After a Jog 35 Years Ago, He\'s Still Running in Circles

By JESSE NEWMAN

At 11 a.m. on Sunday two things will happen: in London, around 100 of the world's fastest men will launch themselves onto the 26.2-mile Olympic marathon course, dashing from Buckingham Palace to the Tower of London in front of hundreds of thousands of excited spectators.

Meanwhile, as the sun rises over Brooklyn, a lone man named Luis Rios will be traipsing unnoticed along the not-quite-three-and-a-half-mile loop in Prospect Park. Some two hours later, the quickest of the elite distance runners in England will be festooned with garlands and medals and the adoration of viewers the world over. Mr. Rios, 64, will be on his fourth lap. He'll orbit the small green oasis for seven more hours and then retire to bed after draining a bowl of soup.

A retired worker for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Mr. Rios has been running in circles for 35 years. According to his first entry scratched into a worn spiral-bound notebook, he went for a six-and-a-half mile jog in Prospect Park one February morning in 1977. The next day, he retraced his steps. The day after that, he rounded the park three times for a total of 10 miles. By March, he was up to 11.

At last count, Mr. Rios had run more than 200,000 miles, nearly all of them around the same patch of land north of his Coney Island apartment. Had he ever run in one direction, Mr. Rios could have circumnavigated the globe eight times by now, or made 33 trips across the continental United States and back. But his sense of direction is hopeless, he said, so he seldom strays from the park's main loop.

“I just went for a run one day,” said Mr. Rios, who is alternately amused and bewildered by his own obsession. “It started with one loop and then it mushroomed.” Soon he was running races. Over the years, he has competed in 50 marathons, more than 200 ultra-races (each over 50 miles) and 20 multiday race s, the longest of which spanned 12 days and 646 miles. When he was 33, he ran the New York City Marathon in 2 hours and 48 minutes. Last year, he completed the race in 6 hours and 49 minutes.

Three decades of clockwise â€" and counterclockwise â€" travel has left Mr. Rios rail-thin, with long, sinewy arms that dangle at his sides as he walks. He has coffee-colored eyes, a woolly gray beard and mischievous eyebrow hairs that escape over the top of his glasses. In motion, Mr. Rios pitches forward, as if leaning headfirst into a howling wind. His gait is faster than an amble but slower than a trot; he is surprisingly graceful in spite of his twitchy shuffle.

These days, Mr. Rios runs upward of 150 miles per week, covering about 40 miles in 14 hours â€" to and from, as well as around â€" Prospect Park every other day, and 7 miles up and down the Coney Island Boardwalk on the days in between.

“Larry!” Mr. Rios called out on a recent Saturday, waving toward t he blurred figure of a bicyclist whipping by in Prospect Park. “That's Larry,” he said. “His wife died of brain cancer a few years ago. He's still grieving.”

On the next lap, Mr. Rios greeted another cyclist, taunting him about a recent Yankees loss. “Every lap, that guy tells me how great the Yankees are,” Mr. Rios said. “He was a very good marathoner once. Then he had a heart attack. Now he's got three stents in him, and an artificial hip. Very nice guy.”

Mr. Rios was born to Spanish parents who fled Francisco Franco's dictatorship and wound up on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Now his only family is a makeshift one of other athletes in Prospect Park. Over the years, he has made and lost friends, struck up a romance or two, and watched the neighborhoods around the park's perimeter change. His doctor, dentist and lawyer all began as casual running partners years ago.

Otherwise, Mr. Rios is alone. His dark one-bedroom apartment is choked with running paraphernalia and awards. Draped across his living room windows are curtains cut from the metallic blankets issued to athletes at the end of a race. When the sun shines, letters reading “1986 New York City Marathon” cast a silvery light into the room.

“I thought I would quit running decades ago,” he said. “But I can't stop. It's an addiction, like cigarettes or alcohol. I need the rush. Also, it's cheap entertainment. Except for the shoes.”

The sneakers Mr. Rios wears today are 20 years old. They've ripened into an uncertain shade of gray and are cracked on all sides, with barely a sole left to speak of. At times he longs for a break. Every Saturday in the summer, he toys with the idea of going to see the Mets play at Citi Field. But he's greedy with the miles; he needs to add another 40 to his running tally so he never does stop for a game. Instead, he walks home, draws a bath, eats his supper and watches baseball on television before fa lling asleep.

Last April, Mr. Rios left Prospect Park to compete in an annual endurance race in Queens. Along with dozens of other athletes, he ran or walked for six days â€" and nights â€" around a track in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park. He covered 314 miles in all, a distance equivalent to two marathons per day.

He's never watched an Olympic marathon and is bound to miss this year's race too. “I'm not really interested in running,” Mr. Rios said. “It's something I just walked into.”