"Breakfast every morning is the same thinga cup of applesauce, a peanut butter sandwich, and a cheap cigar." Not exactly what you'd expect from a guy who ran 4,313 miles last year. It gets stranger. Around 90 percent of those miles were done on the indoor track at the Downtown YMCA in Grand Rapids.

I met Mike Howell at the Y to discuss his accomplishments. He was already there, up on the third floor above the gym, running around the old wooden track wearing only shoes, shorts and a blue bandana. The oval is 70 yards around, so to go a mile you circle it just over 25 times. "Ive got about 13 laps to go," Mike said as he greeted me. I didn't have to wait long.

Twenty years ago, when he was 28, Mike ran 4,053 miles. He wondered if he could match that in 2002. He started a running streak doing at least 10 miles per day in November 2001, and has continued to do at least 10 every day since. During October and November he did 15 miles every day. He tried to bump it to 18 miles, but told me, "That was just too much." The extra miles were run during lunch hours or after work. Why does he do it? "I've never been an outstanding athlete," said Mike. "Ive played a lot of sports, but never really excelled in any of them. So I decided to go for quantity instead."

Mike started running "to feel good." It seems to be working. After covering more than 60,000 miles, he's a lean, mean, running machine at age 48 with no physical problems whatsoever. Most people don't have the time for this. Mike gets up at 4:30 every morning without an alarm clock, eats breakfast and drives from his Grand Haven home to Grand Rapids. By 5:30, he's on the Y track for 10 miles, which is often only his first run of the day, before heading to work a few blocks away at Catholic Human Development Outreach. Mike helps resettle political refugees, which often has him moving furniture and setting up apartments.

In January last year, Mike's Y running peers started having fun with him. Suddenly, some guy named Hanson began writing his daily miles-more than Mike's-on a chart in the locker room.

"Id write my miles down, come in the next day and see that Hanson had run two more than me," Mike remembered. "I bumped up my miles to as high as 20, but this guy kept outdoing me."

Mike tried for months to catch a glimpse of the elusive Hanson. "He must be a treadmill runner. Do treadmill miles count? Is this someone from Kenya," he wondered. Finally the guys couldn't keep straight faces any longer. The secret was out, and Mike's mileage up.

"Ive never gone by the rules," he said. There are no rest days. No water stops. There's a cigar before every run and often another one afterward. He smokes close to a pack a day.

"I dont use orthotics, Power Bars or Gatorade. I keep it simple," Mike said. He buys generic shoes at a discount store. "Ive never had $90 shoes," he said.

Mikes goals for the future? "I'd like to run a 100-miler, and race up the stairs at the Empire State Building." He'd also like to keep his streak going for "I dont know how long.

"Ive never had anything that identified Mike Howell," he said. "Running has done that."

We said goodbye and Mike went to do a few more laps to give him 20 miles for the day before heading for his next cigar. It was Jan. 21 and he'd already run close to 300 miles for 2003. Looks like he'll break his mileage mark once again. MR