Sutherland Close on the Heels of His Mentor

Mentors and their proteges are, typically, a generation or two apart, but that does not apply to Mark Covert and Jon Sutherland.

Sutherland, 42, of West Hills, tried out for the Valley College cross-country team in the fall of 1968 intending to increase his leg strength for the spring when he planned to pitch for the Monarch baseball team.

By the end of the cross-country season, however, Sutherland had caught the running bug and gave up baseball and basketball, sports he played at Granada Hills High.

Though Sutherland was not among the top seven runners on the Valley team that won the 1968 state junior college cross-country title, he was willing to do whatever it took to improve. Covert, Valley’s individual state champion, seemed like the perfect runner to emulate.

“I definitely looked up to him,” Sutherland says of Covert. “The guy was my hero. He just worked his butt off.”

Sutherland, who is three months older than Covert, still recalls fondly the day in 1969 he learned that Covert had gone a year without missing a day of running.

“I remember thinking, ‘This is cool,’ ” Sutherland says.

Sutherland, who had a modest two-month streak of his own at the time, has trained every single day since May 25, 1969. Covert’s streak hits 25 years today.

Although the two have not run together in years, Sutherland will join his old friend Sunday when a barbecue will be held in honor of Covert and his streak.

“I love the guy,” Sutherland said. “I think what he has done is simply incredible.”

Sutherland, who timed 28 minutes 51 seconds over a 10,000-meter road course in 1978, said he has logged more than 132,000 miles during his streak.

He underwent arthroscopic surgery to remove torn cartilage from his right knee two weeks ago, but his streak has endured.

“I thought it would be a lot easier to run after the operation than it’s been,” said Sutherland, a syndicated rock columnist. “There has been a lot of swelling in the knee, but I should be OK in another week or so.”

Running the day after undergoing knee surgery might seem ludicrous to most people, but Sutherland has endured some painful moments for the sake of his streak.

In July, 1979, Sutherland suffered a broken left elbow after tripping over a tree stump at the start of a workout.

He went to the hospital to have the elbow X-rayed and when the doctor informed him it needed to be set in a cast, Sutherland bolted out the back door and finished his workout.

“I just said (forget) it,” Sutherland said. “I was in really good shape and at the time running with a cast on my arm was just not part of the plan.”

Neither was running every day for the past 24 years, but like Covert, Sutherland says that a daily run or two is something he enjoys.

That’s right, sometimes he trains twice in one day.

“I could be sick, or injured, or depressed, but there is always at least one point in every day that, no matter how bad I feel, I want to go out and run,” Sutherland said. “Sometimes, that’s in the morning, sometimes it’s in the afternoon, but it always happens.”