JEFFERSON TWP — Whether being bitten by a dog, avoiding a thrown beer bottle, braving minus 40 wind chills, undergoing hernia and back surgeries … none of that stopped him.

Retired Knoch basketball coach Les Shoop, 78, got his mile-plus of running in every day — for 16,384 consecutive days, just 53 days of short of 45 years. It was one of the longest such running streaks in the world.

So what finally snapped the streak?

A fall on the ice before winter ended. But Shoop wasn’t running at the time.

He works for Lexus of North Hills and was cleaning snow off cars when it happened. The date was Feb. 17, 2025, and Shoop remembers it well.

“We hadn’t put salt down yet. I just slipped and went down hard,” he said. “I had a contusion from my hip down to my knee. I couldn’t even walk, let alone run.

“Just like that, it was over.”

Shoop’s streak of 44.86 years of running at least a mile every day ranks 10th among retired people worldwide, according to the U.S. Running Streak Association. The streak began on April 28, 1980, while he was a basketball coach in Punxsutawney.

His was the 23rd longest active streak in the world at the time it ended. The longest streak belongs to Jim Pearson, 81, of Marysville, Wash., at 20,519 consecutive days, as of Tuesday.

“I didn’t feel any sadness at all, the way it ended,” Shoop said. “It was sort of a relief, to be honest. I wasn’t sure how much longer I was going to go with it, anyway.

“I guess this was God’s way of saying, ‘OK, knucklehead, that’s enough.’”

Shoop got into running with Punxsutawney junior high basketball coach Ken Mack. But they didn’t run in poor weather.

“It was easy to run when the sun was shining,” Shoop said. “Nobody wants to run when it’s raining or if it’s cold outside. I just decided I was gonna run every day regardless of the elements.”

Or anything else.

While his first wife was hospitalized with cancer, Shoop did his run in the hospital’s parking garage. While on a cruise ship, he got his run in along the deck.

“It took 42 laps around that deck to reach a mile,” he said, laughing. “I was in Las Vegas and went out running at 5 a.m. each day.”

While running with Mack one day, Shoop said someone threw an empty beer bottle at him, “missed me and hit Ken. But no one was hurt.

“I carried Mace with me in case of dogs coming at me. The lone day I didn’t have it, a dog bit me in the calf, about 200 yards from my house,” he said.

With his wife, Marsha, going into labor before the birth of their son, Shoop got his run in.

“I was in labor and he had to get it in,” his wife said. “He told me to put the porch light on if I needed him.

“I do admire it,” Marsha said of the streak. “He was very serious about it. Les is a competitive guy and he kept a daily log of his runs. He wanted to get 40 to 70 miles in a week. He was almost obsessive about that streak. But I loved his determination and dedication to keeping it going, no matter the circumstances.”

Shoop had outpatient hernia surgery in Erie and ran later the same day. He had an incision in his back from an operation and was told by doctors to go home and rest after the surgery.

“Of course, he didn’t listen,” Marsha said. “He did his run and split the incision open. Fortunately, I’m a nurse, and I had to tend to that.”

Though Shoop’s streak is over, he remains active. He is Knoch varsity basketball’s official scorer. He runs the scoreboard clock for junior high games. He gets 10,000 to 20,000 steps in every day.

“My father has never been a sedentary person,” said his son, Knoch athletic director Josh Shoop. “He’s a creature of habit. Once he sets out to do something, there’s no stopping him. He’s determined and stubborn.

“Our whole family is proud of that streak. It’s an amazing accomplishment. It’s crazy, the hundreds of miles he’s run. But, yeah, I’m thrilled that it’s over. He can go take a walk whenever he wants. He can go for a bike ride whenever he wants. But he doesn’t have to feel obligated or compelled to go running every day anymore.”

Shoop’s run streak lives on in the family … sort of. His daughter, Lindsay DeFelice, runs between 3 to 6 miles five or six days a week.

She said she started running because of her father.

“Absolutely, that’s why I started,” DeFelice said. “I see what running has done for him. I’m following in his footsteps, so to speak. I’ll continue to run as long as I can.

“Pride kept him going with that streak. Dad always said it’s better to wear out than rust out. It was so sad, seeing his streak end the way it did, but I know he was flirting with the idea of calling it quits soon.”

DeFelice recalled running with her father to school, saying “he would run backward and I still couldn’t keep up with him. He always amazed me that way.”

Shoop’s one regret was falling short of 45 consecutive years with the streak.

“I really wanted to get there, just not meant to be, I guess,” he said. “Toward the end, though, I was doing a disservice to real runners. I was barely jogging. It was getting harder and harder.

“I never sustained any major injury all those years. I had an Achilles problem for a while, that was it. I was fortunate.”

As was his family to witness the streak.

“It will forever be a part of our family legacy,” DeFelice said.