Running saved a life. His life. Let me hear Amen. And by life, mean sanity as well.
Reaching for that final piece of life, remembered his father’s advice. Dad was even younger back then. Don’t go to jail and never let them send you to the looney bin. One more thing. The old man might’ve been six or so. Never just take a girl’s word for it when she tells you she’s pregnant.
Dad was good like that. When I saw him. When he wasn’t asleep on the couch. He’d be gone to work before I got out of bed in the morning and home late. He’d nap on the sofa until bedtime. There was a family myth, all the men in his family died before they turned thirty-nine. The old man was not yet ten that year and he watched his father, this big strong young man wait to drop dead. Left an impression, studying that.
His father hadn’t been afraid of much for the next forty-nine years.
And neither was he. He’d just been thinking, is all.
But I digress.
That night in a pepto-bismal-pink drunk tank in McMinnville, now expunged, except for that, he’d been lucky. Or careful. Or smart. Did I say lucky.
You don’t run marathons balls out if you’re a coward. He believed that. You don’t run hundred mile weeks – at altitude, might add – if you are lazy. He believed that. Running gave him an understanding about himself. He was brave and he was hard-working. Let me tell you something. If you are brave and hard-working – and lucky – you can stay out of jail. As for the looney bin, you’re on your own. I don’t even visit myself there.
Takes a lot of energy to get into trouble. Girls and a gazillion miles pounding pavement and trails, he was exhausted. Too tired to get into trouble. Same technique he propounded today.
And lucky.