This morning, I met my regular running buddy Kurt for our semi-weekly trot of torture around the Academy Loop.  It’s not always a trot of torture, but this morning, it was especially , ummm, “invigorating” because the thermometer read 27 degrees at the house when I left it at 5:50.  Bundled up, I met Kurt at our usual connection point, and we stretched briefly before jaunting out into the arctic darkness.

We covered our normal routines in the run- checking in with each other’s lives as we loosened up on the first mile of the Loop, touching base on topics left open from the last jog.  At the end of this warmup stretch of the run, our course turns and heads east and adopts a slight incline that is significant enough that we generally stop talking as we slowly pound out this next mile.  At one point in the past Kurt commented that this stretch of our run should be called “Heartbreak Hill,” and physically that name fits it fine, but for me, as long as I have run this route over the last few years, it has actually been my “heartache hill.”  For whatever reason, as I plod along in silence up this long and unyielding hill, my mind always turns to think about the women in my life that I have loved, and the women in my life that I have lost.  Probably not the best thing to think about when you are fighting to make your body keep moving, but this has been a strange and perpetual phenomena for me.  But that’s an aside.

Once we conquer the hill, we have an easy half-a-mile heading south in which to recover, and once we make the final turn west on the course- rounding the last corner of the rectangle of our Loop- we know that the hard part of the run is behind us.  Here, I usually feel like a horse that has been coming home from a long journey who finally catches a glimpse of his barn and corral.  I get a second wind and am ready to pick it up a little.  And once we round that last corner, Kurt and I usually talk a little more.

Hill conquered and corner rounded, today Kurt broke the quiet by asking me “Hey man, do you want to hear a success story?”  “Sure- of course.”  So Kurt starts to tell me about this dude he knows.

—

A long time ago (well, like 13 years ago), before Kurt and his wife had kids, they used to get up and go to a local gym at 4:45 in the morning  Now, when you go to the gym at 4:45 in the morning, you get to know people.  Everyone there at that time is a regular.

When Kurt first started going to the gym, he started running into this short and stocky, tattoo-covered Hispanic kid here and there.  “He was the kind of guy you’d see and think it best to stay out of his way. He’d come in the gym and be no-nonsense.  You’d think ‘Yeah- I don’t want to mess around with this guy.'”  Still, Kurt is Kurt-friendly, and unflinching- and during one of his gym visits he said ‘Hello’ to the kid.  They’d run into each other more in the coming weeks and months, and talk a little here and there.  And in time, they had rapport, and Kurt had Eric’s story.

“Eric grew up in the South Valley, in a poor and tough neighborhood.  Growing up, everyone he knew was flirting around with gang life, and ending up in gangs.  When he was in high school, he saw the world around him, thought about it, and decided he just didn’t want to end up staying in that world.  He wanted to get out.  He believed he could have a better life than that- and he hung on to that vision.”

Eric had a number of opportunities to take the lesser, more popular road, but he didn’t.

“‘I am going to go to school. I am going to do something with my life.’ Eric told me back then.”

Time moved forward.  Kurt would check in with Eric once in a while at the gym and see how his life was, how work was going.  Weeks became months, and months became years.  Eric moved from one job to another, and then started taking college classes, and then switched jobs, and sat out a semester, and was sticking to his dream, but struggling to make ends meet, and… and then their lives separated.  When Kurt and his wife had kids, their early mornings at the gym were done.  And Kurt lost track of Eric.

“Last week, I went in early to the gym to get a workout in, and as I was approaching the front door, I saw this tough-looking muscular guy heading for it as well.  When we got in the light, I realized it was Eric.  He flashed me a great big smile, we went inside, and then we talked for a bit.”

“He looked great.  He never finished college, but he picked up some trade skills and had been doing construction work for a number of years.  He’s married now, and he has two step-children- a daughter who is 21, and a son who is in high school. He said he had been laid off earlier this summer, so he was almost done adding 1600 square feet to his family’s home.  He’s happy, he’s doing well financially, and most importantly, he made it out of his old neighborhood.”

“Oddly enough, I went to a birthday party last weekend at a friend’s place, and again, there he was.  His son is dating the daughter of my friend.  It’s a small world, isn’t it?  13 years later, and our lives meet again.  I gave him my card because we have some home improvements we’d like to do, and he’d be a perfect person to help us with them.”

Eric could have ended up gang-banging or dead, or stuck in a harsh life if he hadn’t tried to get out of the Valley.  “But he chose to get out- he chose to make a better life for himself.  He chose to not get involved in the drugs and gang stuff.  I am so impressed”, Kurt tells me.

I am too, Kurt.

“Wasn’t that a good success story?”

“Yeah, man, it was.  That was a good success story.”

I also appreciate that Kurt finds joy in the successes and achievements of his friends- whether they are close or distant ones.