I stopped running in October, 1985.....

I stopped running in October 1985, after a couple of years of running every morning. I didn’t run very far, usually about a mile and a half or so, but I was consistent. I weighed a lot less, probably because I was running.

I’d get up every morning while it was still dark, sometime between 5 and 6 a.m., put on appropriate clothes and shoes, and off I’d go. When I was still lining with my wife, we lived across the street from a large Catholic Complex, several schools, a church and a nunnery (or whatever you call it) and they had a track. This made life simple because I didn’t have to run in the street.

However, there were some drawbacks. Since it was very early and very dark, I did run into hurdles once and nearly killed myself. It’s not that I couldn’t jump them, it’s that I couldn’t see them and I crashed over them, or at least the first one.

When I moved away from my home into downtown Birmingham, MI, I tried to keep up with the running, and did so for a while. When I moved further east in Birmingham, I picked up serious running again. However, in October, 1985, I was running in the street at about 5:30 a.m. and hit a pile of wet leaves. I went flying and hit the ground, peeling skin from both hands and both knees. As I lay there in the street, I looked up to see two paperboys staring down at me. I quickly got up, smiled, brushed myself off and laughed a bit, and ran off into the rising sun. As I smiled and ran away, the tears were running down my grimacing face, wishing I were dead!

I never ran again!