I wasn’t black and I hadn’t just lost 200 lbs, but I was running in a very hilly 10k and when I rounded a residential corner alone and saw yet ANOTHER hill, I slowed to a walk in dismay. A man came up to me, no flirting at all, and said, “oh, no. We can do this. We are gonna finish this. Let’s do it.” He got me back to running and we did the rest of the race together, him offering words of strength and encouragement, until the last little push to the finish inside the park, where he shrugged and said, “you know what I gotta do,” and jogged through the crowd alone to applause. He was Martin Sheen, he had just recovered from his heart attack, and he was very kind when no one in the world was looking.
It was a Marathon for this at the time, 63 year-old man. It was 82 degrees in the shade, a little warmer on the asphalt, at the 20-mile mark the finish line was only a block away...I said to my 10-year grandson who had joined me at the 17-mile marker to complete the task at hand...: “It’s hot, we can just go down here and be done....” his response continues to bounce around in my mind today: “You can’t quit, Papaw...” and so we didn’t quit. An achievement of a lifetime!