I caught up to him on Saturday morning, 14 minutes into it, at the two-mile mark. We still had 1.1 miles to go. He looked like a good runner, and probably in my age-group.
It would be about three more minutes before I made a calculated move. Up the hill. Not a big hill, but at the 2.5 mile mark, any hill seems big.
“When you ran up that hill, I knew there was no way I’d catch you”, he said.
Out of nowhere.
That’s where it came from.
After the race, we were just talking about running, getting in shape, and the reasons we do it and the common struggles to stay motivated.
He had lost 50 pounds. “Congratulations!”, I said.
Then.
Out of nowhere.
“After our son died, I gained a lot of weight. It was three years before I decided to lose the weight”, he said.
“What happened?”, I asked, hesitantly, but unafraid.
His son was in college, but home and riding in a friend’s car.
The friend crashed, and his son died tragically.
It happened near their home.
