"A second 10K for world hunger?" asked Tim Hewitt after we'd run the 6.2 mile CROP Walk route.
"In these old sneakers?" I moaned, feet burning from the May Day blacktop already bubbling in the early summer at the edge of tidewater Virginia.
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Tim was my new running buddy during our late senior year at Randolph-Macon College. A former cross-country star at his Fort Bragg high school, he had watched with interest as I used distance running to make the transition from football to pre-med after my sister's brain tumor and my father's first fatal heart attack.
"Ready to kick it up a notch?" he inquired one lazy spring Sunday after our all-nighters, his at our fraternity's pajama party, mine bent over physics and organic chemistry.
"No but let's go anyway" I answered. "I need to clear my head before tomorrow's exam."
Tim proceeded to coax five miles out of my coffee-soaked lungs for my first really long run. And to my surprise, the mathematical solutions to end-of-chapter problems were much clearer during that night's session at the science building.
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"One step at a time" he coached as we passed the sign-out table.
"Double...or nothing...for Biafra" I gasped, wincing into a plodding jog that would get me through my first marathon.
