Getting To The Starting Line

When Jim Flanagan was 25 years old, he received some inspiring, yet blunt, advice from his now late uncle who was also his doctor. He simply said, "You're getting fat and if you don't do something about it now you'll end up just like me." It wasn't exactly subtle, but it worked. Jim, president of Nuance Solutions, a Chicago-based chemical manufacturing company, has been running now for 30 years. Two years ago, at age 53, he ran his first marathon.

"I occasionally ran a 10-kilometer race, but I never tried to run a marathon because I didn't think I could do the training that a marathon requires," says Jim. "But, in January of 2007, I literally woke up and decided to do it. I put myself into the mindset that if I had to quit in the middle of training, at least I would have gotten in better shape."

To train for his first marathon — the 2007 Chicago Marathon — Jim signed up for the Chicago Runners Association marathon-training program. Pre-marathon training lasted for 30 weeks, four days each week.

"Getting into the heavy marathon training was the best thing that happened to me," says Jim. "I would run long runs at seven o'clock on Saturday mornings with my pace leader and 150 other runners. Our leader was just a regular guy, but before every long run he would give us an inspirational speech that would bring some people to tears before they ran."

A runner's goal for a first marathon is not getting to the finish line, but to the starting line. There's a lot of anticipation during the training, along with some big lifestyle changes. Runners commit to a significant amount of training time (for instance, an 18-mile run on a Saturday takes longer than three hours). But training does have its upsides, for example, the "guilt-free eating" for the rest of the weekend after completing a long Saturday run.

Jim still recalls the excitement of that first marathon, especially the thrill of standing at the starting line with 40,000 other people. Though the race was cancelled in the middle of the event due to unseasonably hot temperatures, Jim was still able to finish.

"It was 97 degrees when I finished the race, which took me five hours and 40 minutes, about an hour longer than I trained for," he says.

Jim ran the Memphis Marathon two months later and improved, finishing in four hours and 54 minutes. Since then he has completed four other marathons: the Flying Pig Marathon in Cincinnati in 2008, the Chicago Marathon again in 2008, Grandma's Marathon in Duluth, Minn. in 2009, and the New York Marathon in 2009.

At this last marathon Jim achieved his best time: four hours and 49 minutes. He ran in honor of six family members and friends who were fighting cancer, giving him a special motivation. He even made T-shirts that said "Faith, Hope and Courage" on the front and their names on the back.

"It's a selfish thing to run in honor of other people, because they give me encouragement as I think of them while I'm running," says Jim. "It keeps my mind off of my own pain. They are the true marathoners."

Gretchen Roufs, an 18-year janitorial supply industry veteran, owns a marketing and public relations company in San Antonio. To suggest someone you think should be featured in “Freetime,” contact her at Gretchen@GretchenRoufs.com.