On the track, my mind has no tension in it, no stress, no dark thoughts.
Some people say it's a runner's high.
But I think it's like almost like a meditative state or a oneness. I believe that.
It’s something that comes with me just like your peace, or your faith, or your state of mind.
All of that is housed in me.
No matter what circumstances—being in prison— I can still do that.
You break your mental will.
You do.
On the half-marathon—that’s the one that I’ve ran—you can break barriers down in
your own brain.
Maybe I can go from rags to riches story.
From jail to the Boston Marathon.
Had I not come to jail, I would have failed in life because I had no strength—mentally,
emotionally, anything.
I was doomed.
The first time I heard the word meth I think I was 20.
I didn’t even know that drug existed.
I was clean for like six months, maybe seven months.
Went to a barbecue, and I knew there was gonna be drugs there.
I tell myself like, oh you didn’t.
But at the end of the day, I did.
I got high.
Never got that high before.
It was a lot of meth I did.
And after that night, something changed mentally for me.
When you’re in a psychosis, like.
you get messages.
I got messages from every single thing.
All day, every day.
I was going crazy.
My mental state was the same far after being here — many, many months.
I think I've always had trouble coping — never really knowing how to navigate life.
When I was about 30, I got baby fever just so bad, and it seemed like everyone in the
world was having babies.
And I spent my whole 40 weeks thinking any minute now the shoe’s going to drop, like
something is going to be wrong.
It kept me from any kind of attachment, and it kept me from any kind of good place.
When I delivered her I still had this, this detachment, and I never got that kind of
that sigh, you know, where you’re just there, and you’re in love, and the experience.
I wasn't at all there.
It's like something's just weighted down and the anxiety of it and just the uneasiness,
like, this doesn't feel right.
And no one to talk to about it.
I didn't get any of the relief that my whole body and being told me I would get.
I got nothing.
It just got worse.
It got worse.
I was imploding, self-destructing, and coming here saved my life.
I had a really great attorney, and she encouraged me.
She's like, ‘Oh they have a running project.’
I couldn't even run a lap when I started, but I was able to build up.
When I think about training for a marathon, it's like a perfect metaphor for life.
In the build up to a marathon, you have good days and bad days.
And how you handle the bad days really determine how you do on race day.
How’s your training going?
It’s been awesome.
I loved running the half-marathon.
My last one was an hour and 49 minutes.
And I think that's something that maybe is missing from folks that end up in the prison population.
When things go rough, how do I recover from that, and build on it, and overcome that to
accomplish something.
Michael, which is my victim, I ran for him a couple times.
My dad ‘cause he’s brain dead.
My son because I wish he was here to see me do this.
But today, it’s all about me.
We’ll give an award to anyone who breaks into the top 10 best times overall...
No matter what crime a person has done, they’re still a human being.
And I think running is just a way to show your humanness.
I can think of the runners we had today and the ones who've come in who were kind of a
train wreck when they first started with us and now are a much different person, you know.
A lot of our runners have never had any sort of big accomplishment in their life.
They've always been treated as a problem.
And here they're just treated as a runner.
There's no problem — you're just a runner.
To be able to run, which not everyone can do, and to be able to get better and better at it
—Good job Sarah!
gives me my own sense of worth and accomplishment.
It also lays down this new perspective that I can do something hard.
I can survive it.
I can thrive in it.
And that goes against everything I always believed.
C’mon Miss Suzette!
When we talk to people at the beginning of the program and then follow them through the
program and interviewed them at the end, they really changed.
They really changed how they felt about each other.
They changed how they felt about their own physical bodies.
They changed how they felt about their prospects for the future.
Hamstring is— Back.
Back thigh.
Good job.
Fat is an unnecessary nutrient...
It’s a shared interest.
It's a shared struggle.
When a race is over, everyone's feeling the same thing.
They're feeling like, wow.
I did that.
And, cool.
I want to thank our community volunteers...
I built a lot of confidence through my running.
A lot.
My perception, my beliefs, my morals, values are different, and they're real.
They're not that easily compromised.
The mind is brilliant, really.
I know that, you know?
But yeah, life is good.