The parking lot is crowded. It is dark. Runners are all outside their vehicles, warming up before the race. They are bouncing on the pavement. Doing calisthenics. Pulling and pushing their own bodily limbs into impossibly contorted positions. Not a thimbleful of body fat between them.

As the sun peeks above the roofline of the Hoover Metropolitan Complex, 2,000 of Birmingham’s most bloodthirsty competitive runners begin to gather at the starting line, forming tight social clusters.

They are all listening to music on earbuds. Lacing and re-lacing shoes. Many are wearing skimpy athletic outfits, revealing six-pack abs, massive deltoids, and well-defined gluteal regions. Some of the runners look like living GI Joe figurines and Barbie dolls.

I am wearing athletic shorts purchased from Walmart. I look like a pig farmer from Butler County.

But I’m here.

“This is for the kids,” is the slogan of this race. Everyone keeps saying this mantra.

The BHM26.2 Marathon is a fundraiser. In its eighth year, the race has raised over $1 million for children in Alabama. All proceeds benefit Magic Moments. Each year, this race brings together thousands of people who inadvertently grant a wish to some hope-starved child in Alabama. A kid with a chronic, life-threatening, or life-altering condition. That’s why I’m here. For the kids.

The music on the loudspeakers starts. The emcee gives us the go-signal. And we’re off.

The mass of runners moves forward. We in the rear are merely shuffling. Because we are not fast runners. We are not competitive athletes. We are what is commonly known to the global running community as, “middle-aged normal people.”

Even so, we all have our reasons for being here.

One woman runner tells me a doctor once told her she would not live to see her 65th birthday, due to breast cancer. She is 71 and runs marathons.

Another man in his 50s began running after his divorce. One morning, on a lark, he took up running. It changed him. This is his 12th marathon.

My story isn’t too different. I’ve been running since age 14. I was a chubby, redhead. I looked like Danny Partridge after taking sodium pills.

Kids made fun of me. I was bad at sports. And things weren’t looking hopeful in the couple-skating department.

To make matters worse, my father was freshly dead. We were the tragic family in town.

For some reason, grief sometimes makes you hate everything. Even yourself. I hated the overweight boy in the mirror. Moreover, I hated being trapped in my saddened mind.

One night I sat before the mirror and cried, looking at my ugly self, feeling so unloved. Why did God make me this way?

It was on that same evening that I donned a pair of cutoff denim shorts and Chuck Taylors. I went outside and ran for 4 minutes under the cover of darkness to hide my shame.

The next night, I ran 5 minutes. By the time I was 15, I was running 3 miles each day.

Running changed the chemistry of my brain. It altered how I felt about myself. Running helped me work through anxieties, paralyzing fears, and soul-sucking depression. In a way, running sort of helped me learn to love myself.

As I approach mile 25, I am not loving much of anything. I’m not so much running as I am hobbling.

At mile 26, I see my wife in the distance. She is cheering. Onlookers are ringing bells and applauding. I limp across the finish line and my wife is screaming.

“This is for the kids,” grunts a suffering fellow runner nearby.

“For the kids,” I grunt.

And it was. Especially for the one inside me.