A runner is reborn in middle age

I rounded the corner into Levy-Lakeside Elementary School in Merrick on April 29, sweating and panting, and I heard my wife shouting my name in the distance. I ran to Katerina’s voice.

Fifteen seconds later, the race was over, and I felt my blood pulsing through my veins when I stopped moving. Katerina and our kids hurried over and wrapped their arms around me. State Assemblyman David McDonough shook my hand and offered his congratulations.

I was dazed. I felt as though I were in a strangely familiar dream.

That blessedly sunny Sunday, I took part in the seventh annual Robbie’s Run 5K race/walk, a fundraiser for Forever 9 – The Robbie Levine Foundation. Jill and Craig Levine, of Merrick, started the foundation in 2005, shortly after their 9-year-old son, Robbie, died of heart failure while running the bases during a Little League practice. They began the 5K to raise funds for the foundation, which donates automated external defibrillators to schools and youth organizations and trains people in how to use them.

This year, more than 1,200 people ran the 5K. There was also a 1-mile run, which my daughter, Alexandra, ran with one of her best friends, and a fun run for kids, which my son, Andrew, did. It was a magnificent day for the Brintons.

Robbie’s Run was my first race in 23 years. I ran competitively from middle school until I graduated from Geneseo. My last set of races –– a 5K and a 10K –– was at the University of Rochester on an overcast Saturday in May 1989. Then I stopped competing, though I continued running and walking for 10 years to work out. My kids were born when I was in my early 30s. Thereafter, there was no time to exercise.

Soon I was 30 pounds overweight, and I would get out of breath climbing stairs.

In June 2010, at age 42, I gave myself a present –– a pair of Asics running shoes –– and promised myself that I would complete a 5K within two years. At first I trained two days a week, then three, four and five, jogging just blocks at the outset, then working my way up to a mile and two and three. From 2010 to 2011, I dropped 15 pounds, and this year I decided it was time to enter Robbie’s Run.