Late coach's advice, ethic still inspire

I used to be a runner, and if it were up to Keith Young, I still would be.

Keith was our neighbor in Green River, Wyo., and the dad of one of my childhood friends. And he was a runner to his core.

He ran track at Heber City's Wasatch High and later at Brigham Young University. As a young father he ran with his children and kept it up through their high school and college years, and beyond.

Keith came into my life as a neighbor, LDS bishop and part-time coach. His daughter, Lisa, and I ran in the Hershey track program, and our dads trained us. Keith was the technical coach. Lisa remembers his tips like this:

"When running uphill, pick up your knees; when running into the wind, put your head down. When running downhill, coast and make up ground."

And always, she recalls, there was this, that last encouragement to keep a young runner going when the going got tough: "When you don't think you can run any further, hold onto my shirt and I'll pull you along."

Keith pulled us along, all right, though he failed to pass on to me his truly maniacal competitiveness. The kindest of men off the field of play, with a self-deprecating sense of humor, he turned fierce and dogged in competition, refusing to be beaten.

He was beaten, though. After the kids — seven of his own, plus a nephew that Keith and his wife, Doreen, folded seamlessly into their family — were grown and gone, Keith kept running. As grandkids came along and his 60s approached, he kept running.

On Memorial Day weekend of 2008, Keith was training for a marathon relay by running a trail along the Green River when he simply collapsed. Moments earlier, he passed a friend with a cheerful greeting. Moments later, a woman biking nearby came upon him face down on the trail. At age 60 he was dead, instantly, from heart arrhythmia.

My family moved from Green River 20 years earlier, and my track career ended long before that. Though my parents encouraged me, and Keith told me (with more kindness than truth) that I had potential, I never took to track.

I felt too exposed out on the wide, flat course, felt too much pressure from all those watching eyes. I much preferred swimming, where the water muffled the crowd's cheers and gave me some private space for what I saw as a private endeavor. So I dropped track and stopped running.

Years later, as time and inactivity made my youthful fitness a dim memory, Keith would ask if I ever ran anymore, though he knew I never did. He'd shake his head a little and tell me how good it was for me, and how good I was at it, once upon a time. And a little, ashamed part of me knew he was right, that I should take it up again, for the sake of my own health.