The road through East Baltimore is a ribbon of despair lined with ghosts from Arnold Shipman's past. Tired-looking women sit on the stoops of run-down rowhouses, seemingly oblivious to the October drizzle. Men with missing teeth and ragged clothes smoke on front porches, staring as a long line of runners—thousands of them, many looking haggard themselves—shuffle up the long hill on Washington Street. Shipman is 50 years old, 18 miles into the Baltimore Marathon, and back in the old neighborhood.

Shipman spent twenty years peddling and snorting heroin on these streets and others in neighborhoods like it. Now he's running the 26.2-mile course that weaves through the city—and his haunted memories. Since the halfway point, he has struggled with the hills, letting himself walk up most of them, and this one on Washington Street is brutal. He jogs steadily, though, head bowed. Suddenly, a guy he knows from his junkie days spots him, points, and calls, "Arnold?"

Shipman's recovery has hinged on ditching the people, places, and things that once fueled his addiction; if he'd known that he was going to run into his old crowd, he might have stayed home today. But it's too late for that.

He nods in recognition, shaken. And then he bows his head and runs.

In 2007, Anne Mahlum was a 26-year-old marathoner about to start a high-paying PR job in Philadelphia. She sometimes exchanged greetings with a few men at a homeless shelter she passed on her daily runs. One day she started thinking about how much running had helped her build self-confidence and discipline, and wondered: Could running help these guys, too?

Mahlum asked shelter officials if she could start a running group. Within weeks, she had corralled funding, sponsorships from local running stores, and a small cadre of volunteers to help organize training sessions. The guys at the shelter told her she was crazy. But a few came to the first run anyway. Then a few more. Before the year was out, three of them had finished the Philadelphia Half-Marathon.

Mahlum never made it to the PR job. Today, she is president of a nonprofit organization called Back on My Feet, which employs a staff of eleven, with more than eight hundred volunteers and 170 homeless runners from seven Philadelphia shelters. In March, Back on My Feet launched a Baltimore chapter, and it is in the process of expanding to Washington, D.C.

Nearly 130 homeless people in Philadelphia have run a competitive race, with twenty-seven running a half-marathon and five completing a full. And their success isn't limited to the racecourse: Thirty-one of the runners have found housing, forty-four have jobs, and twenty-nine have enrolled in job training programs or schooling.

"Training for a marathon speaks to the heart of our program," Mahlum says. "If you're willing to put in that kind of work, you can go back to school. You can get a better job. It's a great metaphor for what we're capable of doing in life."

Runners are only eligible for membership in Back on My Feet after being sober, clean shelter residents for roughly thirty days, although exact requirements differ from shelter to shelter. The program wields a bevy of tools to keep members on track, starting with small rewards for attendance such as rubber wristbands and $25 Visa gift cards. After nine months with 90 percent attendance or better, runners are eligible for $1,250 in grant funding for education and housing.

So far, the statistics in the Baltimore program look sunny. As of October, membership had swelled to forty-seven runners and 135 volunteers. Two members had obtained housing, six had secured jobs, and three were enrolled in job-training programs.

Jeremy Jordan, an assistant professor of sport and recreation management at Temple University who conducts monthly assessments of Back on My Feet, is a marathoner himself, and he knew team members would reap some benefits just from the endorphins. Medical research has long affirmed that exercise can boost mental health, reducing anger, anxiety, and depression as effectively or more effectively than medications. But Jordan was surprised to see the runners make gains "right out of the gate," he says, with baseline surveys showing "attitudinal changes as soon as they become members of the program.

"It's clear the role of social engagement is key," Jordan says. "It wouldn't be as successful if they handed out training programs and said, ‘Here, run this many miles.' Something's happening in terms of their ability to interact with other members and the volunteers that's really powerful."

Back on My Feet's Mid-Atlantic Director of Operations Andrew Marr, who was one of the program's first volunteers in Philadelphia, puts it this way: "Is it about running? Sure. But running is secondary to the camaraderie and networking. All of a sudden, this population that has been largely forgotten about has a group of young, professional people who are willing to give a damn about them."




Arnold Shipman found Back on My Feet only after he'd been thoroughly knocked off his.

Shipman grew up in a comfortable middle-class family in northeast Baltimore. His dad worked long days at Bethlehem Steel. His mom, who stayed home to care for her six children, never missed a PTA meeting. Shipman was a good student. He had a paper route and mowed neighbors' lawns for spending money. Tall and lanky, he was also a high-school cross-country and track star. He went undefeated in the 400-meter sprint at Northern Senior High School.

After graduating from Northern in 1978, Shipman followed his brother into the Air Force. He performed well as a customs inspector and transitioned to the Army in 1984. But shortly afterward, his dad's health started to fail. After Shipman returned from one especially difficult visit home, another soldier offered him some weed, kicking off a downward spiral that would end with Shipman's early discharge two years later.

Back in Baltimore, he found that some guys from the neighborhood had scored cars and apartments by selling cocaine. Before long, he, too, was peddling heroin and cocaine from Baltimore to the Badlands neighborhood of North Philadelphia. "I didn't even need the money," Shipman says. "I just couldn't believe these guys were getting this money for doing basically nothing."

The arrests on drug charges began almost immediately. Shipman usually avoided jail time, although he did land behind bars in 1991 for fourteen months and almost a year in 1997. Shipman's friends and family begged him to stop, but by that time, he had an addiction of his own to feed. Shipman never took to cocaine. Heroin, with its mellowing effect, was more his style.

Shipman fathered two daughters during that time, Latoya in 1989 and Tania in 1993. He sent their mother money and talked to them on the phone, but wasn't a father to them like his dad was to him.


Rock bottom came two years ago. Shipman had lost both his house and his truck and had recently been arrested on charges of possession of heroin and a concealed deadly weapon. He had a court date and was trying to get clean. A couple he considers his second parents had taken him in. But he couldn't handle the vomiting, the shaking, and the pain of withdrawal, and he took his friends' car to go buy more dope. He never made the court date.

Shipman skated by for months before he was pulled over for expired tags. This time, with an outstanding warrant and a long rap sheet, he landed in jail. When he went before a judge in December 2008, he begged for a break and said he wanted to get clean for good. The judge consented but warned Shipman he'd be back in jail if he didn't check into the Maryland Center for Veterans Education and Training, which offers homeless veterans housing and substance-abuse treatment. Shipman showed up at the MCVET facility on North High Street in Old Town the next day.

It was not long afterward that Shipman heard Back on My Feet would be holding an organizational meeting. Something about the group and its story, which circulated through the shelter in the weeks before the first run, captivated him. "Just the name," Shipman says. "‘Back on My Feet.' That's exactly what I needed."



Convincing a group composed largely of chain-smoking former drug addicts to wake up at 5:30 a.m. to go running can be a challenge. But the Back on My Feet volunteers, many of whom are amateur endurance athletes themselves, take up the task with the gusto of a cheerleading squad.

Micheal Tate, 48, who arrived at MCVET after stints in prison for robbery and multiple failed attempts to get clean from years of alcohol and drug abuse, grumbled when he heard the runners "hollering outside every morning," he says. A former high-school track athlete, Tate thought his running days were long gone, but the young volunteers didn't go away. "Fine," Tate thought one morning, and joined the runs, which leave from MCVET and three other Baltimore shelters three mornings a week. "I saw how happy they were," Tate says. "I saw the excitement and the camaraderie, and something inside me just woke up again."

Weeks before Back on My Feet held its first official group run in mid-March, Shipman had started training on his own to get ready, even managing to drop his 20-year-old smoking habit. Over the course of the spring, dozens more joined the group, gathering in a parking lot in the predawn darkness before hitting the streets on routes ranging from 1 to 3 miles, with distance varying with each runner's experience level. No one, no matter what pace, ran alone. After the workout, they would gather again to stretch and exchange high fives and encouragement, often parting ways before the sun came up.

By late spring, the runners had learned the group's routes by heart, and the hilly ones never failed to elicit good-natured grumbles. Shipman, though, liked the hills best. The routes around the Inner Harbor were pretty, but the hills tested him. He would hold a steady pace through the inclines, offering a constant stream of encouragement to fellow runners. Asked how he was feeling, he would unfailingly reply, "Faan-tastic!"

But there were setbacks. In May, the team captain, the first runner to declare his intention to run the Baltimore Marathon in October, left the shelter without notice. "Everyone's story is just so different," says Baltimore Program Director Jackie Truncellito. "You think someone's heading in the right direction, and then one small step, one small move in the wrong direction, and things change."

With several dozen runners still in the game, Shipman assumed the team captain post in June. At the time, he was training for the Baltimore Ten-Miler, but a Back on My Feet staffer convinced him to set his sights higher, and volunteer Lauren Lake, an 18-year-old University of Baltimore freshman who'd become his training partner, agreed to run the marathon with him.

A marathon is a world beyond a 10-miler. Many would-be marathoners end up injuring themselves during training and never make it to the starting line. Those runners who manage to stay healthy can fall victim to burnout as mileage and intensity increase. Then there's the physical and psychological challenge of the event itself. Distance running invites self-doubt in even the most experienced competitors. Even with confidence and solid training on his side, Shipman was in for the run of his life.



Race day arrives after months of buildup, with weekend training runs reaching as long as 20 miles. All four Back on My Feet Baltimore teams gather near the starting line at Camden Yards. Forty-five runners from the program will compete in events ranging in distance from a 5K to the full marathon. Passersby stare as the group of several dozen limber-looking runners, clad in technical T-shirts and expensive running shoes, circle up, cheer, and pray. From the outside, it's impossible to tell which runners in the pack are homeless and which are volunteers.

Shipman is quiet and thoughtful in the minutes leading up to the race. Last night, at a pre-race pasta dinner for all four Back on My Feet teams, volunteer Jill Raimato, a massage therapist who's run four marathons, told Shipman she'd had a dream in which she saw him crossing the finish line. "That wasn't a dream," Shipman replied. "That was a premonition."

After hugs and pats on the back from teammates, Shipman and Lake disappear into the sea of runners at the starting line. They've set a goal of finishing in four hours—roughly nine-minute miles. The start is a cacophony of spectators ringing cowbells and yelling through bullhorns, complete with a puff of confetti showering the more than 3,100 runners.

The pair starts strong on the long, steady climb from Camden Yards to Druid Hill Park, past McCulloh Homes, the housing project where Shipman was last arrested. Near the third mile marker, Lake asks Shipman how he is feeling. He hesitates. "OK," he says.

Uh-oh. It's too soon to not feel fantastic. Lake suggests picking up the pace until the crest of the next hill, then easing back on the downhill. They play this game for a few more miles, with Lake quietly coaching Shipman. But their pace gradually slows as the pack heads back downtown via St. Paul Street. A few miles later, Shipman starts begging her to leave him behind. Close to the halfway point, near the Baltimore Museum of Industry, Shipman has to stop to walk. Lake walks with him, insisting that they started together and will finish together. It takes a couple more miles for Lake to tearfully pull away.

By the 16-mile mark, Shipman is exhausted, walking up the hills and jogging on the downhills and flats. "Speed-walking," he says as he shuffles up a long, steady ascent on Linwood Street. His four-hour goal is out of reach. "I'm going to finish," he says, but his voice, winded and faint, betrays some doubt.

Then, there he is on Washington Street with its haunted memories. The exchange with his old buddy leaves him rattled. He'd hoped that his acquaintances here would be sleeping off their Friday night binges and that no one would see him pass. Now he keeps looking over his shoulder, worried that his friend might chase him down, ask what he is doing, where he's been.

But his friend doesn't follow, and Shipman makes it to an aid station where volunteers cheer him on. With Washington Street behind him, things start looking up. At the 19-mile mark in Clifton Park, Shipman spots a guy he ran with in high school who's struggling through the half-marathon. Shipman says hello and offers him some encouragement before running on. At the 21-mile mark at Lake Montebello, Shipman's daughter Latoya and her own children surprise him with cheers and posters.

Shipman still has to run west through Charles Village, then cover the long final stretch down Howard and Eutaw streets to finish at Camden Yards. It's more than five miles. At this point, every step he takes is farther than he's ever run before. Shipman resolves to not walk again until he makes it to the finish line. At the 25-mile mark, he speeds up to catch the five-hour pace group and hangs with them. His time: five hours, twenty-four seconds.

Later, there will be hugs and high-fives from teammates like Tate, who has finished the half-marathon. There will be a happy reunion with Lake, who finished in 4:28—although Shipman will repeatedly remind everyone she could have gone faster had she left him sooner. There will be a celebratory cheesesteak and a self-declared day off from homework.

But for now, it is only Shipman, sitting on the pavement with a mylar blanket wrapped around his shoulders, alone with his thoughts. He's not thinking about how far he's come since he sold heroin in the neighborhoods he just ran through or about how he's amazed that his 50-year-old body, once ravaged by drugs, has just covered 26.2 miles. Like the hundreds of other runners stretching and resting in an endorphin- and exhaustion-fueled haze, he is thinking about the next race.

—Amy Reinink is a freelance writer in Silver Spring. This is her first article for Urbanite.