“Your truest friends are the ones who will stand by you in your darkest moments--because they're willing to brave the shadows with you--and in your greatest moments--because they're not afraid to let you shine.” ― Nicole Yatsonsky

It is obviously too late to back out of running the Boston Marathon Virtual Edition, barring a believable injury or an alien invasion. Four weeks from Sunday I will attempt to run 47 laps around the outside of Fenway Park and join friends and family and medical staff at a post-race party at Loretta's Last Call.

You may legitimately ask yourself: "What do you do for training when you are this close to a Marathon?" My answer is that the plan was to run a 16 mile obstacle course. Well, that wasn't my original intention. Because the best time to run around Fenway is early on a weekend morning, but my weekend was jammed up with concerts and work, I had to do my 29 laps around the park practice run on Friday morning and it turned into an obstacle course. Here's what I mean, street by street:

So for three hours and thirty-eight minutes and 29 laps, I ran around Fenway Park on the actual route I am going to run next month, with obstacle after obstacle overcome. In fact, I actually struck up a lap-by-lap conversation with a couple of security people, because when you see someone 20 or 29 times running the same way, you become very curious.

So that was my long training day. This weekend it is 18 miles. The following weekend it is 20 miles for a training run. Then a tapering off until October 10th when 47 laps or 26.2 miles will be attempted.

The closer I get, the more I realize that this event will clarify once and for all, whether I am brave or stupid. It will be good to get that question answered.

This story starts out in Brattleboro, Vermont about five or six weeks after we were married. I was a Manager Trainee for McDonald's, accidentally, and I was part of the team scheduled to work 16 hours a day opening a new store.

My wife and mother-in-law drove me up from Massachusetts and came to pick me up when my week was over. What happened on the way home changed the next seven years, but no one knew it at the time.

After graduation, I moved into an apartment in Leominster that my bride and I would occupy after our wedding that summer. It only had a bean bag chair, which I slept in, and a refrigerator and a little black and white TV. My wife was working at the Foster Grant Sunglass Factory, and would pick me up in the morning, I'd drop her at work, and then, well hang out. I had a job when I graduated and promptly quit when I moved away from Amherst.

One day, after dropping her off and running some errands, I went into the McDonald's Restaurant across the street from Foster Grant to grab some fries. Sitting there, with no job and no money and an impending wedding, I went to the counter and asked for an application, figuring I could make a little money and stay busy.

They were skeptical, hiring a recent college grad, but I soon impressed them with my grill work (I had worked fast food in high school). One day the Area Supervisor, Peter, stopped in and asked to speak with me. He offered me a Management Trainee position, and after some thought, I accepted it. I thought the wedding announcement in the newspaper would read better if I was a 'Manager Trainee' rather than 'Unemployed.' so after our wedding, I started as a salaried Manager at McDonald's with no real plan other than to keep looking for a 'real job.'

After a few weeks, I was offered the chance to go to Brattleboro to open the store and it sounded interesting.

When my wife and mother-in-law picked me up, I was pretty tired, so my wife drove our little green Toyota Corolla the two hours back from Vermont, and dropped her mother off. Then I took the wheel for the 8 or miles to our apartment. Since our apartment now had a bed, a couch, a bean bag chair, little black and white TV and a refrigerator.

About 100 yards from the driveway to the apartment complex, a 14 year old kid in a stolen car crashed into the back of our little Toyota and spun the car around at least 360 degrees and shot it into a Sunoco station.

It rested about a yard from a gas pump. My wife had been sleeping when we were hit, and woke up groggy. My arm had been on the stick shift, and when we were hit, my arm snapped back and actually broke the seat in half pushing the top half of the seat towards the rear, with the headrest parallel to the floor. The investigation showed that the broken seat stopped the trunk from crushing us.

My wife asked me if I was ok and as a recent college athlete familiar with bumps and bruises, I mentioned that my arm was broken. Just like that. I just knew. Somehow we both climbed out of the windows because the side doors were crushed shut and I sat on the ground leaning against a gas pump until the ambulance came to take me away.

Just like in the movies, the EMTs cut my jacket and shirt off me and stabilized my arm. When they wheeled me in through the emergency room, I remember looking at the ceiling passing by as I grimaced in pain on the stretcher. I always wondered what that view was like.

A couple of things happened really quick in this post-midnight emergency room. First, the attending physician held up a pencil and with his two hands he snapped it into two pieces and said 'This is what happened to your arm.' Ouch!

My wife came in shortly after that and said she talked to Peter, the Area Supervisor, and he said the company would take care of my salary for as long as it took for me to recover.

I thought I was hallucinating. I had only worked for the company for a couple of weeks. Even I knew that it would be months before I could return to work, and they were going to take care of everything? Wow.

I don't know if Peter came to the hospital or spoke to my wife on the phone, painkillers, when you snap your arm in half, will do that to you.

The next day, we ordered a recliner because the doctor said the only way to heal the break was to keep the separated bones vertical so they would grow together. That meant that these newlyweds would have unusual sleeping arrangements.

My bride would use the bed, I would use the new recliner and sleep sitting up. For three months. I recovered from the close call by January, but it took me seven years to recover from the loyalty that Peter had shown me and my wife at a most critical time in our journey together.

Now, don't get me wrong. I didn't stay in a job I hated for seven years to pay them back. I was pretty good at the restaurant management thing, going on to manage five different locations, including two brand new stores, one that was named National Store of the Year.

But the top two reasons I stayed were first, I was learning so much about business, marketing, human resources, finance and accounting, leadership, pressure, team building, construction, even television commercials (another story for a later day).

I loved being a leader and developing people and the franchise company that I worked for was a great place to do that. I was also doing some training and on the new franchisee tour list, meaning that when someone was granted a franchise after putting down their quarter of a million bucks to get started, they were sent to spend a week with Ed to see how a 'real' store was managed.

The second reason I stayed was because when my back was up against the wall, or up against a gas pump and my arm had snapped like a broken pencil, someone saw the potential in me and had my back. So I wasn't really paying them back for the salary, I was paying them back for seeing my potential, an even more valuable gift.

PS: The crushed car was towed and stored behind another gas station and for the next six months, we could see it from our apartment window. Really. I wouldn't make that up.

PPS: The only thing I couldn't do with one arm was tie my shoes. So one day, I taught myself to do so with one hand, my left hand, and every now and then someone challenges me and I can still do it. I used to be better at it after a few beers.

PPPS: Peter Napoli, the McDonald's Area Supervisor referenced above, went on to own the McDonald's in Ayer, Massachusetts and eventually became the largest McDonald's Franchisee in the world, with more than 200 locations. His company, Napoli Enterprises is based in New Hampshire and his son is now in charge. Peter and I connected when I moved back to Massachusetts since he owned the store in my new town. I thanked him, again.

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