He took the same ferry out for the start of the race once, back in 1982. He was 40 years old and coming to the realization that he was gay. He had left my mother and our home in Boston for Washington, D.C. And he was beginning a period of life that included prodigious amounts of alcohol, record-setting promiscuity and little sleep. But running seemed to provide enough centripetal force to hold his life together.