By John Branston

Mike Cody, who died Sunday was among many other things an outstanding runner.

I am not a runner but I had the pleasure of getting to know him because for years we both worked out at the same time at Rhodes College, his alma mater. As a collegian at Southwestern College (now Rhodes) his half-mile times of well under two minutes were near Olympic class.

We started jogging on the Rhodes track. Or rather Mike would jog on the track and I would walk/jog on the infield so I could sort of keep up with him and we could both pretend we could hear each other. When his health failed and he was injured in a number of falls, we took to walking in the Old Forest at Overton Park. Once a pretty girl ran by and he said, “You know, I still look but I don’t remember why.”

In his prime he specialized in marathons, and like many such runners began logging his miles in a lifetime journal. A few years ago, we were walking on a trail and he tapped me on the shoulder and said, “John, I need to ask you a question.”

Bring it on buddy, I thought, this is going to be heavy stuff.

“I’ve been keeping a journal counting my miles,” he continued, “and my goal is 80,000 miles. My question is, can I count miles like this when I’m walking with ski poles because I’m not really running?”

Cripes. Athletes lie all the time about their prowess on the track, golf course, or playing field and don’t think twice about it . . . But this was Mike Cody, a man of the law and a straight shooter and America is a government of laws not of men and all that.  And moreover a marathon man, and marathons as everyone knows are 26.2 miles, not some nice round number like 20 miles or 10,000 kilometers.

So my answer was something like this: Look, Mike, you’re 86 years old. You ran track in high school and college and didn’t count all those miles in meets and practices. It’s not like you’re counting walking from the parking lot to the office or to the grocery store.

I think he was satisfied.

So yes, Mike Cody ran 80,000 miles, probably more like 100,000 miles, and that was the least of it on his ledger of good deeds.

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John Branston covered Memphis as a reporter and columnist for 35 years.