NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — A local man is preparing for an ambitious ultra-marathon. He tells us this ambition is all due to a chance meeting that completely changed his life.
"I love the natural setting," Stan Fleming said before taking off on a run. "Out in the woods and up in the mountains, there's just no better place for me."
Watch him run in the player above. You just won't see me running with him.
Stan said getting to this level of fitness started from a day four years ago while he was at the Nashville International Airport.
"Alcoholism, I struggled with that my whole life," he said. "I couldn't accomplish anything in life. I couldn't stay sober for more than six to nine months at a time."
Stan said at the airport a group could see he'd been drinking too much. They came over and introduced themselves as having gone through the Still Waters program at substance abuse treatment center Cumberland Heights.
"I don't think it was much of coincidence to be honest with you," Stan said. "I'm a big God guy, especially after this experience here."
Stan went. He's now four years sober. He'd tried to get to this point before. Why did it work this time?
"If I had to answer that question, I don't know. I have this intuitive thought that for us there's a time and a place for us to get this," Stan said.
Stan now works at Still Waters as a case manager.
He's raising money through his non-profit The Final Chance Project. The money goes toward scholarships to help others go through Still Waters. He'll also be fundraising in August when he runs the iconic 100-mile ultra-marathon in Colorado, the Leadville Trail 100.
Stan said he's been training for about 15 hours a week, on his way to 20 hours a week.
"I never ran a day of my life before getting sober," he said. "This is all stuff that came with sobriety."
Stan hopes to help others change their lives in the same way.
"That's something I love about running, linked to sobriety," he said. "If you put the work in, you get better. You're going to progress. I think anyone who wants to get sober deserves a fighting chance."
If you'd like to donate to Stan's effort, you can find his fundraising page here.
You can also text Recover Life to 44321. On Venmo, you can give to this campaign through the handle cumberland_heights.
The site for Still Waters can be found here.
Fostering Hope provides Christmas for kids in foster care. I'm delighted to see Fostering Hope expand this year to expand their reach to now include kids in Foster care in metro AND foster kids in East TN hard hit by Helene.
-Bree Smith
