Edward Lehman

The Running Man
Edward Lehman loved to run. He would run in the morning. He would run in the evening. He would run on the weekends, sometimes for three and a half hours.

He belonged to a running club, and anytime there was a benefit run, he would be there. He especially liked to run for causes in and around Glen Cove, N.Y., where he lived. He ran for the local hospital. He ran for the local orphanage. He ran.

The funny thing was, the running started out as the idea of his wife, Joanne, who had done sprints back in school. A couple of years ago, she announced to him that she'd like to start running again on a regular basis. Long jogs, she discovered, were nothing like short sprints. "I stopped," she said. "But he tried it and kept it up. I guess you could say, he took it and ran with it."

Mr. Lehman, 41, an assistant director in the risk management area at the Aon Corporation, really got into the fine points of the sport. He subscribed to running magazines. He bought books on running. He elaborated on his discoveries to his wife. "The man would just not stop talking about it," she said. "I'd tease him, 'Ed, enough.' He'd talk about the pace for hills and all that. He'd talk of the technical things. I'd say, 'Ed, layman terms, please.' "