Coy’s Story
Finally, a blog worth reading. For my first entry, I was puzzled as to what to write about. I wanted it to be about something exciting, so my love life was out. Perhaps it could be about some great adventure I had, but midnight trips to Walmart, while amusing, cannot really be considered adventurous. I started to get depressed for leading such a miserable life, and was grasping for a feel-good story to lift my spirits. My mind was ignited and, as my thoughts began racing, I thought about my friend Coy Orange.
I first met Coy a few years ago through a mutual friend. I knew that he was a runner who recently began coaching runners. I also knew he had a somewhat troubled past, but who doesn’t these days? Intrigued I called my friend Coy and asked him to meet me for a cup of coffee at a coffee shop whose name I won’t mention because, frankly, they don’t need any more advertising. His story couldn’t be all that bad, right? Wrong. Dead wrong.
I asked him when he started running, and he replied, “When I was in the Marine Corps roughly 15 years ago, but I don’t really count that because I was smoking a pack of cigarettes a day. I started running about 7 years ago in Port St. Lucie. I was in my third stint of homelessness and my only pair of shoes was some worn out Run DMC’s. For those of you that don’t know, those shoes are much better for break-dancing than running. Coy knew he didn’t have many chances left in life. He was on a cocktail of illegal drugs, drank way too much, and had no job, no money, and no home. You get the idea.
Needing a change and needing it now, he just started running. “In the beginning I would run to the first light post, and then walk for three. Then I conditioned myself to run to the next light post. As his running progressed, his life began to progress with it. He got a job in Jacksonville and found a place to live. He was able to get a truck and, more importantly, his first pair of real running shoes. That’s when he ran his first race, as well as the “Tour de Pain” which is actually three separate races run in a 24-hour period. “The first race was on the beach and my shoes got soaked, so the next morning I had to run the 5K in my Run DMC’s. I was so sore afterward; I couldn’t run for two weeks.”
The road to the top is rarely traveled without adversity. Despite his progress, Coy went through a painful breakup with his girlfriend and, once again found his self homeless, addicted to drugs, and living out of his car. But the story can’t end here, can it?
Struggling to find something to hold on to, something to hope for, he kept running. He ended up employed as a cab driver in St. Augustine a short while later. Still on drugs and living out of his car, he was barely making ends meet. Once, he was robbed at gunpoint on a routine pick up. Coy ran instead of giving the perp his money, not because he was brave, but because he wasn’t about to give up his drug money for the night.
Coy caught a break when his boss and his wife let him crash at their place for a while. “I’m pretty lucky. The right people seem to show up at the right time,” he said. He moved back to Jacksonville and got a job. He found another place to live, got off drugs for good and, did I mention, he kept running?
Soon, he joined a running group and was always be the last to finish. “There is an unwritten rule that if a girl falls behind, the group will wait for her, but they won’t wait for guys. We ran before sunrise, so I was constantly getting lost,” said Coy. A little while later, Coy attained one of his goals by completing a marathon, which he ran with a staph infection. Don’t ever underestimate the power of determination.
Then, through a unique set of circumstances, a representative from the Leukemia and Lymphoma society approached Coy and offered him a coaching position with their Team in Training program. “At first I was a little hesitant, because these were people straight off the couch. I wanted to run at my pace, not theirs, but I knew that this was my opportunity to give back. Running became a vehicle I could use to carry a message.” Coy trained his first group of ladies and, in a strange way, found he could relate to them. They were a group of people that used running to fight for something. This special group completed the “Disney’s Princess Half-Marathon” and Coach Coy couldn’t have been prouder.
At a banquet held to celebrate the completion of the Disney race, the princesses — as Coy now refers to them — had a surprise for their coach. “They gave me a photo album filled with pictures and memories of the all the training that we did. I can’t even look at that thing without crying,” he said.
I can understand why. That’s what men do when you’ve come from nothing, when you beat the odds. That’s what happens when you’ve come from waking up on the beach without a friend in the world to being surrounded by people that don’t know where they would be without you.
Coy’s new goal is to qualify for the Boston Marathon. He narrowly missed a qualifying time by eight minutes in his last marathon.
Nearly moved to tears by Coy’s inspirational story, I left our conversation with a big smile on my face. “And to think,” he said, what would have happened if I had stopped at the first light post?”
John “Johnson” Fuqua
John “Johnson” Fuqua has been a Jacksonville resident and previously resided in the huge city of Starke, Florida.
He wandered the unforgiving streets of San Marco for a few years searching for a place to call home. Lost and confused, in 2005, he stumbled upon Definition Fitness and has been a dedicated employee ever since. Wait. That’s not exactly true.
In 2009, he left for personal reasons but came crawling back after his attempted modeling career went down in flames faster than Tom Hanks’ plane in Castaway.
When John isn’t at work, smooth-talking female clients, he is usually at home taking a nap. A fitness enthusiast to the core, John is passionate about NCAA football and the sport of mixed martial arts.