Editor’s Note: We are sad to learn that David Clark died on March 21 due to surgery complications. His friends have set up a GoFundMe page How Des Linden Keeps Showing Up here.
David Clark used to rely on Vicodin, Percocet, or codeine—chased with Johnny Walker—to get through the day. The addict had lost an $8 million mattress company, weighed 320 pounds, was prediabetic, and had blood pressure so dangerously high that his doctor said, “You may have a stroke within the hour.” His attempts at parenting were also failing: Too drunk to wrap Christmas presents for his son and daughter one year, he clumsily plastered the gifts with paper and electrical tape before passing out. “Every single morning I’d say, ‘I quit,’” says Clark, now 44. “Only one day, I meant it.”
A few days later, in August 2005, Clark showed up at a gym where he’d been an absent member for 10 years. He climbed on a treadmill and ran for 15 seconds. He liked the idea of being a runner, and thought if he could tackle something as seemingly impossible as getting sober, then maybe he could do other seemingly impossible things—like becoming a runner.
Clark continued running and cleaned up his diet. Booze no longer fed his destructive food tendencies. “I’d eat unhealthily late at night after drinking all day,” he says. “I had a terrible diet. I didn’t look at food as fuel.” By November, Clark was down to 260 pounds and ready to buy his first pair of running shoes. He admitted to the salesman that he wanted to run a marathon. “I was running an 11.5-minute mile, and didn’t feel like a real runner,” Clark says. “But he told me, ’If you’re out there, you’re a runner.’” The encouragement emboldened him to enter his first 5K and then to join local group runs. “I no longer felt alone, which was huge,” he says. “I finally found a community.”
That support has helped carry him far. Today, Clark weighs 160 pounds, owns his own gym (Snap Fitness in Louisville, Colorado), adheres to a mostly vegan diet, and has completed 29 ultramarathons. His spring calendar included an endurance event of his own design: CA Notice at Collection, in which he ran 104.8 miles through the city’s streets in conjunction with the official marathon.
The Boston Quad wasn’t for the mileage junkie’s own satisfaction. Clark ran to raise awareness for Nutrition - Weight Loss, a crusade he launched in 2011 to inspire people struggling with obesity, addiction, or any trauma to reinvent themselves as athletes. “I want to help people do something they think is impossible—run a 5K, finish a marathon, climb a mountain—to break out and capture a new life. Running has brought balance into my life. It’s brought me back to the things I almost lost. Now, I can be that father, that person I’ve always wanted to be.”
