His Marathon Is More Than 26-Mile Race

He smoked, was overweight and, although he pumped a little iron, running was anathema, because there are better ways to travel the fast lane in Studio City.

He also had a two-grams-a-day cocaine habit.

Now he rides a bicycle, swims and runs.

Almost everyone in the 19,000-runner field for Sunday’s Los Angeles Marathon has a story of kicking a habit, overcoming a sedentary lifestyle or using fitness to promote health. Jim Howley’s story has all that, plus a punctuation mark:

He has AIDS.

He has run the Los Angeles Marathon six times with the virus, each time writing, on the back of his number bib, “I have AIDS.” He does that because, he said, “I know my body is different. If I passed out or something and somebody came up to me . . . I don’t want anyone to hurt themselves. . . . I would never let anyone draw my blood or anything.”

He runs a plodding pace, usually needing a bit more than four hours for the 26 miles 385 yards, but each race is a milestone because it means he has lived another year.

“It tells me I might have a couple of years to go,” he said, then laughed and added, “or at least a couple of weeks. I can’t look that far ahead.”

He looks back somewhat reluctantly, to the day he learned he was HIV-positive and decided to live faster, because he knew he would die young. For awhile, life became a race to see if he could destroy his body with drugs, nicotine and alcohol before the disease could do its inevitable work.

“I had walked into a convenience store in Studio City to get a pack of cigarettes, and there, I read on the cover of one of those ‘rag’ magazines that so-and-so [an actor he will not identify] dies of AIDS,” he said. “I almost threw up. My friend was with me and said, ‘Do you know him?’ ”

He did. The next day, Howley was tested. The results showed he was HIV positive.

“I know when I got it,” he said. “I know who I got it from.”

Six years later, in 1989, the T-cells in his blood that fight infection dropped below 200. That meant the HIV positive had become AIDS. A normal T-cell level is 800-1,000.

His doctor told him he had 16-18 months to live and to avoid the strenuous activity that would accelerate the process.

So Howley got a new doctor and began to train for the marathon and for triathlon competition.

“It wasn’t so much to get in shape as it was to do something crazy,” said Howley, who lives in Carpinteria now. “Some people say, ‘I want to go to Paris before I die,’ or, ‘I want to go to Hawaii.’ ”

On the day his illness was diagnosed as being AIDS, he had a chance meeting that turned his direction from self-destruction to self-challenge.

“I met this woman who was training for a triathlon and she had just run 10 miles,” he said. “I had never met anyone who had run 10 miles in my life, and she did it like it was nothing. I said, ‘I’m going to do a triathlon.’ I didn’t even know what one was.

“I got out the next morning and tried to run around the block. I knew it was half a mile because I had gone out in my car and checked it out. I got down to the bottom of the street, which was a hill, and I couldn’t get back up. I had to walk. I joined the [swimming] pool that night and couldn’t get down to the end of the pool.”

He also found Gary Cohan, a Beverly Hills internist, who is more aggressive than most doctors in treating AIDS patients.

“What Jim does is becoming more common,” Cohan said. “What we’ve found is, that for people with AIDS, being sedentary is counterproductive. The main thing has been lean muscle mass. There are people who have done one thing or the other--exercise or treat with drugs--but the idea is a synergistic package of exercise and treatment.”

Howley takes 60 pills a day and injects himself with other drugs periodically. On good days, he runs, rides or swims, a week’s regimen totaling 35 miles on foot, 100-150 on the bicycle and five-six miles in a pool.

“The good days are perfect,” he said. “Knowing you have a limited life to live, most people, I think, live their lives in the fullest way possible, and that’s what I do. I would wish my life on anybody, if it didn’t have the disease aspect.”

On bad days, he stays on the couch.

“That’s when I really face the fact that something’s going on with my body,” he said. “There’s the excuse that I don’t feel like training, but those are the days that I really can’t train. I’m weak. I’m nauseous. I’m depressed. It’s real life hitting me.”

He sees Cohan three or four times a week, getting advice and sometimes giving it, and he spends time with school children, talking about safe sex and abstinence, and with their teachers, talking about giving students the discipline and confidence to be stronger than he was.

He studies, and on Wednesday, will get his master’s degree in clinical psychology from the Santa Barbara branch of Ohio’s Antioch University.

He also remains angry, but not at his fate or future. Death comes from complications of AIDS, and chief among those complications is giving up.

“I’ve been living with this long enough that I’ve seen how the disease has changed,” he said. “People went out and blew their brains out when they got diagnosed. People didn’t die of AIDS in the ‘80s--well, some of them did, but not the ones I knew.

“Most of them killed themselves because you lost your job, lost your family, lost everything. You had two choices: live with it closeted, or tell people and risk everything.”

Support comes from many areas, and his message gains strength from an increasing number in the main stream who have acknowledged they have the disease.

“I was really [angry] at Magic [Johnson] for quitting, because I was a real Lakers’ fan and Magic fan,” said Howley. “But when he came back, stronger and bigger and healthier, I couldn’t be happier.

“Now you have this boxer [Tommy Morrison] who has the guts to go public. . . . That’s something I wish I had the guts to do 12 years ago.

“For him to talk about it takes more guts than for some gay guy like me to talk about it. I give him and Magic a lot of credit. They’re probably doing more for this disease than I could ever do, being a gay guy.”

He does what he can, working with drug companies and Cohan, who occasionally sends a patient for support and monitors Howley closely.

On Sunday, Howley will be in the middle of the Los Angeles pack, trying to beat four hours for the first time. It will be a good day. Marathon Sunday is never bad.

“I get scared every time I do it,” he said. “I take several months to train slowly, because my body does break down easier than that of most people.

“But then on race day, there’s something about the energy of the L.A. Marathon, 19,000 people in the race, the course lined with people cheering, screaming for you--whether it’s for you or not, it’s still for you--running through neighborhoods that I know and love.”

Howley’s T-cells had dropped to three. Now they are at 55, but he understands the inevitable.

“To believe anything else, to me, is false,” he said. “No, I’m a realist. There are drugs that are working. I don’t know how long it will last. It’s a reprieve now. It’s a second wind. I’m just going to go as long as possible, and whatever happens . . .”