Run for your life

Ron McCracken has run more than 6,000 consecutive days. To him, it is therapy, and also kind of an addiction. He runs because he can’t stop.

“It’s no exaggeration to say that running saved my life many times,” he says.

You might’ve seen him at White Rock Lake, jogging along the trail in a once-white shirt with the words “Boston Strong” handwritten in pen on the front, holding a tattered American flag in his right hand.

People often salute the flag as he passes by, he says. His favorite encounters are when Marines give him a traditional “OohRah!”

He plans to run his 16th consecutive Boston Marathon next month, even though he still carries emotional scars from the 2013 bombing.

McCracken became enamored with running when he was just shy of 10 in the summer of 1972. While watching the Olympics, he saw Frank Shorter, an American longdistance runner, take the gold medal.

“I was just riveted,” McCracken says. “I still remember when he entered the stadium just thinking, ‘This is the coolest thing ever.’ He inspired a lot of people.”

The very next day McCracken asked his mom to measure a mile around the neighborhood, and he started running. A year later his mom bought him a stopwatch, and he pushed himself to run faster and faster.

As a freshman he was involved in basketball, but he “was having a miserable time,” he says, because the coaches weren’t the mentor-type figures he wanted. “They had their favorites, and I wasn’t one of them,” he explains. “On my own I would practice probably 40 hours a week, and I could see where it was going; it was tearing me up.”

He left the basketball team to pursue running. His dream was to become a worldclass miler, but he soon realized he’d never run a 4-minute mile.

“No matter how bad I wanted to, my body wasn’t designed that way,” he explains. “I realized early on that the longer I ran, the better it was for me.”

But the real difference was the mentoring he received from his coaches. His parents had separated a couple years earlier, and he was desperate for a father figure.

“Those were the men I needed,” he explains. “They were very positive. My freshman year, compared to other track runners, I was kind of in the middle. I was mediocre. After a tough race, my coach would come up to me and put his arm around me and say, ‘That was a tough race, wasn’t it?’ I needed that.”

As a teen, McCracken struggled with severe depression, which he still battles today.

“I’ve always been a very emotional person. Every single day I was angry as hell,” he says, “but running kept me out of trouble. If I didn’t have running, I would either be dead or in jail — probably both. I’m serious. There’s no doubt I’d have been dead a long time ago if it hadn’t been for running. I probably would have ended up killing someone. That might sound disturbing to some people, but that’s just the truth.”

Luckily, his coaches recognized his need for an outlet. Even though he wasn’t always the easiest student to coach, they stuck by him.

He graduated high school and went on to study at the University of North Texas running cross-country, but he and the other players dealt with constant injuries because of the intensity of the team’s workout regiment. Even as a young man, McCracken knew he wanted to run for the rest of his life and he was afraid the injuries would ruin him. So halfway through the season, he left the team.

He never stopped running, but it wasn’t until 1992 that he explored his first marathon. Although he was warned by experienced distance runners to pace himself at the beginning, he underestimated how hard the last 6 miles of a marathon would be if he didn’t, which resulted in a disastrous finish. “It was so bad,” he remembers. “I couldn’t believe how badly I’d misjudged it.”

It shook him up enough that he didn’t run another marathon until 1998.

McCracken ran his first Boston Marathon in 2000, and he has run it every year since, even though the race is linked with more than one dark memory.

In 2005, his best friend died the day after the marathon.

“I left it at home one day and a couple different people I don’t even know asked me, ‘Where’s your flag at? We love seeing you run with the flag.’ I love that people get it. It’s a symbol of defiance that ‘You won’t stop us.’ ”

“I didn’t find out until I flew back,” he says as his eyes pool with tears. “The first call I got when I got back was that one. It was very sudden and unexpected. He was 40.”

Then in 2009, McCracken’s mother passed away, also suddenly and unexpectedly, while he was in the air on the flight home.

“I called her from the running store before I left for the airport,” he says. “She was at work and I asked her how she was doing — had a little conversation. So you can imagine, at 7 a.m. I get a phone call that mom’s dead. That can’t be right. I just talked to her.”

Combined, those two experiences gave him “a borderline phobia” about the Boston Marathon, he says. “The two biggest people in my life, I’m flying back from Boston and they die? I was unprepared in every way.”

But he kept running the Boston Marathon anyway, partly for himself and partly out of respect for his mom, who was his biggest fan and supporter and who adored the event, he explains.

Then he was there at the infamous 2013

Boston Marathon, which ended abruptly when two brothers set off a homemade bomb at the finish line, killing three people and injuring 264 others.

McCracken remembers that day vividly, how hundreds of emergency vehicles packed the street for miles and the National Guard wouldn’t answer his questions: What happened? Were people hurt? He remembers reaching out and touching an ambulance as it drove by.

“That was a really dark day,” he says. “For a lot of us that was a huge turning point in our lives. In the hours after it, even though I didn’t understand the full gravity of it, I remember wandering around Boston and I just thought, ‘This can’t be good for us. This can’t be good for our souls.’ ”

He returned home and a couple of days later, while running near White Rock Lake, an ambulance drove by him along Buckner. When the siren clicked on, McCracken was propelled into the throes of a panic attack, a classic sign of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

That’s when he started running with the American flag.

“I knew I needed something,” he explains. “When I’d run by veterans they’d salute the flag, and that really touched me. I left it at home one day and a couple different people I don’t even know asked me, ‘Where’s your flag at? We love seeing you run with the flag.’ I love that people get it. It’s a symbol of defiance that ‘You won’t stop us.’ ”

He knew he had to go back to Boston. Like thousands of others, he went back the next year to reclaim the finish line.

“It was extremely important — to everyone,” he says. “Leading up to it, people would always ask me, ‘Are you scared about going back?’ and I would say, ‘It doesn’t matter. We have to.’ ”

But it hasn’t been easy.

“I still cry about Boston every day,” he says. “I think I always will.”

“Do you ever just think about those moments that really define your life?” Kincaid Stringer muses.

He was 7. And, of all things, it was “Riverdance” that captivated the young boy’s imagination, and would ultimately define his life.

His parents, East Dallas neighbors Shannon and Allen, returned home from Ireland with a “Riverdance” DVD, and Stringer watched it obsessively. That was 20 years ago — the first year the now world-famous show began.

“‘Riverdance’ is what made Irish dancing globally famous,” Springer explains. “[Choreographers] Michael Flatley and Jean Butler made Irish dancing sexy.”

A year later, the show toured through Dallas, and Stringer watched wide-eyed from the audience as the dancers on stage, bodies rigid and heads held high, rapidly moved their feet to create a rhythmic percussion. Each dancer displayed beauty, grace and strength, and Stringer was hooked. He knew exactly what he wanted: to be in “Riverdance.”

He began taking Irish dance classes at St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic School in Dallas. A natural athlete, Irish dance was everything Stringer hoped it would be.

“It’s right-brained and left-brained. It’s as mentally stimulating as it is physically challenging,” he explains. “There are a lot of technical aspects of it — the composure of your body combined with the speed of your legs, and then there’s the rhythmic musicality of what you’re performing. It’s so athletic but so artistic. I’m obsessed.”

Over the years he traveled back and forth from Dallas to Ireland to train and compete. While in Ireland, he lived with the family of “Riverdance” cast member Celine Hession, who became like a second mother to Stringer.

“I trained with them every year, and don’t think I realized until I was like 15 or 16 years old that we aren’t blood related,” Stringer says, in a distinctly Irish accent.

“Their daughters are like my sisters.”

By college he was one of the top Irish dancers in the world. He eventually moved to Ireland, leaving his studies at the University of Texas to study literature and business at National University of Galway in Ireland — all while competing in dance. He won more than 10 regional titles, the All-Ireland title twice, the All-Scotland and The Great Britain Championships. He almost won the World Championship, reaching fourth place in the world, before he retired from competing.

“I have one of those tragic ‘I-almostdid-until-I-didn’t’ stories,” he says dismissively.

“The year I was closest to winning the world title, I was leading. You do three rounds and I was leading after the first two. I danced really well, and at the very end I slipped and fell. There was a ridge in the floor, and afterwards they pulled up the floor and fixed it, but then didn’t let me go again. You win some, you lose most.”

Those near-misses all lead to his big break in 2011, when the official “Riverdance” troupe began a search for a new cast member. Out of thousands of people who sent in DVDs, he was selected for a live audition.

“It was what I always wanted to do,” he says. “So we went, warmed up and there were all kinds of world champions there. It was intimidating. We all knew each other, but this was going in for a potential job.”

The audition only lasted about 20 minutes and then he was dismissed. A few weeks later, while in Barcelona, Spain, for his sister’s 18th birthday, he received a call.

“They said, ‘Congratulations, you’ve passed the audition. We’re giving you a spot.’ They didn’t take anyone else,” Springer recalls. “It was my sister’s 18th birthday, I’m supposed to be this big brother and I’m like weeping in the hotel and my dad’s crying in the corner. It was cool.”

Not long into touring, “Riverdance” did a North America tour. After a six-weeks in California, Stringer found himself in the exact venue in Dallas where he first saw the show as a boy.

“That was nuts,” he remembers. “I was standing on the stage and I could see my mother, and I thought, ‘It was 20 years ago that I was sitting there watching this show, and now I’m here performing for them.’ It all came full-circle.”

Beyond North America, “Riverdance” the speed of your legs, and has taken him from South America to Europe to Asia to Africa. While glamorous, it’s a life that many of his friends don’t find relatable. He relishes the opportunities he’s had, “but I live out of a suitcase, I don’t have a mortgage and I’m definitely not getting married anytime soon,” he says with a chuckle. “So it can be hard when I come home to connect with people.”

However, the friendships he has made along the way have made up for it.

“When you go on tour your friends be- come your family,” he says. “There’s this hodgepodge of people and you never get to be alone — ever. Everybody has rooms and all that, but you don’t just travel with people, you live with people 24/7. The best alone time you have is when you’re in the shower.”

When Stringer thinks about all the things he wouldn’t have if his parents hadn’t introduced him to Irish dancing as a 7-year-old, it’s staggering.

“I wouldn’t have a career,” he says. “I wouldn’t have the friends I have. I probably wouldn’t have gone to university in Ireland, although I might have. I wouldn’t have traveled and seen the world. If I wasn’t a dancer, I don’t know what my life would be.”

His home base is his parents’ house in East Dallas. On top of touring, he teaches Irish dance workshops to kids all over the world. He plans to always keep a foot in Irish dance.

“That way I can get my fix and do all the other things I want to do too.”

Although Heather McRae has been dealing with Multiple Sclerosis (MS) daily for more than 20 years, she never connected with other people in Dallas with MS. Instead, they cycled up to her.

The first time McRae went to a Meat Fight event, which is an annual barbecue in Dallas that raises funds for the National MS Society, she was skeptical.

“The first year on the way to the event I remember telling my husband, ‘It’s really weird going to an event that’s about a disease I have,’” she says, “but when I got there it wasn’t like that at all. It was so uplifting and empowering. They want to help us find a cure, but not because they think