Heavy-duty Carhartt overalls were de rigueur on a cold and windy February day at Harvest Farm a few miles north of Wellington (Colorado). A hardy crew shoveled dirt and set railroad tie dividers, creating beds for flowers, vegetables and herbs alongside the low building that houses the dining hall.

The nasty weather didn’t appear to be an issue. These guys were enjoying one another’s company. Even so, they welcomed the call to lunch and, after a simple grace, lined up for man-sized portions of rice, spicy, steaming stir fry, an enormous slice of homemade bread, green salad and cake.

Soon the men were back at work, except for Bradford Donaldson, 36, who stayed behind to talk about the path that led him to Harvest Farm.

In May, Donaldson graduates from the program and will move to Longmont to share a home with his mother and begin work as a welder. The same month he will graduate from Front Range Community College and run 26.2 miles down Poudre Canyon, his first full marathon. But there will be no beer at the end for Donaldson. He’s finished, not only with alcohol and drugs, but also with a 17-year destructive relationship — discoveries that took a while.

Donaldson had reached the six-month point in his first stay at Harvest Farm when he was kicked out for 30 days for fighting. After six months in the program, participants may seek paying work, something Donaldson had been looking forward to. He lived at the Mission in Fort Collins and found a landscaping job, waiting for 30 days to pass so that he could return to the farm.

On day 29, his girlfriend asked him to return, saying the children missed him. He quit his job and took a bus to Kansas. During the months that followed, he returned to his old ways, eventually hitting bottom.

“I couldn’t eat, sleep or think right,” he said. He called Harvest Farm and asked to return.

Donaldson remembers running to baseball practice as a kid and even winning a 50-yard dash at school. But until he met Nick Sterner and learned about the AIR Foundation, he’d never run distance.

These days, it’s hard to stop him. He trains regularly, even though it is sometimes hard to fit in the miles between chores at the farm. He plans to run half marathons in Boulder and Fort Collins in April. One day, he’d like to do the Rock and Roll Marathon in Washington state.

“It’s around a lake and it sounds so great,” he said.

A dozen other men who live at Harvest Farm will be running marathons and half marathons this spring. Under the tutelage of Sterner, president and founder of the AIR Foundation, and a crew of volunteers, the Harvest Farm team is part of a larger group of runners who have bought into the concept for which AIR stands — “activity inspired rehabilitation.”

Sterner, himself a graduate of the Denver Rescue Mission rehabilitation program, has been a runner since 1995.

The twists and turn of his life, which began when he left home at age 13, led to years of marijuana use, two divorces, and eventually a lifestyle based around the manufacture and sale of amphetamines with his oldest son, Shane. Together they went through 18 months of rehabilitation beginning in 2005.

Sterner turned to running again and completed the Colfax Marathon in Denver in 2006. When a Rescue Mission board member asked if he’d be willing to recruit and train men from the mission to run in the 2007 marathon, Sterner agreed.

“It was a lightning bolt,” Sterner said. “I knew this was what I was supposed to be doing for the rest of my life.”

He set to work, asking running clubs, race directors and running stores for help. Today AIR Foundation has six running programs in operation. Participants get coaching, shoes, clothing and free race entries. The Fort Collins Running Club has signed on as a sponsor, and its members frequently train with Harvest Farm team members.

Donaldson fell twice on icy surfaces during a 10k run sponsored by the Fort Collins Running Club this winter. He got up both times and finished the race. He knows about falls, and he knows, with the help of his faith and his friends, how to get up and go on.

Harvest Farm is a 72-bed rural rehabilitation facility owned and operated by Denver Rescue Mission where homeless men can overcome addictions and negative life patterns. Located north of Wellington (Colorado), the program is free and open to men from all over the country.