Each spring, Steve Connelly will spend a three-day weekend running 27 miles – one for every year that his former girlfriend has been gone.

The act is repentance, in a way, since he’s the one who killed her.

“It’s not an easy task,” the 61-year-old said, “but considering all the pain that I caused, the pain that I experience while I’m trying to fulfill this goal is minimal.”

As an inmate at the Oregon state penitentiary in Salem, Connelly will run those miles on a quarter-mile track, an oval of concrete couched between a 25ft wall and barbwire-lined fences.

Every year, he adds another mile. And with every step of every mile, Connelly dives into the pain. The leg soreness. The knee aches. The stomach cramps. But most of the pain he feels has nothing to do with the running. “It’s shameful, it hurts,” he said. “It hurt everybody that I love on both sides of the family, our friends. It hurt everybody who knew and cared for me.”

It’s a cathartic way to spend the anniversary of his crime. “It’s healing,” Connelly said. “It gives me permission to go into that, to see where I’m at with it.”

Most years, Connelly runs six of those miles with about 20 “outsiders” – a group of people allowed into the maximum security prison to run 5k and 10k races with the inmates.

Steve Connelly running. Photograph: Travis Epps

Mixing convicted felons with members of the running community makes the program a unique one.

“Our main goal is pro-social behavior,” said Bill Marion, recreations specialist at the prison. “Most of these people are going to be back on the street. They’re going to be someone’s neighbor. These programs help them to rehabilitate, teach them how to communicate again.”

Ben Hall, who has served 18 of his 22-and-a-half-year sentence, said the first time he spoke with someone from outside the prison he was sweating from nerves. Except for a few stretches, Hall said he has been locked up since he was 12.

With each interaction with people from outside the prison wall, he said, it becomes easier.

“The races are the backbone of the running club,” Hall said. “In here, sometimes you feel less than human … It reminds [inmates] that they’re human beings, that there is more to them than what they’ve done.”

The running program dates back to the 1970s, when famed Oregon Olympic runner Steve Prefontaine visited the prison and put on seminars, encouraging inmates to focus on training and racing instead of prison distractions. The club continued after the athlete’s death in 1975 and has grown in popularity in recent years.

Prisoners at the all-male prison need to log a year of good behavior before they’re eligible to join the club. Even then, there’s no guarantee they will be able to participate.

The running club has a cap of about 300 inmates, Marion said, and because some runners are serving a life sentence, the waiting list can be as long as three years.

Hall said that it’s easy to see why the club is so popular. About 100 inmates sign up to run each of the eight races held throughout the year, and the sight is one he looks forward to. Hall said there is nothing more motivating than seeing an inmate standing on the sidelines cheering on another inmate who’s pumping his arms, straining to reach the finish line.

“They’re doing what we should be doing in life – encouraging others, saying things like ‘Keep going, you’re almost there,’” he said. “Prison can be an angry and sometimes violent, depressing environment, but this is the one space where you see people cheering one another on … It’s never made more impact on me than when I know someone’s on my side.”



Being around some people who’ve committed the same crime that happened to me … I’m working through it with them Laura Donnelly

A lot goes into planning a race at such a high-security location with a vulnerable and potentially violent population. Before outside race participants willingly enter the maximum security prison, they are first given a series of warnings.

“There is a possibility of personal assault and a chance you may be held hostage,” Marion said.

Once inside, the prisoners are the ones running the show: they welcome the runners, whom they refer to as guests, and hand out race bibs. They keep track of the race time and emcee the event on a sound system.

The biggest reason that Marion hears for why participants choose to run laps around a prison yard instead of along any of the Pacific north-west’s picturesque trails is curiosity.

That’s how 60-year-old Laura Donnelly ended up running alongside burley, tattooed men. “At first, I thought it seemed kind of scary,” she said of first learning about the race. “Then I was intrigued by it.”

But she was still a little hesitant. Thirty years ago, Donnelly was a victim of attempted rape and attempted murder and she worried about how she’d react. Still, she hoped the experience might bring some closure. Her assailant went to prison for the attack, but she had never gotten the chance to find out if he was remorseful.

So Donnelly took the bus 50 miles from her Portland home to the race and was surprised to find how welcoming the inmates were.

“When we went to get our bibs, they came up to talk to us and said: ‘Hi, how are you doing?’ It eased the anxiety,” she said. “Being around some people who’ve committed the same crime that happened to me … I’m working through it with them.”

‘Before outside race participants willingly enter the maximum security prison, they are first given a series of warnings.’ Photograph: Travis Epps

Matt Mason, however, wanted to participate in the race because he thought he had something to offer the prisoners.

Two years ago, Mason was a passenger in a car crash. He broke his back in two places and suffered a traumatic brain injury. While doctors at one point wondered whether he’d ever walk again, Mason has since made a full recovery. He now runs six miles a day and as many 10k races as he can.

“I thought I could identify with some of these people. I’ve been in horrible situations and I thought maybe I could give them hope,” he said.

Mason said he’s always had a heart for those who have made mistakes and said on any given night, anyone could do something that leads to them doing time behind bars. “Sometimes a person makes a bad judgment call and if it’s bad enough, it lands you in here.”

For Jeff Jacobs, that night came on 16 September 2009. He was driving drunk when he crashed into another car, killing the man inside. “If there’s one thing I could take back, I would take back what happened,” he said.

When he arrived at prison, Jacobs struggled with the choices that led to him living a few cells down from the infamous I-5 Killer. He spent the first three years depressed, putting on more than 40 extra pounds.

“I stopped weighing myself at 255,” he said. “For a while, I just thought, what is life for anyway if it can just come and go so easily. I wondered why I’m even [alive] after what happened.”

But when he reached his lowest, one thing stuck with him – something that the victim’s daughter said to him on the day of his sentencing.

“She told me that during my time in prison that she wanted me to do something productive with my life so that her dad’s life wouldn’t have been taken in vain,” he said.

Since he entered prison in 2010, Jacobs has taken classes and earned a business degree. He joined the running club and keeps a meticulous training regimen that has him running 400-meter repeats after eight hours of working in the laundry facility. His hard work has helped him become the fastest runner in the penitentiary.

“Running is the glue that keeps it all together,” he said. “It keeps me positive, keeps me moving, keeps me going forward. It keeps me hopeful that there’s something better than this.”

Jacobs is scheduled to be released next summer. He said he’s excited to continue running because he knows it will help him accomplish all the things he wants to do to lead a happy and productive life.

“I’m not literally going to run my way to owning a home or anything, but it’s going to help me get to those steps that I need to take in life, like keeping a job and staying positive. A positive attitude gets you a long way in life and running definitely improves my attitude a lot,” he said. “If I’m still on two legs, I’ll run.”