If crows don't bother you, fall is the best time to run through the Ann Arbor Cemetery. The temperature is just right and the groundskeeper sweeps fallen leaves off the pavement path. Summer is the next-best time, if you don't mind getting mud on your running shoes.

Winter is the worst time because the freezing Michigan weather keeps pedestrians off nearby streets, so there's no one to help you out if a zombie grabs your ankle and brings you down.

Most people think running through cemeteries is disrespectful, so when I see mourners I dart in the opposite direction. I don't know how they feel about me whizzing past their departed loved ones, and if they do have a problem it's not like they're going to chase me down to complain.

I hope running through graveyards doesn't disqualify me from heaven, because they're the only places I've ever gotten a runner's high. I have a friend who says she runs because it makes her feel alive. When I run, I usually feel like I'm dying. But running through the cemetery, I do feel alive - by comparison.

I run because it's good for me, though my aching body does not believe me. It's in too much pain to listen. I can only get its attention when I bring up matters of life and death, and the graveyard is the perfect place to do this. There, I can put a positive spin on my discomfort. I can look to a grave and tell my body, "At least you're able to feel pain, unlike the guy in there." Faced with row upon row of tombstones, my body gets the message and pushes through.

Reading tombstones keeps my mind off my body's pain. A tombstone tells me a person's age, sex and religion. Decorations often tell me how religious a person was. (Did she get the simple foot-high cross, or did she go all-out and get the three-foot, wounded-Jesus model?)

Tombstone placement speaks volumes. There's the husband and wife of 50-some years buried by the entrance, away from the other graves. There's the young couple buried on either side of their infant son. There's the four-generation, super-rich secular gang. And then there are loners. Lots of loners.

I make these tombstone studies literally on the run, so I don't have time for epitaphs. I consider this a small tragedy: these dead people's families reduced their loved ones' lives to a single sentence (Can you imagine a harder task?), and I don't even put forth the effort to read it. This must be the ultimate brush-off.

If I don't read these epitaphs, nobody will. I have yet to spot another cemetery runner, and I only see mourners on about one-fifth of my runs. And these mourners come to visit a specific person; they're not browsing, like me. They know where their loved ones are buried, and don't spend any more time in the cemetery than they have to. Understand-able. And throughout their visits, their loved ones consume all their attention. Understand-able again.

Every day I sprint by thousands of forgotten people. These people lived important lives, did important things, had important friends. But today few remember or care about them. So I do what I can: I think about these people as I dash by their graves. I think about them individually. I'm not going to get to every single person in the Ann Arbor Cemetery, but in the past three years, I've made quite a dent.

Passing by, I size up a gravesite and imagine what its occupant was like when living. My guesses are probably way off, but it's the effort that counts. I've decided one guy, in the back left corner, was a bank robber. I forgot why I decided that, but now that I've got this bank-robber image cemented in my mind, I can't shake it. Poor guy, he was probably a priest or something. Still, every time I run by him, I say, "Morning, bank robber."

I don't have time to construct elaborate stories for these people's lives, because when a narrative gets too complex, a new tombstone catches my eye and I move to the next story. And after three years of graveyard running, I've got my stories down. There's the bank robber, the lawyer, the town drunk, the debutante, the professor and the grieving parents. The list goes on.

These days I rarely make up new stories; acknowledging all the semi- fictitious characters I've created takes up all my fleeting time. There are a lot of them to say hi to, and they never say hi back, but I don't take it personally. They're dead.

But death still scares me - that's why I run. If it'll keep me alive longer (and science says it will), I'll deal with the pain, stretch my calves and be on my way.

The scariest part about dying is knowing one day I'll be forgotten. The most I can hope for is that somebody will run by my grave and think about me, even if just for a passing moment. Because this person can't remember me, they'll do the next-best thing: they'll make up a story about my life. Maybe they'll think I was bank robber. Or maybe they'll think I was once like them, a cemetery runner.

Maybe then they'll realize they'll one day be dead like me. And they'll hope that somebody will run by their grave and imagine the story of their life. MR