Jim Engle is one of those classic UP characters: a tough-as-nails bulldog in love with the land and his fellow runners, a trail nut who loves attacking the toughest terrain in the nearby Porcupine Mountains every chance he gets.

The ex-Northern Michigan University football player approaches running the same way he used to approach knocking people on their keisters - aggressively, fearlessly and joyfully.

A long-time teacher in Wakefield and seems-like-forever race director of the run around Sunday Lake each Fourth of July weekend, Engle can be counted on to show up at the tip of the Keweenaw Peninsula early in July each year. There have been six Keweenaw Trail Festivals, and each year Engle has completed all three races. This year was his slowest combined time but no doubt his finest, if perhaps not the wisest, effort.

Early on in the 10K I could hear Engle chatting up a storm with someone as he slowly reeled me in. He's often reeled me in at UP events, often talking to someone as he does it. (It's amazing, not to mention really irritating how those Yoopers can go up and over obstacles without any hint they need oxygen to do it.)

"Hey, Tom, is that you?" he said, pulling up to run with me awhile before accelerating away, again.

A wheezed and extremely-labored "How ya doing," led to Engle reciting his bad news. He has congenital heart trouble and it had been acting up. He'd had one stent put in earlier and either was about to get a second stent or had just got one. I was too oxygen-deprived to be able to process what he was saying into long-term memory.

Then he told me about his sore left knee. A day or two before the Festival, he'd gotten the MRI back, and it revealed a torn meniscus. "Don't run on it, we'll get you in for surgery as soon as possible," said his doctor.

Not so quick, Engle told him. He had races to do. Like three that weekend, totaling 25.5 miles. And a marathon in Grand Island at the end of July. And a fall marathon in Calumet. And probably some others, too. Make it late fall, doc.

Engle, 50, pulled away from me before the two-mile mark and finished a grueling course in 48:08, good for sixth out of 18 places in his age group.

Saturday night he again reeled me in, this time halfway up Brockway Mountain. My pulse was pounding so hard my eardrums were bongos. It was an ugly beat and I couldn't do anything about it. My lungs wheezed like an old bellows half-filled with iron pellets. My thighs were screaming like Iggy Pop on a bad day. And there was Engle, chatting me up just as calm as a coot on the porch of an old country store about to open a bottle of soda pop.

He chatted. I wheezed. He wasn't bothered I said nothing back to him. "See you later, Tom," he said, taking off like the wall of trail looming in front of me was my illusion and not his reality. He finished in 37:47, good for fifth out of 15 in his age group this time.

Sunday morning Engle caught up to me at the bottom of our first wicked decline in the 25K, as we hit gorgeous Lake Manganese at about the two-mile mark. He, I and UP-newcomer Tamara Hoover from Chicago ran together in single file over the next ridiculous tricky two miles or so of trail along the banks of Lake Fanny Hoey. Take your eye off the trail for a second and you'd be sent airborne by some root, rock or piece of loose shale, or your foot would be sucked down into some goop of cedar bog.

"How's your knee?" I asked.

"Killing me," he admitted. Endorphins had been no help. It had hurt every bit of the 10K, had hurt all the way up Mt. Baldy, and was hurting now.

"Jim, I know it's not in your nature, but sometimes the most-courageous thing you can do is quit something."

"Ain't gonna happen. I've done all five of these and I'm gonna do this one, too."

As for the upcoming Grand Island Marathon, well, he had to do that, too. He'd been running on Grand Island every summer for years and had told Jeff Crumbaugh he oughtta consider a marathon over its fairly- forgiving, wildly-scenic terrain. And had reminded him. And pestered him.

And - What do you know? - this year Crumbaugh decided to put a Grand Island Marathon together, lined up volunteers including Engle, and they were going to make the thing happen. And part of making it happen for Engle was to run the thing, too.

Engle told me about his mom, who had started running in her 60s, won her age group in her first 5K at the Traverse City Cherry Festival, then had been diagnosed with an aggressive, late-stage cancer and died.

Then he and Hoover were off, as they either picked up the pace or I started to sag in the heat and humidity. Engle finished in 2:53:17, improving his position in each race by placing fourth out of 13 in his age group.

Hoover is the poster woman for whom Keweenaw tourist promoters are trying to attract. She'd never been to the Keweenaw before, fell in love with everything about it, and vowed to return.

Back in 2001 I spent a few days hanging around Chicago with a young genius named Tejal Desai, for a profile I wrote for Ann Arbor-based Small Times Magazine, which was devoted to micro- and nanotechnology. She was, and is, a professor of bioengineering whose ability to garner patents and big grants was making her legendary in her field. (She later accepted a lucrative offer from Boston University to start her own department there).

Her boss at the University of Chicago-Illinois was Richard Magin, who invited me to run with him while we chatted about Tejal. He put a major hurt on me for eight miles as he chatted and I listened. Later, when we were done, it was my turn. Magin was just getting into trail runs. I told him then, and expounded in subsequent e-mails, about trail runs in Michigan, namely the Harvest Stompede through Leelanau Peninsula wine country and the UP trail festival.

Magin met Hoover when they were both in South Africa for the Comrades ultra-marathon. They discovered they were both from Chicago, their spouses hit it off and they became friends.

Magin ran the Harvest Stompede for the first time two years ago and brought Hoover with him last year. This year was his third Keweenaw, and Hoover drove up with Magin and his wife to see what all the hoopla was about.

Hoover, 39, a vet of two ultras and 19 marathons, with a PR of 3:39:41, says the Keweenaw was everything Magin had told her it would be, and more.

"It was lovely," she wrote by e-mail, back home in Chicago. It was, she said, something unique to her: a tourist place without seeming at all touristy.

"We were able to drive places without a ton of traffic, stop by the side of the road to view wonderful waterfalls, or have a picnic. I also just loved the fact that we could see a hand-painted sign that said 'Barb's Favorite Jams and Jelly.'

"When we stopped, there was actually a woman named Barb who was selling a shed full of homemade jam and jelly, plus other handmade items such as potholders, Barbie clothes, hand-knitted sweaters, etc. She spent all this time talking to us about how she picks the berries, cans them, and how hard she works all winter to make the things she sells in the summer.

"It was perfect! She was perfect. I ordered $40 worth of jellies and jams from her, and plan to order more when I'm done."

After the Saturday morning 10K, they took in a boat ride to the Copper Harbor Lighthouse, toured the lighthouse and got a recommendation from the guide for the best local lunch.

"When I tried to tip him as we left, he almost seemed offended," Hoover wrote. "This was a first for me. He asked me instead to donate the money to the North Woods Conservancy."

They then hit Zik's in Copper Harbor for lunch, "a great meal at a reasonable price. The service was wonderful, and the raspberry pie, which I had never had before, was mind blowing. I could have stayed there all day, enjoying my Pickaxe Blonde Ale (from the Keweenaw Brewing Co.), but I did have a mountain climb that evening."

As for the courses - this is someone who finished Comrades and has run the tough Two-Oceans ultra in Cape Town, South Africa - Hoover wrote, "They were killers for a flatlander ... However, I did love them. They were a challenge like I had never had before."

One she was up to, though. Hoover finished the 10K in 50:59, was second in her age group in the hill climb in 39:32, and finished the 25K in 3:10:27.

As for the whole experience - the courses, the volunteers, the post-race raffle prizes, the organic food served at breakfast, the spaghetti-feed after the hill climb, the contestants, the places to visit, the local people she met - Hoover wrote, "It was very obvious that all these people loved the land, their homes and their way of life. They saw nature as more than just two categories, food and bait. They really respect and care for it. Very cool."

And a postscript when I asked her to elaborate on the weekend: "I didn't have a bad meal anywhere - fresh fish and amazing pies! What else could I ask for? I really enjoyed learning the history of the mining community, how the UP became part of Michigan, and talking to the people in general.

"As I said in a WGN radio interview after Comrades, 'I agree with Forrest Gump. I ran to get places, I never thought my running would take me anywhere.'

"Well, it has. I've met wonderful people from all over the world, and have traveled to places I never would have if I were not a runner. Keweenaw is now one of those places."

Sounds like she could be a PR person, or perhaps a travel agent, for the county. And - Who knows? - perhaps she might become one. She fell in love with South Africa so much she started a business specializing in marathon tours, safaris and wine tours of the country.

It's called Africa Calling, and if you want to find out more about her other favorite place to run, go to www.africacalling.com. MR