Raymond Bailey was done with alcohol, but addiction wasn’t done with him.

“I started running to feed the addiction I still had, but in a more healthy way,” he says.

He started running with a group of strangers, members of the Pikes Peak Road Runners who met at 6 a.m. every Tuesday and Thursday at some of Colorado Springs’ most beautiful places. They swiftly moved along trails as birds sang to the rising sun.

They were strangers, “but they made you feel like you’d been there for 10 years,” Bailey recalls.

Early into recovery, it was exactly what he needed.

“The best way I can describe it is, friends are the family that you choose,” he says. “That’s exactly what this whole thing is.”

That’s been the Pikes Peak Road Runners for 50 years.

The nonprofit is celebrating the anniversary this summer — half a century of the stated mission “to cultivate health and fitness in the Pikes Peak region through a community of runners and friends.”

The mission has stretched beyond generational relationships. By hosting dozens of annual races that are now classic, local traditions and lending a hand in the world-famous likes of the Pikes Peak Ascent and Marathon, the Road Runners have been central to fostering the Springs’ sporting profile.

With more than 1,000 members, the group claims to be the largest running club in Colorado. It’s no wonder, says the club’s president.

“Pikes Peak. The challenge of running up Pikes Peak,” Wayne Heilman says, mentioning also Garden of the Gods and the city being home to the Olympic Training Center. “It’s a natural place for runners.”

And a place for camaraderie — for healing stories like Bailey’s. And like Heilman’s. A retired Gazette reporter, he previously wrote in this paper about regaining strength and confidence through club meet-ups and races after a heart attack.

The club’s volunteer president is walking more than running nowadays. Running has never been a requisite for volunteering, which is to thank for the Road Runners’ longevity. (The club pays no staff, keeping its annual budget of about $200,000 to race organization.)

Pat Lockhart is another who is in it for the volunteering, not so much the running. She has directed several races and held just about every administrative role going back to the ’80s.

“To keep me busy,” she says. “And being happy.”

That’s what the club gave her years ago — happiness amid darkness. While battling cancer, Lockhart remembers one bright day of smiles and hugs while she sat among the cottonwoods and melodious creek of Monument Valley Park, watching runners of the Nielson Challenge.

The monthly, 2-mile challenge is rooted in the club’s history dating to the ’70s. Nielson continues to symbolize the group’s spirit: The winner is not the fastest, but the one who is the most improved.

The club has attracted fierce competitors, too. Larry Miller came along after a collegiate career in the ’70s that saw him vie for the Olympics and run against the legendary Steve Prefontaine.

To the Pikes Peak Road Runners, Miller brought a serious, competitive approach and a fun-loving one; courses of fence hopping, rope climbing, culvert crawling and creek running were his ideas. He has followed in the footsteps of Bill Bennett and Bill Gallegos.

“Talk about two characters,” Miller says.

They were two who helped grow the club, which started as the Pikes Peak Track Club in 1975. They are remembered for their attention to detail (Gallegos with his three-ring binder of names and results) and sense of humor (in a recent club newsletter, a longtime member and Vietnam veteran recalled Bennett as “always funny, often bragging to me, ‘You know I served in three wars and never got shot at.’”)

Bennett took his wartime navigation skills to course-setting. He acquired other skills, former club leader Dave Sorenson said in “The Long Run” newsletter: “He taught himself QuickBasic and wrote software to process the (race) results. Before the days of reliable generators, he kept a car battery in the (club) van and used it to supply power to the results laptop, jury-rigging the cables to make things work.”

Now it’s Miller driving the van of pop-up tents, tables, course cones and other race day equipment. He has also kept up with technology for tracking results.

“We started out with no bibs; you got a popsicle stick,” Miller remembers. “You took your stick over to the clipboard, they put your name down and the number on your popsicle stick.”

Today the club uses RFID timing equipment and hardware “paired with customized software that can handle the various unique requirements of races.”

Perhaps most unique: the Turkey Trot Predict around Thanksgiving. At Memorial Park, runners predict their times and are released from the starting line in a calculated way that is intended to have everyone cross the finish line at the same time. The ones closest to their prediction take home a turkey. The ones furthest receive a Cornish game hen.

The Super Bowl Sunday half marathon and 5K are other go-tos starting downtown, accompanied by school bands and cheerleaders. The most avid run in the Summer Series, Fall Series and Winter Series, aiming for victory at the seasonal set of races spread across parks. At Bear Creek Park, the New Year’s Day Rescue Run benefits El Paso County Search and Rescue.

The club’s longest-continuing race is the Pony Express, now held on trails around Rampart Reservoir. The first running was in July 1975, not long after locals organized out of the YMCA. The club took off.

Membership reportedly doubled to about 300 in 1977, when the club added the Garden of the Gods Run. The race would morph and join the renowned Triple Crown of Running, composed of two other events including the Pikes Peak Marathon.

A 2-mile challenge started in 1978, to be named the Nielson Challenge in 1983. It was named for Larry Nielson, a passionate regular whose heart had failed.

“Larry was always so enthusiastic and nice to be around,” read a remembrance in the club newsletter. “His spirit was competitive but only to the point of self-improvement.”

It was but one tragedy in the club’s history.

In 2017, an influential leader died in his sleep from cardiac arrest. Mike Shafai was 47.

A couple of days later, more than 70 friends and loved ones gathered for the Thursday morning run he organized. The sunrise met their tears.

The tears kept coming for Shafai’s wife and world-traveling running partner, Stephanie Wurtz. She reflected in a Runner’s World article: “Sometimes it’s hard to cry when I’m running, especially if I’m doing a really intense workout, so in this way, it provides relief from loneliness and grief. Other days, running gives me the space and time to cry in a way that’s cathartic and meditative.”

Running would not be the same without her partner. But Wurtz keeps running. And she keeps volunteering.

“Like so many others, I found comfort and purpose in continuing the work Mike believed in,” she said. “The club helped me stay connected and inspired. It was a reminder of how strong and supportive this community really is.”

It was the community she needed. And the community Bailey needed.

Sober since 2019, he calls running his therapy. He calls the Pikes Peak Road Runners his support group.

He volunteers on the board now, meeting at the YMCA where the club began. “For a sport that gave me my life back, of course I’m gonna give back,” he says.

He continues early morning runs with that group of strangers-turned-friends. The conversations tend to be about running, about recent achievements, about races coming up and goals and dreams.

Also: “How are the kids? How’s the family? How’s work?” Bailey says. “It’s about life as well. Which is running.”