It’s a Sunday afternoon. Adam Safdi sits comfortably in a chair in Peet’s Coffee & Tea, sipping on a glass of water and staring out the window. Outside, the weather has reached 94 degrees, too hot to even walk for too long. But Safdi has just run 20 miles.

“My training just ended a half an hour ago,” he admitted, smiling a little.

Safdi is one of 12,000 participating in the Gay Games and plans to compete in Saturday’s marathon, a total distance of 26.2 miles.

“They say you should never run the marathon distance until the day of the actual marathon,” he said, going through his training style. “My longest run is 22.6 miles, and that was two weeks ago.”

Safdi is a math major with a minor in Japanese language and culture. He plans to graduate in September. He decided to start the pre-med program at the end of his junior year, delaying his graduation until August. Training for the marathon has been a huge commitment for Safdi on top of his already heavy class schedule.

“Officially, I’ve been training since the end of February. Unofficially, since the beginning of the year,” he says. “I first started doing 10Ks, but I built up to it, followed different schedules. I’ve been lucky enough to train with a group.”

The group is the reason he is running at all. He had always wanted to run a marathon and joined a running group to train for one. A friend from the group found out he was interested and encouraged him to sign up for the Gay Games.

That wasn’t the only source of support.

“My friend Ellen works for the Gay Games,” he says.

Ellen Bird, Weinberg ’06, is an advertising and public relations coordinator for the Gay Games.

Safdi tried to play down how committed he is to the event – “Honestly, it just fit in with my schedule,” he jokes – but this is his first marathon, and he plans to see it through.

As a participant of the Games, he marched onto Soldier Field during the opening ceremony.

“It was a long, amazing spectacle,” he recalled. “They had us process in. I went in with Team Chicago. They sorted us into lines and gave us glow sticks which formed a rainbow flag across Soldier Field.”

Soldier Field did not sell out for the opening ceremony, but there were still thousands of fans as the players from different countries and states made their way onto the field.

“I was surprised by the lack of young people. I thought there’d be more college-aged kids,” he said. “I didn’t know anyone there the whole time.”

The disparity among the number of people that participate per country also seemed strange to him. There may have been around 2,500 people from just Chicago, while Uganda had only one participant.

“Texas had a fair amount, too,” he said. “And Nebraska was there.”

Safdi, an Ohio native, said the most inspirational part of the opening ceremony was when the participants passed by the dozen or so protesters standing outside Soldier Field.

“When I was processing in, and I passed all the protesters, just being with people so proud of who they were, it made me feel proud of who I am,” he said.

He finished training for the marathon a few days ago to give himself some time to relax, but this week may be a little busy. He said if he has time, he would go see the swimming events or possibly the triathlon.

“I was originally going to do the triathlon, but in this one you had to swim,” he says. “I didn’t have a wetsuit or a bike, and I wasn’t going to buy them just for this.”

After the marathon ends, Safdi plans to finish his credits and return to Japan as soon as October. He studied abroad there while attending Northwestern.

Leslie Gittings, a senior majoring in biomedical engineering, is also participating in the Gay Games. Gittings, who plays soccer for NU, is on the women’s soccer team. She was unavailable for comment.

Reach Emmet Sullivan at [email protected].