See How He Runs

What did he learn?

"I learned you have to cross every 't' and dot every 'i,' because one little thing can lead to a big problem." You can see that he's taken those lessons to heart, he suggests, by the kind of disciplined, responsive operation he has tried to run as a council member. "I learned to show the type of attention to detail to make sure that never happens again."

Finishing the Marathon

Fenty's wife, Michelle Cross Fenty, met her future husband at Howard Law School, when, as a third-year student, she was assigned to mentor the first-year Fenty. She says friends now tease her that she married Adrian because she knew he wanted to one day be mayor of Washington.

But Michelle Fenty, 37, says her husband never talked about a political career until he worked on the mayoral campaign of former council member Kevin Chavous and later won a seat of his own on the Advisory Neighborhood Commission in Ward 4.

"I saw that was what gave him passion," says Michelle Fenty, who practices law at Perkins Coie, specializing in executing international business transactions. "He was the happiest when he was on the ANC. He would come home very excited about having talked to all of these people and how he was going to help them with their problems."

Adrian Fenty says he became fascinated by the process of lawmaking in an 11th-grade civics class. He decided he wanted to become a lawyer and help shape public policy behind the scenes.

He did not get involved in student politics at Oberlin College, where he ran cross-country and track and played on the basketball team. But he interned for three members of Congress and volunteered for the campaigns of the late Council Chairman David A. Clarke.

After he got married and bought a house in Crestwood, Fenty says, he started attending meetings of his neighborhood association. There, he says, was the beginning of his interest in elected office.

Shawn Fenty manages the family store and races bikes. He jokes about "dragging Adrian around" on the bicycle, but says he can't hang with his younger brother on those 6 a.m. runs.

When Fenty won the Ward 4 council race, Shawn says, he let Adrian talk him into taking over his old ANC seat.

"I really hated it," he says.

"I like to get things done, and it's not easy to get things done in city government," he adds. "I do not have the patience for the meetings and the posturing . . . the people who want to sit and debate one thing for hours."

But Adrian "never seems to get frustrated about it or flustered about it," Shawn says. "He really is made for it."

Last Sunday, Adrian Fenty rose at 3:30 a.m. to go pick up his father, 65, who still lives in the Kenyon Street NW house where Adrian and his brothers grew up. The two men drove nearly two hours to compete in the North East Triathlon in Cecil County, Md. But they ended up not competing because of a downpour. So Fenty came back to the District and joined his volunteers knocking on doors.

This would have been their fourth race since May. Last month, a day after taking part in a 90-minute debate with long-shot opponent Marie Johns and spending eight hours knocking on doors, Fenty and his father drove to Delaware to compete in a triathlon. Adrian placed 150th out of 478 athletes and 18th out of 46 in his age group. Hitting the triathlon circuit is an annual ritual for the father and son.

Phillip Fenty's eyes light up when he talks about the first marathon that they ran together, when Adrian was 15. It was the Marine Corps Marathon, no big deal for Phil Fenty, who took up running at age 30, when he decided that he needed to get himself in shape to keep up with his three little boys.

"Around mile 16 or 17, I could see that he was visibly tired," Phil says. "I said to him, 'Okay, tuck yourself close to me. Don't look at the other people who've stopped, don't look at the people who are walking. Just focus and you'll get through it.' And we ran it together all the way."

What Adrian remembers most about that first marathon was that it was hard and that there was "no way in the world I would have finished that first marathon without my dad. My dad could have run the whole race probably an hour faster if it wasn't for me," he says.

The races and the training, he says, have taught him much about discipline and perseverance.

"The toughest thing about a marathon is not just physical, it's mental," says Fenty. "You have to mentally push yourself through when the body gets tired and wants to quit. It's just a great feeling to accomplish such a tough challenge."

These days, after finishing a race, Fenty waits for his father. "Then I go back and I run the last mile or two with him."