Come Nzibarega of Burundi is training in Spokane this week to run in Bloomsday 2015 Sunday. (SR photo: Jesse Tinsley)

First he had fled his home, and then his uncle’s home – fearing for his very being and the prospect of becoming a grim statistic, another of the more than 300,000 people who had died in Burundi’s hateful civil war. So Come Nzibarega ran. And, yes, he was still a statistic, but a breathing one – part of the half-million Burundi refugees scattered to neighboring parts of Africa: Tanzania, the Congo, Rwanda, Uganda. He had made his way even farther, to Ethiopia – an urban refugee on the outskirts of Addis Ababa, where he was safe. But safety is not security. “I believe you’re created with a purpose that you are to fulfill here on Earth,” Nzibarega said, “and I could see myself dying with all I have inside of me. It is a horrible life. There were no opportunities for me to release my potential, to help the community and be who I was created to be.” He couldn’t even begin to know who that was or where it could take him. Surely the wonder of the answer will dash briefly through his head again as he lines up on Sunday morning with 40-odd-thousand of his new best friends in downtown Spokane/John Blanchette, SR. More here.

Question: How often have you run in Bloomsday?