When Uriel Lara needs to pray, he doesn't go to church or light a candle in his Avondale apartment.
He goes to the forest preserve in suburban Willow Springs and runs 10-16 miles on the trails there.
The miles don't come as easy as they used to for Lara, a 49-year-old volunteer running coach who is working his way back to his previous routine of 100 miles a week after a shooting devastated his family.
Each step is a painful reminder of what he's lost-yet, he needs to pray now more than ever.
In July, Uriel Lara and his youngest son Adam Lara were leaving a Northwest Side restaurant after lunch when two men approached Adam and traded insults. The confrontation ended with one of the men fatally shooting 16-year-old Adam.
A bullet also hit Uriel on his right side, shattering six of his ribs and piercing his lung and liver.
No one has been charged in what police say may be a gang-related shooting. Uriel Lara and his son were two of the 2,366 shooting victims this year through November, a 13 percent increase compared with 2013. By November 2013, police had counted 2,098 shooting victims who were either injured or killed in the city.
Lara is determined not to let the shooting slow him down. He has been getting stronger every week in the hopes of running the famed Boston Marathon in April-a dream that Adam Lara had for his dad.
"The only way to release my pain is running," a tearful Uriel Lara said in a recent interview with RedEye. He said he feels connected to God and Adam's spirit when he runs.
Uriel Lara has been running for as long as he can remember. As a kid growing up in Mexico, he often ran between home and school because it was the only way to get around, he said.
He didn't have a bike for his newspaper delivery job so he ran to each home.
A neighbor took him to his first race, a 10-miler, at age 9, Lara said. At age 10, he ran his first half-marathon and at age 12, his first marathon.
Long-distance running is a popular sport in parts of Mexico as a tradition passed down among generations.
For Lara, he found running to be exciting, especially since he typically won trophies for winning his age group in races.
In 1985, at the age of 20, Lara moved to Chicago to be near his sister. He found the climate to be colder and less hilly than Mexico but on his second day in the city, he started running a route near his Wicker Park home.
Quickly, he built an impressive resume at local races, placing in the top of his age group at many of the events. Just last year, he won a 5K in suburban Shorewood in 17:14, a 5:33-mile pace for the 3.1-mile race -- a fast time, especially for Lara's age.
The average time for male runners who ran a 5K last year was 28:53; the average female 5K time was 34:58, according to Running USA, a running industry group. Besides his running accomplishments, Lara also started a family in Chicago.
In 1986, he met his wife Rosa, who had two children of her own. They married and had four kids, including Adam.
When the couple separated five years ago, Adam Lara was the only child who decided to live with his father.
For years, it was just father and son in Uriel Lara's Avondale apartment and the pair spent most of their free time together.
They would exercise and lift weights together at home. And Uriel Lara tried to teach his son the importance of school after Adam Lara didn't show interest in classes. And he hoped Adam Lara would learn from his mistakes.
Uriel Lara has had a few run-ins with the law, including charges for possession of marijuana, for which he spent time in jail.
"Everybody makes mistakes. Nobody's perfect but we learn from mistakes," Lara said.
Though he is a machinist and fence builder by trade, Uriel spends a lot of time teaching-mostly running techniques to dozens of career runners and fun runners.
But Adam Lara, who loved to play video games, never wanted to run-until July 14, the day he was killed. He approached his father out of the blue to express his interest, Uriel Lara recalled.
"I'll never forget that day, first time in his life to tell me, 'I want to start running,'" Uriel Lara said. "I got so happy."
The same day, father and son ran three miles of trails in a West Side park with Uriel Lara's oldest son Uriel Lara, Jr.
Afterward, Adam Lara and Uriel Lara headed to Restaurant Ricardo in Hermosa to grab lunch before the father had to work.
As they were leaving the Northwest Side restaurant, Adam Lara was approached by two men, Uriel Lara said. Words were exchanged but Uriel Lara said he doesn't know what was said.
Adam Lara and Uriel Lara got into Uriel's car. Just after Uriel Lara drove out of the parking lot, one of the men started shooting, the father recalled.
Suddenly, Uriel Lara felt a "powerful pain" and put his hand to his chest to find blood. He was confused and didn't realize he had been shot.
Then he turned to his son, who had been shot in the head.
An ambulance took the Laras to Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center. Adam Lara was pronounced dead at the hospital. Uriel Lara was in critical condition.
Chicago Police told WGN-Ch. 9 news at the time they thought the shooting was gang related. In recent weeks, a Chicago Police spokesman said there were no updates in the case.
Uriel said he didn't think his son, heading into his junior year at Lydia Urban Academy on the Northwest Side with an interest in working with computers, was a gang member but wasn't completely sure how he spent his personal time.
"The last day was one of the best days I ever had with him," Lara said.
Uriel Lara said he was the closest with Adam Lara but since the boy's death, the father has found himself becoming tighter with his other children, who were by his side in the hospital.
Besides his biological and stepchildren, Lara also serves as a father figure and mentor to the runners he trains. The shooting had an immediate effect on one of these runners, Heather Williams, of Rogers Park.
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Lara and Williams, 31, struck up a friendship more than a year ago through their Lakeview running group. Lara told Williams he would help her reach her goal of running a 5K in less than 27 minutes (about an 8:40-minute mile pace).
He met with her twice a week at a North Side park for an hour each time to increase her speed and endurance.
She finally met her goal last year at the 2013 Burgers and Beer 5K along the lakefront when she ran the race in 26:23, with Lara by her side.
This year's Burgers and Beer 5K was July 14, the day of the shooting. It was a hot day at Soldier Field as Williams waited for Lara, who was supposed to run alongside her again. Lara never showed.
Williams ended up running alone, missing him along the way. "He's very positive. he always wants you to feel comfortable and he always makes sure you can do your best," Williams said. The day after the race, Williams finally heard from Lara.
He texted her that he had been shot and his son was dead. Williams brought a friend and headed over to the hospital to visit her coach.
In the hospital, Lara was getting restless. He wasn't used to sitting still. Lara had spent years logging hundreds of miles on roads and trails without ever getting injured-until he got shot.
On day three after the shooting, he was walking five miles on his hospital floor with a nurse by his side.
"I did so many loops, the nurse got tired of me," Lara said.
After a week in the hospital, he returned home to an empty apartment. But Lara's Asics running shoes were there. He started slow at first. He began walking three or four miles at a time, then biking and finally, after three weeks, he started running a mile at a time.
He said he's now up to 75 miles per week though when he runs, he can still feel the pain in his side where the bullet struck him.
Lara said he recently ran a 10K in Mexico. The 6.2-mile race was his first long-distance race since the shooting.
Lara has also returned to coaching. He started working with Williams again and in September, he began training Daniel Aguilar, a track and cross country runner at Lake View High School who is now a freshman at Loyola University Chicago.
He is hoping Lara can help him make Loyola's track team next year.
Three times a week they meet at a North Side track or the forest preserve that Lara loves to run.
Aguilar said he and Lara run together during speed workouts but Aguilar has trouble when he tries to run longer distances with Lara.
"I can't keep up with the guy," said Aguilar, who lives in the Dunning community on the Northwest Side. "Even though he got shot, he still has it."
Lara's goal is to complete the Boston Marathon, considered to be one of the most prestigious marathons in the world, in under 2:40, his personal record for running a marathon.
Runners have to have a fast marathon time to qualify for the Boston Marathon, which occurs every April. Lara's qualifying time came last year when he ran the Quad Cities Marathon in western Illinois in 2:59:40 (about a 6:51-minute mile pace over the 26.2 miles).
"This is my job, my mission. This is what my kid wanted me to do," Lara said. "I cannot see him but I feel him."