I was driving around and about on a recent morning, stopped in a line of cars at a construction site, and I saw a guy walking toward me on the sidewalk.

Though it wasn’t a hot morning, the long-sleeved gray T-shirt he was wearing was soaked through with sweat, as if he’d been running hard, rather than walking. His pace wasn’t brisk, but he was resolutely pumping his arms and legs, grinding it out.

The reading I had was that he’d just recently started to walk in the morning, and for him to do so was a physical, even an athletic challenge and feat.

He looked to be in his early to mid-sixties, and I imagined he’d started to walk in the morning for his health. Maybe a recent medical exam resulted in his being warned he was heading for a heart attack or a stroke if he didn’t alter his diet and start exercising. Or maybe, more than a warning, he’d recently experienced a health event that had gotten his attention, that he’d “heard the angel feathers.”

Or maybe he was trying to stop drinking and/or smoking, and exercising was part of that lifestyle change. Or maybe he’d recently retired after 30 years of the same weekday routine, and walking in the morning was part of the new regimen he was trying to put together to do retirement well.

Whatever the inspiration, what I saw was a lot of grit in his trying to do the right thing for his life. After he passed me, I started to think about how I’ve always been a little in love with grit and all its first cousins — determination, drive, desire, etc.

Sometimes that ardor for effort has served me well, and sometimes not so much. It turns out that, like a lot of things in life, aspiration can cross the unmarked border into “too much of a good thing.”

Anyway, I don’t know how many other drivers took note of that walker, let alone were set off by him into a rumination about grit. It may have been that he had an audience of one — moi.

I liked the image of his being met at the finish line (his house) by a spouse, or an adult daughter or son, or a grandchild living with him, or all of the above. Maybe part of his new daily routine had become one or all of them greeting him with a glass of ice water and a towel.

Then the police officer working the construction detail waved my line forward, and I put my foot lightly on the gas. I remember thinking how that later-in-life walker, gamely trudging forward, was enough of a hero for me that I didn’t need to turn on the TV or search the internet that night to find one.

And then I proceeded to my next destination, leaving him to continue on to his.

Amherst resident Richard McCarthy, a longtime columnist at the Springfield Republican, writes a monthly column for the Gazette.