A Probably Unnamed, Definitely Unnecessary Story

Good for you, actually got me invested and feeling warm inside only to tear my heart out at the end. I hope you're happy .

Hory shet…!

This is kinda awesome. But I suggest a couple edits.

The biggest is that the timing and probability of drug testing aren’t realistic. There’s almost zero chance you’d get drug tested running 2:17 at CIM. If you did get a random one, that would’ve meant the USADA agent contacted you 9 days after the test (the day before you met with the reporter..which was 10 days after CIM). Results don’t usually come back that fast.. especially for a random 2:17 guy in 30 or 40th place for no prize money.

So I’d change the story to the Philly Marathon where you’d place maybe Top 7 and have the USADA agent contact you around 4 weeks later. Plus the Philly Marathon qualification makes it more heart-warming that you did it in PA after failing at super fast courses like CIM and Houston before.

So the story would come out around 4-5 before Christmas and you could change that Christmas line to something like “it will be a great Christmas dinner conversation”.

But overall, nice work!

I'm not aware of the background of this narrative. It is well written. Makes me wanna read more.

>>Interval 2<<

I awoke to the sound of Emma’s alarm clock ringing at 5:23am. It has been three days since I met with Carl. Emma has been going to a Pilates class at the Scranton Community Center three mornings a week with four other teachers before school. She works at John F. Kennedy Elementary School as a third-grade teacher. We moved in together in September and she handled the annoyance of living with a high milage marathoner in the heart of his build-up for the first three months of our cohabitation with incredible patience. Emma played soccer for Bates College, so she generally understands the demands of training, but not many can understand someone at my age still pouring this much time and energy to what could most accurately be described as a hobby and I suspect Emma is among them, though she never explicitly says it.

“Why are you up,” she said to me as she shut off the bathroom light behind her.

“Not sure I’ll find any success in trying to squeeze any more sleep out of tonight. I might head out for a run. Mudra is stopping by tonight. I’m thinking of grilling, but no pressure, probably around seven,” I said as I push my upper body upright.

I have not been sleeping well at all since the race. Most nights I lie still with no signs of sleep coming. By 2am I ultimately take my insomnia out to the living room and put something on Netflix that doesn’t require much attention. I try to slip back into the bedroom as soon as sleep sends some warning shots, but most mornings since the race Emma has added turning off the TV and slipping a blanket over my body to her morning ritual.

“Oh! You know I won’t refuse some grilling. I’ll swing through Wegmans on my way home and get that marinated steak we had last time. Text me if you think the lettuce is bad, you’re a weirdo about that,” she said, now walking around in one shoe and kicking some clothes on the floor aside in search of the second.

“Okay,” I said.

My house is a small, three-bedroom ranch in the East Mountain section of Scranton. I made a snap decision in 2020 to buy the house when interest rates were low. At that point in my life, I had just gotten out of a long relationship that my girlfriend and I at the time had probably seen ending about two years before it did, but we just kind of hung around to see if something happened. The house was a boring place for my first three years of ownership - off-white walls in every room, no drapes or blinds on any windows, flowerbeds with no flowers in the front and back, a living room with only a couch and a TV, a dining room with no table. When Emma and I started dating in early 2023 she made sure to point out my lack of effort as a homeowner early on. When these jabs resulted in no changes (other than the addition of a bench in the entryway that quickly became the forgotten center of a shoe mountain) Emma began redirecting a lot of our weekend adventures to furniture and décor shopping. After moving in this past fall, she’s really embraced the role of making this house a home and despite my complete lack of attention to these types of things I must say, it does make for a much more relaxing and welcoming environment to come home to.
I listened to Emma’s car pull out of the driveway and decided to get ready for a rare morning run.

Most days I do a longer run after work, whether starting from the office or driving to Lake Scranton for some miles before driving home. Occasionally on a weekday I sneak out for a quick lunchtime run, utilizing the warehouse shower that I’m certain no one other than myself has used in at least a decade. It’s easy enough to grab a quick sandwich at the campus café and scarf it down at my desk, but I still seem to only be able to talk myself into the routine twice a week – three times on a particularly motivated week. Otherwise, I tend to do longer single runs in the evening to rack up the 100 to 120 miles a week I find myself running in the heart of a build-up.

I took a quick peek at the wilting lettuce and grabbed some cold brew from the fridge. Sitting at the table sipping on a cold brew, a full two hours before I’d typically be getting ready for work, felt like free time. Peaceful time. It almost felt like a normal day and not the reality: that I was still sitting between a failed drug test and the local embarrassment that is sure to come crashing down on me soon.

My house is about a three-mile run from West Scranton High, the high school where this crazy running obsession took hold of me. I decided to run to the high school, do a track lap, and run back. The post-marathon period is always a weird, aimless time. In the heat of the build-up, it feels like something you’re constantly bargaining with yourself to get through. “Just two big, long runs and three hard interval sessions to go.” Fighting to find the end of this daunting task and then when it’s done, in comes a wave of immediate nostalgia and an overwhelming sense of “what now.”

A few cars were in the parking lot when I rounded towards the West Scranton High School track. It would be another 45 minutes before the parking lot was a chaotic scene of trucks showboating, beaters struggling under the erratic driving of its teenage owner, and all the rest of the anxious energy that forms around the stat of a new school day. The track was empty. I continued through the gate right onto the oval for my destination lap, then veered back towards the gate I had entered through as I head back towards home.

Zip-tied to the chain-link fence to the immediate right of the gate was a white metal sign with printed labels indicating Boy’s Records and Girl’s Records for every event from 100m to 3200m, javelin to triple jump. I stop to review the names and records.

“3200m - Jared Allan (2005) – 9:21.87”

I audibly chuckle. Half embarrassed by who I was when I was Jared Allan, the 9:21 guy and half amused by the memory.

I’m overcome with guilt. It feels the heaviest of all the pangs and zaps of guilt that have been reliable visitors since testing positive. I shrink slowly to the hard, cold ground and lean my back against the chain-link fence, my head resting at the bottom of the WSHS Track & Field Records board.

I was never an athlete before stumbling my way onto the cross-country team my freshman year of high school. I had always done some youth sports for the social aspect, but I was never successful at any I tried. In youth soccer I did my best to blend in – not noticeably bad, never relied on. In my one very failed year of little league I tried the same, but after two concussions (one from colliding with a teammate, one from getting hit in the head), I quit. When they held the Freshman Welcome Fair going into my first year at WSHS I had no intentions of looking into any of the sports teams. I wondered over to the XC table only because my ride home was signing up for soccer and a senior girl (who was both terrifying me and making me feel cool as hell) from the team called me over to see if I’d be interested in signing up. It was probably more out of social anxiety than interest that I scribbled my name down, but one week later I was walking out to the center of the track in my Billabong shorts and Vans skate shoes.

The coach of the team was Scott Mudra. A 35-year-old triathlete that worked as a consultant for ESPN and coached WSHS purely for the love of it. Coach Mudra joined me and three other boys for our run that day. I should say I joined them as the four of them (Coach Mudra and what I would later find out was our top three, a senior and a set of twins that were juniors) grouped together without announcement and started off on their run. We exited the school grounds before they noticed I was heading out with them. “Let’s stick to neighborhood laps,” said Coach Mudra, making sure not to discourage my ambition, but lining up for the expected disaster. It was on the sixth 1.2-mile loop that Coach Mudra tapped me on the shoulder and said, “why don’t we call it after this one.” This was the first time I felt good at something. I had “natural endurance.” Well, at least relative to the 35 boys who showed up to run for WSHS Invaders XC in the fall of 2001.

The smell of iron and wood radiating off the old, fading bleachers still reminds me of meeting the XC team on this field for my first run. Sometimes it feels like the lion’s share of the motivation behind this decades old hobby is a continuous chase for that magical feeling that floods the memories of that first season as a runner.

Every week of high school seemed to have running improvement to show for it. 25th in the league freshman year, 7th sophomore year, 2nd junior year, and a win to cap off my final season. On the track I broke the coveted 10-minute barrier in the 3200m (an impressive time for the weaker league I was in) my sophomore year, broke the school record my junior year in 9:33, and then lowered that school record to this 9:21 still facing the old oval to this day.

The perimeter of the fields, parking lots, and back lot of the school combined for the 1.2-mile that I must have run over 2,000 times in my four years here. Once I had leadership sway with the team my second half of high school, I redirected a lot of our runs and even workouts to this 1.2-mile loop. I liked to be close to the other sports practicing in the various fields that the loop circled.

(Interval 2 continued below)

(Interval 2 continued)

My junior year on this loop, just towards the end of regular season cross-country, I let teenage ego get the best of me and I blasted the final rep of a five by mile workout. With about ¼ mile to go, rounding the backstop of the girls’ softball field where they were hosting a senior appreciation day for players and families, I directed my attention inside to the field, watching to see who was noticing my impressive final rep. In my head some fantasy was probably playing out. As I rounded the backstop parked right in the center of the dirt utility road was the athletic department’s golf cart used by our trainer (a severe alcoholic who would notoriously park this cart at any angle in any spot as he stumbled about the after-school practices, taping and stretching and fixing in unhelpful ways to any young athlete who didn’t know any better). My full body smacked the side of the cart, I rolled over the small bed of the cart in the back and fell flat onto the dirt. The resulting injury would only be a knee that flared up and required a short two-day break from running, but the ego bruise was severe. Coach Mudra made a point to bike at the front of every workout after that day.

I let out a quiet chuckle, again half embarrassed by who I was then, and half amused by the memory.

My chest is tight on my run home. Avoiding stopping the watch every ninety seconds is difficult, but I’ll need to get ready for work soon. I consider walking off and on – the anxiety is overwhelming. For the first time I wonder if I’ll be fired from work when the news drops. Does that matter for "real world" work?

I walk back inside and get right in the shower. As I’m walking out to the car, I text Emma that the lettuce is bad. I get into my car and stare at my hands gripping the steering wheel for a moment. I see my neighbor is bringing in his trash barrels from the curb. He looks very carefree.

I drive off to work.

This is one of the weirder Nico Young posts I've seen this year.

Fickshun, can you please register your username? I want to see the end of this story

>>Interval 3<<

This morning the Scranton Times-Tribune article came out.

My incessant refreshing of the Times-Tribune website is not what reveals today’s story to me. Instead, I’m greeted with a stack of four full copies of the Scranton Times-Tribune for Friday, December 15, 2023. I look down the row of cubicle half-walls and see Shareen, the other Senior Customer Service Manager. I place my bag down and snap my laptop into its stand. Shareen turns at the sound.

“Well look at this, a celebrity in our little cubicle colony!” Shareen said, getting up to give me a hug. “He’s a runner, he’s a track star!” Shareen said, motioning her arms like a sprinter.

Shareen is in her late fifties. I refer to her outside of work as Work Mom. She’s got a very motherly approach to everyone in the office, especially the younger males. No one would ever accuse Shareen of having a filter.

“Oh boy, who put all these on my desk?”

“Chris has been handing them out all morning. He must have had about 20 copies when he walked in this morning. He’s out in the warehouse pinning them up at the coffee stations right now. So exciting!”

My vision blurs a bit as anxiety rushes in. Every acknowledgment of the race makes me want to run away off the grid and disappear, especially acknowledgments in the “real world” outside of my hobby. I find myself almost combating the anxiety with anger. “Why do these people care? Can’t anyone just let me do a hobby and leave it at that.” It’s the first time in my life that my wish for others to not notice my participation in this sport is genuine.

“Chris, what a guy,” I said, taking a copy off the top of the stack and folding it in my hand. “I’m going to go grab a coffee at the café. Need anything?”

“Go mine right here.” Shareen holds up a massive 40oz Stanley mug. “You better not fill up on any sweats down there. We have a surprise for you this afternoon.

I find the most secluded of the four small tables outside of the café and sit down with my coffee and the paper. I flip to the sports section. Half the page is a picture of me crossing the finish line at the 2023 California International Marathon. My head is swung back with a face of pain that is mid-transformation into a grin. The red digital numbers above my head read “2:17:50” as my front leg barely comes to the finish line strip. The heads, backs, and arms of earlier finishers, some now holding a bunched up American flag in their hands, are cheering me and others in, knowing we’re all fighting for every inch to find the finish line before the big red digital numbers flip to “2:18:00.” The feeling of elation felt by the person crossing the finish line in this picture feels so foreign. I am certain in this moment I’ll never have that feeling again.

“Local Star Finishes Top in Nation” the title reads. This time I let out a soft chuckle at the inaccuracy of the title and the continued realization that this situation only stands to get worse.

The article is a generally accurate representation of the conversation I had with Carl three days earlier, save for a few embellishments by the author that aren’t anything too egregious for the pages of a local paper. I stop on the picture in the middle of the story—the pack of what must be 80 of us somewhere just after the half-marathon point—to scan for all the faces I know. Many of these guys I’ve gotten to know well over our continued pursuit of an “OTQ” (Olympic Trials Qualifier). In these packs you feel less like competitors and more like teammates against a common rival: The Standard. I wonder what all my OTQ teammates will think of me when they know.

That afternoon Chris and Shareen organize a little celebration in the larger cafeteria at the back of the warehouse. Faces I couldn’t put names to walk in for some cake and coffee while I stand off to the side with Chris. Chris kicked off the celebration with some words that make me sound like an elite runner to the 15 or so people who’ve gathered to be first in line for the treats. His embellishments about my running are matched by his embellishments about my performance as an employee. Truth be told, I approach my job a lot like I approached my years of youth soccer: not noticeably bad, never relied on. I suppose once one has the stage and is saying nice things about someone the tendency is to lean into the theme and take it to its limits.

The rest of the workday feels like I’m waiting for the results of an STD test. I am completely unable to think and instead just focus to stay eyes towards my screen, playing around with our customer management software in repetitive cycles that achieves no work to avoid any further conversations about the race or the article. Chris and Shareen have an afternoon meeting running over and I manage to slip out of the building at 5:00pm unnoticed.

Coach Mudra arrives just before 7pm. I’ve begun setting up grilling supplies while Emma is grading papers in a small spare bedroom we have. Mudra’s wife Amy is the high school girl’s JV basketball coach, and a night game for the Lady Invaders means Mudra arrives alone.

“Hello Champ!” Mudra said, walking through the front door. He’s carrying a paper grocery bag under his left arm with a bottle of red wine gripped at the neck in his right hand. He hands over the paper bag as he swings to remove his coat, switching the wine to his left hand halfway through the movement.

“Coach! How’s it going?” I said as I take the paper bag from his hand. Emma hears us and pops her head out into the hall from the spare room.

“Coach Mudra! How are you?” Emma said as she closes the spare bedroom door behind her. She takes the bottle of wine from Mudra and heads towards the kitchen.

I bring in the grilled steak and vegetables from the grill and begin setting up everyone’s plates. Emma has poured us all a glass a wine while updating Mudra about the current issues of the Scranton Public Schools. Mudra was briefly an educator before his time as an ESPN consultant and his wife is a middle school teacher a few towns over at a public school, so he’s very up on the current issues with public education. Teaching for the test, metrics over learning, and all the bureaucratic nonsense that plagues public education today at the expense of real students achieving real learning.

Inside the bag is a framed picture with some words scribbled on the back. The picture is a group of the guys from our 2001 cross-country season seated at a large picnic table in front of a pumpkin patch. The picture was taken at Albert’s Farm on our way home from the first invitational I ever ran, a necessary stop for their award-winning apple cider donuts. That day I had narrowly held off the win in the Boys Freshman 4k race, a race that I ran the first half without any governors and spent the second half weaving and wobbling to hang on to as much as my 40 second lead I had built up through 2k as I could manage. The note on the back says: “The day I knew you understood. – Mudra.”
I stare at the picture for a while. We’re all wearing whatever sweatpants and jackets we had laying around at the time. We look more like scrawny boxers from the 1970s about to go sweat ourselves down to weight than a group of high school cross-country runners. I’m not even sure we ran a cool down that day, though I’m certain we all put in a least a mile of sprints throwing a frisbee around while we waited for the awards. Nick, our top senior at the time, who I once saw as the image of ultimate success as a runner and who now, looking in this picture, looks like a goofy high school kid wearing his high school band windbreaker, is holding a pumpkin above his head and yelling something to the camera as the picture is taken.

“That was fun day,” I said to Mudra, placing the framed photo next to the kitchen sink.

“We love pictures! This place needs all the personality it can get. This is a perfect size for that hallway spot I’ve been looking to fill, Jar,” Emma said, picking up the picture to go see it for size against the hallway wall.

“That was a great day. That was the day you really came out of your shell. Hell, we would have podiumed in the Varsity Section if I had run you there!” Coach Mudra said.

“That was fun,” I said.

Over dinner Mudra wants to dig into more of the specifics of the race and the build. This is our first time speaking (save for a few texts here and there) since he called me about an hour after finishing the race. On that call I had yet to be notified I was selected for drug testing. I felt almost drunk with happiness trying to recount everything to Mudra on that call. “Oh yeah, I fell! But it was kind of funny. And the bottles helped a bunch. I got down six out of seven. It felt like butter through 20 (this is never true, but, as with all things, the future changes how we remember the past and a successful race tends to hold everything that led to the moment in an overly positive light). I knew I had it (also not true until I had physically found the finish line).”

(Interval 3 continued below)

(Interval 3 continued)

Mudra is mostly interested in how our 10-day cycles seemed to pay off. For most of my running life I rigidly held to the weekly routine with a Sunday long, but this build, starting back in July, we opted to move to a 10-day cycle, and we looked at every 20-days as a chapter to have touched upon all the necessary stimuli. Typically, this would be a 10-day cycle of longer intervals on day three, shorter intervals on day six, and a hard long run on day nine. The other days were all just easy mileage with strides the day before each workout and an alternating short hills day for day one of every other 10-day cycle. Within a 20-day block we’d make sure to hit some continuous tempo, some broken tempo, a taste of 3k to 5k speed, and some longer work at closer to 10k or 10-Mile race pace. The long runs alternated between very hard (incorporating marathon and sometimes half-marathon pace) and moderately hard, with my favorite being the long steady cruise (considered moderately hard). Just me alone for 20 to 24 miles cruising along at about 5:50 pace. These are where I’d focus on fueling practice and race visualization. It’s a special feeling to know you can cruise along all day at a steady pace – it was always on these runs that the power running can give an individual really resonated with me.

Mudra and I had decided against the growing trend of double thresholds. These are special workout days where the morning session would typically be something around aerobic threshold pace (or basically marathon pace) broken into one or two or possibly three-mile segments. That same afternoon the idea is to do a second workout, typically closer to lactate threshold pace (or basically half marathon pace) for intervals ranging from 400m to possibly one miles reps. It’s a great way to stack work and mileage, but my aversion to morning runs and the chaos this seemed to do to my sleep made these too distracting to incorporate. That’s another thing I’ve gotten better about in my aging years of the marathon: I do a lot less “for the log”, as they say, and a lot more for how it’ll specifically work for me.

Mudra was a real purist when it came to endurance sports. He was always pulling our heads out the analytical side of running whenever we drifted there. He wanted his athletes focused on the *feeling* when they were heavy in a training block. Some of his athletes handled receiving training in three-to-four-week blocks, to schedule their life around big efforts in advance, very well. Others (like me) only received training a few days at a time. I would text Mudra after each workout, and he’d quickly flip back the days ahead, through the following workout. This arrangement started years ago, my second year out of college, when he found I was taking his four-week blocks, putting them into a spreadsheet I had created, and trying to guess what fitness Mudra as implying I was in through this formula I had tying workout paces to various race distances. I suppose my system would work if every workout were a true fitness test, but with Mudra this was never the case. He was good at reading both the physical state of his athletes and the mental state they carried into each session. His workout paces reflected that.

If Mudra had it his way, I’d do everything off effort, off the track. But after 17 years of insisting almost every workout be on the track (I loved the constant feedback) he conceded that fight. Instead, he insisted on speed limits. If he prescribed a softer effort, knowing I needed a little confidence booster to bridge myself to the next workout— “5mi @ 5:20 pace, ease into it!”—I’d undoubtedly think something like: “a 70-minute half workout? What the hell?” When I’d report in post workout— “25:12 – felt good!”—Mudra would reply something along the lines of: “Speed limits! Nice work.” Happy I felt good, but a little slap on the wrist for the disobedience. I suspect Mudra at this point in our relationship could easily anticipate my level of disobedience and prescribed paces accordingly.

The dinner welcomes alternating waves of normalcy and intense anxiety. Sometimes when the anxiety hits, I let out a little chuckle, which I’d always excuse with something like “just remembering something funny about that” or similar vague excuses. Emma, who is acutely aware of the signs my anxiety comes with, is not fooled by these excuses.

We talk until after 10pm when Mudra finally notices the time and says he must be going.

“Why don’t you swing by the track tomorrow and hop in Allison’s workout? We gotta get those legs awake again for a few solid weeks before February,” Mudra said. Allison is another one of Mudra’s “post-collegiate” athletes. She’s building up for Houston in January. She’s probably fit enough to run 2:33 as we speak but having given birth a year ago this January, she decided to ignore all the OTQ fanfare and just focus on getting back into shape. As it would turn out, that post-pregnancy year of work would have her in the best shape of her life with a no-pressure opportunity to celebrate her successful comeback on the roads of Houston this coming January.

Mudra is referring to the US Marathon Olympic Trials this coming February. He always loves a scheduling challenge and this would be the quickest turnaround between two marathons we would ever try. I fresh pang of guilt hits knowing I will not be running this race.

“What’s she got?”

“We’re doing some 2ks. Four is the goal, but I have a feeling we’ll be throwing a fifth rep on there. Probably aiming for about 6:45 to 6:50. You can hop in and out just to get the legs moving a bit. Does 10am work?”

“Yeah. I guess that sounds good. Sure, I’m there.”

After Mudra leaves Emma and I clean up from the dinner.

“Jar, are you okay?” Emma says as we’re finishing up our cleaning tasks.

“Yeah, why?”

“You seem uptight. Anxious? I don’t know. You sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah, I’m totally fine. I think the bad sleep is just catching up with me. I might go lay down now and see if I’m tired enough to pass out.”

I hop into bed just before 11pm. Emma stays out in the kitchen finishing up grading a few papers before tiptoeing into the room around midnight. She whispers my name to check if I’m awake, but I hold my fake sleep through this. Shortly after getting into bed, I hear the subtle snoring that always comes with the first 30 or so minutes of Emma’s sleep.

At 2am I go walk to the couch and turn on the TV.

>>Interval 4<<

I arrive to the track at 9:40am. I know Allison will only be doing her typical 2-mile warm-up, so I plan to get in a campus lap before joining her. Coach Mudra is sitting on the bleachers with a coffee and a Stephen King novel – “Billy Summers” is his choice for today. Mudra is a huge King fan. He says he’s not one for horror or paranormal typically, but he can’t get enough of King’s storytelling, especially the way he develops such relatable characters.
“Hey, Coach,” I say as I step up onto the bleachers.

“Hey, bud. IDEAL conditions today, eh?” Mudra says. “IDEAL conditions” was Mudra’s catch phrase. Today actually is an ideal day for a track workout with temps around 45 and the flag on the infield completely flaccid in the absence of wind. The skies are completely clear, but had this been 35 degrees, 20 mph winds, with frigid, sideways ran, Mudra still would have used his catchphrase: “IDEAL conditions.”

Some of his high school distance guys are starting to congregate on the infield, finishing up their easy 45 minutes for the morning. Mudra is still the head boys coach for the WSHS cross-country team as well as the men’s distance coach for both the indoor and outdoor track teams.

“See that kid there, in the blue? He’s going to do big things on the oval this year,” Mudra says, pointing to a tall, lanky boy who is quiet among the otherwise rowdy bunch of high schoolers. “He broke 16 at Stroudsburg this fall, and no one was near him. I think he had another 20 seconds in him at least.”

Stroudsburg High School is host to League Championships every other year. The first 2k of the course is basically straight up a ski mountain, with the second 3k zigzagging back down. When I graduated high school, the course had yet to see a sub-16. Four runners (including the boy in blue on the infield) have since gone sub-16.

“Oh yeah? That’s the Sullivan kid, right?” I said.

“Yup. Quiet kid. All business when it comes to running. I don’t think he realizes how good he is.”

“Sounds like that flimsy label down there is on borrowed time, huh?” I point down to the back of the records board zip-tied to the chain-link fence.

“I’d say it is. I wouldn’t be surprised if we see a sub-9:00 out of Sully, if I can trick him into running the deuce. Hates the 3200.”

Sully had run 4:11 in the 1600m last spring, his junior year. This is the current school record. I’m sure my name would have been stripped from the board by now if Mudra could have convinced young Kyle Sullivan to try for eight laps, but he refused to run the distance when it mattered and scooping up a win at dual meets in the area typically didn’t require anything much below 10 minutes. Walking for a runner like Sully.

I’m still talking with Mudra when Allison arrives. I guess my mileage add-on will have to wait for the cool-down.

“I hear I’m getting assistance from a famous runner today,” Allison says as she enters the stadium and steps up onto the bleachers. “Mike brought me a copy of your article last night – very cool!” Mike is Allison’s husband. Like Emma, he played college soccer. He was the goalie for the UMass Amherst team that made the NCAA Quarterfinals. He’s since dabbled in running, holding a personal best of 2:59 from the Steamtown Marathon a few years back.

“That’s right. Squad’s back!” Mudra says.

Intense waves of anxiety hit in this moment. This round causes some nausea, and my legs feel a bit rubbery. My mind is trying to protect itself from contemplating how upset these two will be when they know the truth. I chuckle off the comment and start changing into my trainers.

Allison and I get right into the warm-up. With an 11-month waiting at home Allison is the true definition of efficiency in her approach to training. Show up, do the work, and go home. Dwell on nothing. I find it inspiring, and I wish I could approach training the same, but I suppose I’m more of an “over thinker” and efficient is the last word anyone would dare use to describe my style of training.

Before we start the reps Mudra tells me I can take the rest intervals “steady”, if I’m feeling good. The plan is for Allison to walk to the opposite 200m line after each rep while I run a 2:15 600m between each. I figured I’ll do this for a few reps, or until it starts to feel like too much of a workout for the first one back.

I lead Allison through each rep. I can’t help myself from checking every 200m split as to not mess up her workout. We’re consistent through the first four reps at: 6:46, 6:45, 6:45, 6:45. Other than accidentally taking the workout out in 37 for the first 200, everything is pretty dialed in, and Allison sounds very smooth floating along behind me.

Pacing Allison is the closest thing I have to a training partner these days. All my closest friends abandoned the sport as one naturally lets hobbies slip aside when work, marriage, parenthood, and other real-life matters take center stage. Sometimes continuing this hobby in such a religious manner feels a bit embarrassing, but I’ve generally accepted this is just part of who I am at this point.

After my college years at Widener University, I moved to Philadelphia with four of my college teammates. Most of us were okay college runners. I managed to graduate with personal bests of 30:23 and 14:34. I was a reliable second or third guy for the distance team, but in college I was never a front runner. In my four years competing I never won anything bigger than a few pre-season quad meets.

The stud of our crew, Kevin Mulvaney, was a true talent. Had it not been for his constant injuries I’m certain he could have entertained some professional years in the sport. Our crew never ceased to be amazed by Mulvs’s miraculous comebacks from some serious injuries - femoral stress fractures twice, a broken vertebrae his junior year, 10 weeks in a boot at one point for stepping weirdly on a pine comb on a warm-up. It would always be the same comeback trajectory – a couple weeks of walk jogs that culminated in some test 200s on the track and then two weeks after that he’d be worthy of points at conference championships. His senior indoor track season he was coming off one of the femoral stress fractures from cross-country that fall. Coach Mudra (Mudra assigned our distance workouts at Widener via the head coach, Perry Templeton, whose background was mainly in sprints and jumps) had Mulvs in the pool for the entire winter. Three days before indoor conference championships Mulvs took his first stride on real ground. That weekend, in the men’s 5k, Kevin Mulvaney would go on to take the win in a tactical 5,000-meter race, blasting to the front with 600m to go and putting the screws into the field 100 meters at a time en route to his 14:41 win, a final 600m of 1:28. Later that spring, with a rare 10-week training block injury free, Kevin locked up a DIII Outdoor Nationals title in the 5,000 meter with blistering 13:59.

After Widener Kevin got a job in public accounting at KPMG in Philadelphia. I’m sure he would have hung up the spikes altogether had myself, Drew Cann, Nick Prince, and Kyle Dougherty not followed him to the city. We rented an old four bedroom at 26th and Christian and the rest of us found whatever jobs we could get to keep the college dream alive (I worked as an AP Clerk at City Hall, which required about 45 minutes of real work a day and came with a paycheck to match the effort).

We started a club having not found any post-collegiate running options that interested us. The Philly Distance Project was just us five keeping The Dream alive in an overcrowded apartment just off the banks of the Schuylkill River. The club gave of an excuse to stay together as teammates and proved to be quite the source of entertainment. After each race I’d write up an article for our website, blasted out to an audience of likely only us five. I remember once getting a very nasty email from a board member of the USA Track & Field Mid-Atlantic Association after one of these articles took aim at a prominent Philadelphia runner who sat on Drew for 24 miles of that year’s USATF Mid-Atlantic Marathon Championships. “Drew Cann, performing pacing duties for Eric Tyson, went on to secure 2nd place at this year’s USATF Championships in a time of 2:21:43” was the line that really spun them up. I suppose we were “rebels” on the scene, so much as a five-man distance team can be rebels in amateur road racing.

After a few years the club sort of faded away. Kevin pulled back first as his job became more demanding. Drew and Kyle were finding it hard to justify working at a shoe store and doing some side coaching with their degrees collecting dust (Drew would go on to practice law and Kyle moved back home to the Austin suburbs to join his dad’s marketing firm). Nick and I hung around for another two years, but Nick was doing a lot less running in those years and eventually moved in with his girlfriend, who he met while bartending down the street from our apartment at Devil’s Pocket Pub.

I eventually moved back to Scranton and started in the Customer Service Department that I’m still at today.

I start my fourth steady 600m, checking back to see if Mudra is going to have Allison line up for a fifth rep. I see them diagonally crossing the infield together and all signs appear to be “yes.” As I come into the final 30m of my last steady rest Mudra shouts out “second half of this one can progress!” Allison hops into my slipstream as I click my watch to start the rep.

I try to increase the pace without Allison noticing over the second kilometer after crossing through the first kilometer in 3:21. I look down at 1600 meters to see 5:18 and press very carefully into the second to last turn. With 150 meters to go I swing into lane two – it’s always proper pacing etiquette to leave the finish line open for whoever you’re pacing as a pacer.

6:34. Allison, who hardly registers any emotional reaction to workouts, is happy with the effort.

“Whew, didn’t think I had smooth 80s in these legs,” Allison says, allowing a touch of the post-workout euphoria to soak in, but quickly getting back to her sober mind, heading straight to the flimsy folding chair at the start line to begin changing into her trainers.

“You’re going to crush Houston. We could have gone sub-6:40 for all of those,” I say, seeing if I can get anymore celebration out of her.

“We’ll see.”

(Interval 4 continued below)

(Interval 4 continued)

That evening, I have a Zoom call scheduled with D3 Glory Days, a podcast that highlights achievements of Division III collegiate and post-collegiate runners. They’re doing a series on all the ex-DIII runners who’ve qualified for the Olympic Trials and have squeezed me in as a late addition. One of the hosts, Noah Droddy, is a 2:09 marathoner himself, but always shows genuine excitement for fellow D3ers who are still giving this crazy sport a chance.

I barely eat between the workout and my 5pm podcast call. Emma is down in the city checking out a Harry Potter display with a friend. I could never bring myself to read any Harry Potter. Emma recently has joked “we’re never getting married until you read the best book series ever written.” Maybe I’ll blast through them on Audible one day.

I log onto the Zoom to find hosts Noah and Stu already waiting on the call. We engage in some small talk for a bit. I’m typically talkative when running is the subject, but I’m short with replies and I can’t hide my reservations from the screen. At one point during our small talk Stu asks if I’m okay or if I’d prefer to reschedule the call for Sunday or Monday. I say I’m fine, that I was just feeling a workout from the morning. I work to snap myself back into character.

The recording is a blur. I answer with forced animation when I can but know that most of my answers are coming out robotically. I know it will be a terrible episode. “Maybe the real news will drop before they air this thing?” The thought doubles my guilt, knowing these guys put a lot of time into this podcast and now they are victims of my lie as well.

The recording stops and we hang on the call to chat a bit.

“So, any ambitious goals for the Trials or will it be more of a celebration?” Noah says.

“I think a celebration, but I’ll still try hard.” I sound like a dud. I realize I haven’t asked either of them a single question in return. I force a generic question out to appear somewhat human.

“What’s next for you guys?”

“I’m fighting my way to the starting line, so we’ll see,” Noah says, having battled some recent injuries over the last year. “Stu?”

“Houston for me. Then sprinting around to keep you guys moving in Orlando!”

The idea of Orlando makes me want to slam my laptop shut. The tile with my face on the screen looks like a juvenile delinquent seated in a courtroom awaiting sentencing.

At 6:45pm the Zoom call finally comes to an end. I text Emma for an idea of when she’ll be back. They’ve already left the display and are just sitting down for a drink and some apps, so I know it’ll be at least three hours until she’s home, probably four.

I go out to the kitchen and pour myself a beer. To the left of the fridge is a half empty handle of Grey Goose that my dad brought to my housewarming party over two years ago. Emma and I never drink hard alcohol, so here it has remained, collecting dust.

I pick up the handle and hold it in my hand for a moment, then reach above to the cabinet and pull out a glass.

I soon find myself slouched on a kitchen barstool. My fingers locked in a weave, palms pressed down on the bar top, with my chin resting on my hands. I’m peering with blurring and shifting vision through a nearly empty bottle of Grey Goose. Emma is still not home.

>>Interval 5<<

A door slams in the distance and startles me awake. I sit up, confused and already feeling a merciless headache. My eyes feel completely dried out. I look down at my body lying on top of the blankets. I’m in bed, still wearing my jeans, which have a streak of what appears to be red sauce splattered and dried down my left leg. My right hand hurts. I turn my palm up to see some cuts that appear to be from my hand having slammed down on either asphalt or concrete. As I’m examining my hand, I hear the door open. Footsteps are marching back towards the bedroom.

“Jared, wake up!” Emma says, walking back into the bathroom and plugging in her hair dryer. “We need to be at the restaurant in fifteen minutes. You better be ready to get in the car in the next five minutes!”

I go to check the time on my phone, which is tucked into the back packet of my jeans. My phone is dead, crusted with what appears to be the same red sauce that now paints the left thigh of my jeans.

“What time is it?” I say to Emma.

“It’s 10:46. I’ve been trying to wake you up for the last 45 minutes. I have never met these people, I don’t want to be late,” Emma says under the blast of the hair dryer. “Seriously, if you’re going to shower, it better be quick.” Emma sounds very upset.

We’re having brunch with my dad’s side of the family today, which only consists of my 52-year-old cousin Gary. Every year we have try to have a smaller Christmas celebration with my dad’s side of the family, though we’ve only successfully held the gathering four times in the last 15 years. Both my grandparents on my dad’s side of the family have passed away. My dad’s brother, Rick, who is about 12 years older than my dad, has been out of the picture for at least a decade now. He’s a bit of a “doomsday prepper” who now lives somewhere “on high ground” in Tennessee. My last memory of him was at a family funeral when I was in high school. He was trying to explain to me a few places in the area where you could still buy unpasteurized milk. I had no idea what he was talking about.

“It’s fine. There’s a good chance Gary doesn’t even show up.”

“Get ready.,” Emma says, clearly not in the mood to deal with whatever mess I’m currently in.

For this year’s failing tradition my parents have booked a back room at The Scranton Club for brunch. On the short drive to the restaurant Emma is silent. I am trying to remember what scene Emma may have walked into last night when she returned from Philly. I am careful not to ask any questions yet, not knowing in the slightest what I may have been up to. Never ask a question you don’t know the answer to, and all that.

As we pull into the parking lot, I attempt a weak reconciliation, mostly to test the waters and quell my anxiety.

“I’m sorry, Emma. I think I had too much to drink, I must not have eaten enough after the workout.”

“Ya think? We’ll take later. Let’s go,” Emma says, already opening the driver side door and stepping out into the cool, sunny parking lot. “Seriously, let’s go. Grab the gift bag on the back seat.”

Now that the silence is somewhat broken I have so many questions I want to ask. Instead, I follow Emma’s instructions and commit to getting into character for the brunch.
My cousin Gary has his new girlfriend, Linda, with him (no girlfriend has made a repeat appearance at one of these gatherings) who has brought along her 15-year-old daughter, Natalie. Natalie spends the entire brunch with her face in her phone, completely uninterested in the group she’s been forced to share brunch with. Benny and Trish Allan, my parents, are already seated at alternate heads of the table we’re shown to. My sister, Kerry, her husband, Jake, and their four-year-old, my nephew Zach are on one right side of the table, opposite Gary, Linda, and Natalie. Emma and I are the last to arrive, five minutes after the hour. We split to opposite sides of the table.

“Let me guess, Emma’s the one who was finishing up her 30-mile run,” my dad says, bursting out in laughter at his sophisticated comedy.

“Yes, of course,” Emma says back, slowly giving a stern look in my direction.

“Alright, it’s fine. We’re here,” I say, my anxiety can barely handle the playful entrance.

“What’s up, cuz!” Gary says, walking around the table to give me a big hug. “And this must be the lady tasked with keeping this guy in line. Gary, nice to meet you,” Gary says, reaching out to give Emma a handshake.

Gary also works for Penn Foster, but he is stationed at a remote warehouse that’s about a 50-minute drive out of town. We never talk about work. I’m not sure Gary even remembers we share the same employer. He lives only four miles from my house, but I never see him outside of this faltering tradition. There is sure to be some grand promises of “getting together more” and “stopping by the house sometime”, but I know it will be another two or three years before we’re having that same conversation in the company of whoever Gary’s new love interest is.

“Linda works in the legal department of the Times-Tribune. She brought me home a couple copies of your article – I had no idea you were trying to make the Olympics!” Gary seems genuinely excited at the thought.

I’m pulling out a chair next to young Zachary. I plan to spend as much of this brunch building pyramids out of creamers and drawing on the back of menus with the little dude as I can.

“Definitely not Olympics bound, but thank you,” I say, almost totally collapsing under the anxiety of both the conversation topic and the unknown damage I may have caused last night. Emma is fully ignoring me at this point, engaged in a conversation with my mom about a sweater my mom is wearing. “60% off, can you believe that” my mom is saying. Trish Allan never passes up a good deal.

Thankfully no one at the table knows the difference between a four-hour marathon and a two-hour marathon, so we’re able to move on from the topic rather quickly.

I can barely eat at brunch. The combination of my progressively worsening hangover and my current state of anxiety leaves my body protesting every bite I force down. Emma continues to focus her conversations at others around the table. To an outside eye it would appear we hardly knew each other.

Gary’s gift to me is a leather wallet with the insignia of his biker gang pressed onto the outside. He’s been a member of this gang for as long as I can remember. They’re not really a biker gang so much as a group of guys in the area who wear matching leather jackets and ride their Harley Davidsons to a Dunkin’ Donuts just outside town every Saturday and Sunday morning to sit at the outdoor table, no matter the weather, sip on bad coffee and people watch the suburban parents picking up trays of coffees and boxes of donuts to return with to their suburban dwellings.

I find myself stuck in a conversation with Linda halfway through the brunch. It turns out she’s quite close with Carl Bellingham, the journalist from the paper.

“When I made the Allan connection, I had Carl bring me a few copies of the article. He’s quite the fan of yours. I love Carl and all of his whacky ways,” Linda says.

“Carl is a nice guy,” I say.

“So, what does this mean? Are you going to the Olympics? Carl says there’s just one more race you have to run.”

Linda’s interest is sincere. She is looking at me as if she’s in the presence of a real professional athlete. Because I don’t know Linda and don’t expect she’ll be around for much longer if Gary’s past trends repeat themselves, I don’t feel as overwhelmed by talking with her about the subject as I have been with others.

“It’s really just a personal goal,” I say. “For someone like me this is a big deal, for sure. But for some perspective, I am probably ranked around 200th in a race intended to select three runners for the Olympics. I definitely won’t be close.” As soon as the words leave my mouth, I hate myself for forgetting the reality of my situation. What a fraud I am, sounding like just another innocent soul enjoying my hobby with some decent success. I begin to really hate myself for what I’m saying to Linda.

“But still, 200 out of the whole country! That’s amazing!” Linda says, again sincere with her words.

I’m out of replies for Linda. I wish I could eject myself from this conversation—from this room—immediately. The moment is saved by a toast from Gary, who has been generous enough to ensure our server is getting in a respectable step count for the day with the speed at which he is making his Miller Lite pints disappear.

“Family! My family. Here’s to Gram and Pop, may they rest in peace. To Linda, Natalie and Emma, welcome to the family. And to all you Allan’s for being the best g*dd*mn (he pauses with his hands over his lips briefly for swearing in front of Zach, then resumes, slightly less animated) family on earth. And to our new Olympian!” Gary is drunker than I thought and concludes this toast by finishing off his pint, which was healthily over half full at the start of his tribute.

After two hours a host from The Scranton Club comes over to notify us, they had another party coming in shortly and asked if we’d need anything else or if we’re ready for the check. Restaurant language for “leave.”

“Are you guys going to make it to the Trampoline Zone next weekend?” Kerry says as we’re all standing up, getting ready to leave brunch.

“Of course,” says Emma. “Rumor has it, someone is turning five,” Emma says, slouching down to make eye contact with Zach. Zach is swinging around, hanging off the side of Kerry’s legs, then buries his face into the side of her jeans when he realizes Emma is talking to him.

“That’s right,” Kerry says. “Too old!” Zach is giggling and burying his face deeper. “Hey buddy, you’re going to make mommy fall over.”

(Interval 5 continued below)

(Interval 5 continued)

Out in the parking lot, Emma and I both drop the characters we’ve been playing once we’re in the car. I assume the driver’s seat for our return trip. I’ll need every bonus point I can scrounge up; I know this much is true. I exit the parking lot onto the main road before I take a chance at breaking the silence.

“Emma, I am so sorry. I know I was way too drunk last night. I hope I wasn’t annoying.”

“Jared, what was that? I come home to the front door partially opened. I thought we were robbed! I was in an absolute panic for literally over an hour before you came stumbling in. What the hell was that?”

“I don’t know. I’m sorry.” I am panicking. I did not realize I left the house at all the night before. Did I drive?

“You walked to McDonald’s. You had a bag of food with you, and you were covered in ketchup. You were making no sense at all. You kept saying ‘I did the drugs.’ What drugs? What did you take last night?”

I can’t manage driving while holding these thoughts in my head. I pull over into a gravel pull-off in front of what used to be a farm stand.

“Drugs? I didn’t take any drugs,” I say, wanting to know each word I drunkenly uttered the night before so I can assess the real damage.

“You were adamant about taking drugs. You said you took the drugs, and everyone would hate you soon enough.”

I resist the urge to halt the conversation altogether. Even under comical circumstances I’ve never been able to handle the embarrassment of hearing what I did when having had too much to drunk. The urge to get angry is strong, but I know I need to hear this out, understand what the real state of things are now.

Emma explains calmly everything I told her the night before. I never explicitly said the drugs I took were performance enhancing nor that I had failed a drug test, and that the news was sure to get out, one way or another. She explained that I kept saying that I took drugs and that my family and Mudra and she herself would hate me when they knew the truth. Her annoyance was transforming to genuine concern as I just listened, not defending anything she was saying.

“We can get you help. Do you take drugs? I had no idea. Honestly, Jared, I would have been better about this if I knew,” Emma says. Her concern for me makes the guilt pile on heavier.

Listening to her question me and herself out loud has me in a trance. It feels like all the walls are closing. Truth has found its first opening. As she keeps talking and asking questions, questioning herself and trying to understand what I meant by everything that incoherently oozed out of my mouth the night before I realize this is the first confession I must make. I cut her off.

“Emma.”

“What? Talk to me.”

“Emma, I have some really bad news. It’s going to make you hate me and I understand that.”
“Hate you? What happened? Jared, tell me what happened,” Emma says, her eyes are beginning to well up with tears.

I take a deep breath. Then I tell her everything.

>>Toughness Interval (last rep is free)<<

If I had to answer on the spot why I doped I’d probably start with something like: “I didn’t mean to dope…”. But this isn’t true. I don’t believe this is true for anyone who dopes, unless they’re being slipped something without their knowing. The truth is, I remember the exact moment that I flipped that switch.

At the end of July, I was feeling a bit bored with running. I had run Grandma’s Marathon the month before and Mudra and I had already circled CIM as the next (and final) OTQ attempt. Mudra basically just had me running regular mileage for all of July and August and I started to find getting out the door to be difficult. To break the monotony, I decided to go rogue and try something stupid. I tried to run from Scranton to Philly on a random Saturday.

Emma loaded up the back of her Rav-4 with boxes of GU, electrolytes, granola bars, Gatorade packets, and JJ’s pies (if you haven’t fueled on a run with a JJ’s pie you’re depriving yourself of living). I loaded up Emma’s maps app with 20 different fueling stops from Scranton to Philly. At 5:30am on July 22nd I started shuffling towards Philly.

The run itself had moments of “zen,” I guess you could say, but for large segments of it the effort felt a lot more like a chore. Pacing on something like this is very strange – even if you think you’re starting off too slow, you’re probably digging yourself a hole. Not being able to lock into the foreign pace I opted to run two-hour segments with 25 minutes of complete stops with Emma to freshen up and eat. Those 25-minute stops became 35, then 50, then one-hour. At just after 1am on July 23rd I finally stumbled up to Emma, waiting outside The Rittenhouse lobby.

Following that unnecessary effort, I could not get back to regular running in the same way. My back was so tight. I was certain some bone in or around my knee was fractured or bruised in some way. I just could not get right for several weeks.

Finally, I went to a general practitioner, hoping to get the process for an MRI scan underway. The doctor my appointment was with that day was Dr. Razalas, or Dr. Raz.
Dr. Raz was in his early sixties, balding, and generally messy in his appearance. He wore glasses, but never seemed to be using them as they hung precariously on the edge of his large nose. He was a die-hard Eagles fan. Even in these summer months Dr. Raz found a way to talk current "Birds" issues. I immediately got the sense that Dr. Raz’s typical patients were elderly Scranton folks as he lit up with excitement as soon as I mentioned my issues being sports related.

“So how good we talking here?” Dr. Raz says, wanting to understand how important his new opportunity is.

“I’d say someone who doesn’t run would consider it obsessive and crazy, but there’s a whole amateur population of weirdos like me,” I said.

Dr. Raz must have taken my response to mean “very good” because from that moment forward, he acted like the Head Doctor for the Philadelphia Eagles.

“I can get you in for an MRI tomorrow. I know the tech, so I can swing down to catch you then. We’re gonna have you running faster than you ever have before, kid.”

The MRI would ultimately come back inconclusive. A rhabdomyolysis test read normal. Bloodwork read normal. All signs seemed to point towards the medicine no runner wants to be prescribed: time off.

Now in the third week of August the CIM training block shimmered right over the horizon. Three weeks off right now would surely end all OTQ dreams for this cycle. At 38, it’d end the OTQ dream for good. After a long talk with Mudra, I realized this was the only current option, so it was time to get right into stopping.

Two weeks into my down time I got an unexpected call from Dr. Raz.

“Hey, kid. How’s the body feeling?” Dr. Raz said.

“Well, I can walk to my car and sit at my desk and walk back to my car like a pro, so I’m surviving everything I throw at it.”

“When’s the return to running?”

“The week after next,” I said.

“Okay, why don’t we toss a follow-up on the calendar for five days in. Make sure we’re starting back on the right track,” Dr. Raz said.

Five days into my return to easy running I reported to Dr. Raz’s office at 10am on a Friday. He popped into the room, very excited, as soon as I arrived.

“There he is! How’re you feeling?” Dr. Raz said.

“Good, good,” I said. “Very out of shape, but I feel weirdly springy, and my back is totally unnoticeable.”

What happened next is a position I never imagined a guy like me would be put in.
Back in the early nineties Jerome Razalas (Jerry) was a resident in the UPenn hospital system. Jerry was an avid cyclist who had friends go pro but could never quite make the leap to the next level. While hosting two elite riders racing the Philadelphia International Cycling Classic in 1992 Jerry was exposed the new well-known secret whispered all over the pro peloton – EPO was everywhere.

In those early years some of the pro field was still riding clean, but it was becoming painstakingly obvious that to win, you had to be on EPO. One of the riders staying with Jerry that weekend happened to be a clean rider. Jerry and Bill spent the Sunday evening after the race drinking wine while Jerry listened to Bill rage over his 25 dropped positions from last year to this year and all of the obvious signs of EPO’s presence, like the effortlessness of the break with 30k to go. Jerry listened intently assessing the situation while Bill drunkenly professed his retirement from a rigged game. It was that night that Jerry thought to make Bill his little experiment and prescribe Bill this wonder drug to resuscitate his career.

“Listen, kid. I can have you in the best shape of your life in 12 weeks if you really want to give this thing a go,” Dr. Raz said, now with a straight face where I thought I smile was permanent.

“How do you do that?” I said, genuinely confused in this moment.

“You’ve been hammering away at these miles for how many years of your life now?”
I think through the math quickly. “I guess, like 23 years? Damn, yeah. 23 years.”

“23 years! 23 years of running and now you need to figure out a way to squeeze a little extra out of the next 12 weeks,” Dr. Raz says, looking to me to confirm his understanding of the task at hand.

“Yeah, more time would be great.”

“Well, I can’t play with time, but I can get you a little more out of the time you have,” Dr. Raz says, still holding a serious face.

“And how is that?” I said.

“EPO.”

Dr. Raz prescribed me three doses per week of 50 unites per kilogram. I administered the doses myself – I’d shoot the EPO right into my butt cheek, alternating sides each dose. The first two weeks of taking EPO my butt would bleed after each shot. I taped the doses into my garage refrigerator, behind a shelf in the old fridge that always tried to fall loose. Emma had just moved in two weeks before my EPO program began, so I would typically go out to the garage where I had a small yoga mat and some various sized dumbbells and tell Emma I was going out to the garage to do core. As soon as I was out there, I’d set up the EPO, take my shot, and then kill some time in the garage, typically not doing any core, but instead sitting out there and questioning—every dose—what the hell I was doing.

The results were amazing. After two weeks of getting my legs back under me I started to flirt with workout paces that I’d typically only see for the briefest moments during a successful build. Mile repeats that used to be fought for in 5:00 or 4:55 were becoming smooth 4:48s. Even more shocking was my ability to stack more work into my week without feeling fatigued.

I started sneaking in a totally unscheduled session on day one of each 10-day cycle. These were my freestyle workouts. Mudra didn’t know about them. I’d do them very late, so I was sure Mudra wouldn’t be lingering around the track when I was sneaking in my ghost sessions. They started small, little 4-mile tempos and some 400s just because I felt so good. Later they became quite aggressive. Going into the Indianapolis Half Marathon—only six weeks into my return to running—I added an unscheduled 10-mile tempo four days before the race. That day I ran 40 laps (plus a turn) of the WSHS track in 49:50, a time that bettered my 10-Mile personal best by 20 seconds. It was incredible how quickly my mindset shifted to view 5:00 pace as “just cruising around.”

Indy was the first time Mudra saw something special was happening this build. Given the shorter lead up we had recalibrated the goal to 1:08:00 instead of the original plan to go for a PR (my PR at the time was 1:06:43). During the race I went out at what felt like 5:10 pace. At 10k I looked to my left as I crossed the timing mat. The big red digital numbers flashed back a “30:51.” I would go on to finish in 1:04:49.

Mudra was in shock.

“Well, look what some downtime has done for Mr. Mileage! Wow, man. That was incredible,” Mudra said from across the bike barricade as I was herded through the finishing shoot.

Even following that half marathon, I felt antsy to get in more work. I snuck in another secret workout three days after the race as Mudra had me running five days easy. This workout was almost better than the race itself. I ran an alternating tempo and steady session where I ran 3-miles at about half marathon pace and then take one mile steady. The session ended up average 14:50 for the 3-mile segments and 5:06 for the “steady” miles – not at all a steady pace. Running had never felt so easy.

(Toughness Interval continued below)