I was looking through an old 1982 SI that had coverage on that years milrose games. I couldn't get over Padilla running a 13:20 5k indoors at milrose that was on a board track and 34 laps to the 5k. The people in the race he beat were almost as amazing, Alberto Salazar, Nick Rose and Suleiman Nyambui (who held the indoor 5k world record). Here's the part of the article that has to do with the 5k race:
The men's 5,000-meter run began. The favorites in it were indoor 5,000 world-record holder Suleiman Nyambui of UTEP and Tanzania and Alberto Salazar, the world-record holder in the marathon and the American record holder in the indoor 5,000. The dark horse appeared to be 25-year-old Doug Padilla, a fifth-year senior at Brigham Young. Padilla, last year's NCAA indoor two-mile champion, is an over-aged student only because he devoted two of his regular college years to Mormon missionary work in El Salvador. e had already beaten both Nyambui and Salazar in indoor races this season, and a week before the Milrose he had won a mile, in 3:56, over a strong field at the Los Angeles Times meet. Yet Salazar, whose loss to Padilla had been at two miles at Portland in late January, was still writing him off. "I think the race (about 3.1miles) is too long for him," said Salazar. "He tends to fall asleep for a couple of laps in there." Salazar himself wanted to run as well as he had in January's U.S. Olympic Invitational 5,000 in New Jersey; in that race he would have broken Nyambui's world record if had he not been jostled to the track in the early going. Right after that race, Alberto and his father, Jose, happened to see Schmertz. "If you want my son to run in your meet, you'd better set that track up the night before so he can practice on it," said Jose Salazar. "Dad, that wasn't why I fell," whispered Alberto, "Besides, setting up the track for an extra night in Madison Square Garden costs like $90,000 or something." "Still he shouldn't do it," maintained Jose. Salazar too the lead from Padilla three laps into the 34-lap race and held it until only six laps laps were left. "It was a pity," one spectator would say later. "Alberto did all the work." Padilla, whose strategy had been to "stay with Alberto," did just that until 5 1/2 laps remained, at which point Nick Rose of Great Britain slipped inside him, next to the curb. "I wanted to make my move with two laps to go, but when Nick foced me wide, I had to take the lead then," said Padilla. "I was running scared."
Nyambui was never a factor, and Salazar, who carried the race through the first mile in 4:18.8 and the second in 8:36.0, eventually faded to forth. "No excuses," he said. "I just wasn't strong enough." Having passed the three-mile mark in 12:56.9, Padilla kicked and pulled away from his closest pursuers, Rose and another Briton, Geoff Smith. He reached the finish in 13:20.55, seven yards ahead of Rose and 2.05 under Salazar's U.S. indoor record, and then collapsed from fatique. Salazar came over to help him. "Thank you for the race," said Padilla, who is excptionally polite and humble. He had run a personal best by 13 seconds, missing Nyambui's world record by only .15 of a second, and couldn't believe what he had accomplished. "I had all kinds of doubts. I wasn't sure i'd be able to run the whole race," He said a few minutes afterward, still slightly wobbly. "It's kind of hard to put myself in a class with these guys." Padilla tilted his head to the right and started hitting above his right ear with his palm, like a swimmer clearing out the water. "This night has been like a dream," he said, and slapped the side of his head agian. "Just like a dream," he repeated. "My head is buzzing."
I also read that in 1985 that Padilla had an awesome year. Does anybody know what he's up to today? If so it'd be cool to find out.