Bernie Montoya is running in a race Friday for the first time in 10 months.
In between, one of Arizona State's most high profile track/cross country recruits was told by doctors at the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale that due to a heart disease called hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, he would need to stop competitive running and have a defibrillator installed to protect against a heart attack like what killed Loyola Marymount basketball star Hank Gathers in 1990.
Just days after his 20th birthday in December, while at home in Yuma for the holidays, Montoya was tossing a football with friends when he felt dizzy and blacked out.
"They knew I had an enlarged heart, but the thing that threw everything off (was) scar tissue in the heart," he said of an MRI finding at Mayo. "It was a shocker. One moment, you've had a good career, I've been healthy, then all of a sudden your life changes in an instant."
Rather than starting his second college track season in March, Montoya started down the long, slow road to a second and third opinion. His sister, Beatrice, a nurse who formerly worked at Phoenix Children's Hospital, used her connections at PCH to connect Bernie with cardiologist Dr. Andrew Papez. After a metabolic stress test and second MRI, no scar tissue was found and Montoya was told in March, "You have a perfectly healthy, functioning heart. Once you put that defibrillator in, you can't go in that MRI ever again. That was dodging the bullet."
Montoya was far from cleared to resume running due to concern about electrocardiogram readings. He was required to complete a full six-month deconditioning to monitor a more normal rather than athletic heart.
"I was a couch potato," Montoya said. "That was hard. I knew my body, I felt I was OK, but the doctors were not going to allow me run."
His father, Leonardo, came to live with him for a few months when Bernie was not allowed to drive for fear of another blackout.
Finally in late June, all the doctors including at Mayo signed off on Montoya returning to the sport in which he earned eight state track titles and three in cross country at Cibola High School and ran 4:01.32 to win the national high school Dream Mile title in 2012.
"It's not something I would wish on any of my athletes," ASU cross country/distance coach Louie Quintana said. "But in terms of timing and where he was at in his career, he's taken something positive out of this whole thing. He was able to grow during that time and it gave him balance (in life). It gave him time to reflect on why he's doing this and what it really means to me, and that's reignited his passion for the sport. Before that passion was muddled with expectation and made things difficult for him."
Montoya was 20th in cross country at the 2013 NCAA West Regional and ASU's top finisher. Last year at the regional, he was 30th (third for ASU). In his only outdoor track season so far, he ran 3:51.65 (1,500-meter) and 14:26.28 (5,000), failing to qualify for the 2014 NCAA West preliminary meet.
"It was more of a wake-up call for me," Montoya said. "I don't like to use the word 'burnout' but when you train so much and do so much high mileage, it's a risk. Not just physically, my body was able to handle it, but the mental side. I'm tired of doing this, getting up this early and going to run and doing 90-100 miles (per week) and racing at a high intensity. Something like that has to happen to wake up. My freshman year at ASU wasn't what I expected.
"The cardinal rule in this sport is you can't compare yourself to other people. You've got to do what you need to do, and everything is going to fall in place. I never gave myself that chance my freshman year, and it was pretty much eating me up. My sophomore year, I got it together a little bit. But the fire still wasn't completely there.
"Once I was diagnosed, sometimes I regret how I took running for granted. Now, I enjoy my miles, I enjoy my workouts, the process, running with my teammates. That's what I was missing. The last time I felt like this was in football," as a wide receiver dreaming of the NFL, "my freshman year in high school. I feel like that Bernie."
Montoya will run unattached Friday at the Dave Murray Invitational in Tucson but already is showing signs of being among the top three runners for No. 23 ASU.
"He's our secret weapon," Quintana said. "We need him. In six weeks, he's going to be our guy. His progression (since July) has been nothing short of amazing."
Because of redshirting in track in 2015, Montoya still will be running college track at 23 when his medical scare could be even more of positive than it appears now.
"If we're able to move forward training without interruption, he's going to write his ticket for what he can accomplish," Quintana said.