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“You got to…know when to walk away, know when to run.”
- Kenny Rogers, The Gambler
The wheels are coming off this workout. The repeats are strained and the rhythm feels wrong. There’s a sense of discomfort, absent any visible pain; drudgery played out in 40-second increments, three-hundred torpid meters at a time. There is no pop to the legs, no pop in the stride. No pop, period.
Elijah Greer, a senior at Lake Oswego High School outside Portland, Oregon, and the top returning prep 800-meter runner in the land, jogs gamely toward the start of another interval. Obscured behind a shaggy mop of brown hair is a brow etched with frustration.
It is late March at the Duniway Track near downtown Portland. With Greer and the rest of his Lake Oswego schoolmates on spring break, he’s made arrangements to meet his coach, Lake Oswego assistant Bob Williams, and a small group of others at this community track for a late afternoon workout designed to improve speed and sprinting form. The plan calls for repeat 150’s and 300’s at a sharp, controlled pace, followed by short, explosive hill repeats, all with specific focus on late-race arm action and opening his hips during the drive to the finish.
 “The one element that’s missing,” says Williams, “is his sprinting form.”
To help with the effort, Williams has recruited local speed and strength coach Askia Brown, a former assistant to the track team at nearby Central Catholic High. Greer’s Lake Oswego teammate, James Ratliff, a state runner-up in the 110-meter hurdles, has agreed to accompany him on the repeats, but inevitably lags behind the smooth-striding half miler.
The sky is overcast and chilly, the day struggling to reach the 60-degrees promised by the weatherman. Greer, by contrast, is lanky and languid. He is confident without seeming cocky. Reticent without being taciturn. If you happened upon him in the school hallway wearing a hoodie and a backpack, you’d never suspect you’d encountered the fourth-best prep 800-meter runner in history. At the afternoon workout, the only indication you’re watching an athlete more gifted than your average high school runner is the Team USA shorts he wears over a pair of compression half-tights—leftover gear from his foray to the World Junior Championships in Poland last summer, where he made the semifinals of the 800 in a field fronted by 1:42 800 talent Abubaker Kaki of Sudan.
A set of 300’s and 150’s, for this kid? A guy who dropped a 1:47 800 as a junior? The best high school two-lapper the US has seen in years? This workout should be a slam dunk for Greer, a softball pitch of an afternoon.
But it isn’t. Nothing is coming easily today.
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