It’s only 10 A.M., and Aaron Olbur is already breaking a sweat. Partly to blame is the San Diego sun, which even in December shines hot and hard on the asphalt parking lot. The other reason is Olbur’s hustle. With the help of his team of four, the 39-year-old hauls out big metal rolling racks containing 700 boxes of running shoes from a large sprinter van. He sets up the trademark —a metal platform you stand on to get a 3D digital model of your foot. He has boxes of orthotics and something like an oven to heat them up so they can be shaped to your foot—right there on the spot.

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Olbur assembles the mobile running store in a parking lot outside a medical office building, aiming to help the doctors, nurses, and patients there get fitted for comfortable and supportive shoes. He’s not a one-man mission but rather represents the second-largest running retailer in the U.S., with 40 stores in 12 states across the country—including a warehouse-sized store adjacent to its headquarters in San Diego.

“So what we’re really doing is we’re taking a Road Runner Sports and bringing it into your company,” he says.

People are always happy to see Olbur and his team, who call themselves Shoe Force. He estimates they bring the mobile running store to about 200 businesses a year.

“It’s not just runners,” he says. “It’s anyone who needs comfortable shoes or an insert—which is almost all of us do because that’s just the nature of the world.”

Olbur understands this personally. He’s up and moving constantly thanks to his job and his dedication to running. But more than spreading the , Olbur is devoted to helping people find relief for their feet.

“If I don’t go for a run, you can tell”

Olbur started running 20 years ago, discovering it helped his ADHD and mental health in college.

“Running has always been that thing to bring my brain back,” he says. “For physical fitness, I don’t know if it’s doing anything for me anymore because it’s just so repetitive. But for my brain, it’s like, if I don’t go for a run, you can tell.”

He began as so many runners do—showing up to a 5-kilometer race in gym shorts carrying two Red Bulls.

“I didn’t know what it was. I just didn’t even know how far it was. Back in the day, I didn’t have a watch or anything. I had no idea,” he says. “I ran this race, and everybody was dressed up as Elvis. It was actually awesome.”

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He was hooked and quickly ramped up to half marathons and fulls. At the same time, he decided to move from Chicago to San Diego based on random advice from a friend.

“I just drove across the country with a bag and a box of Cheerios,” he says.

He got a job as a seasonal part-time call center employee at Road Runner, taking shoe orders over the phone.

“I did that for literally three weeks. And I’m like, ‘Oh my God, I can’t do this,’” he says.

So he made a change but stayed in running. He’s naturally a performer, and he would put on adventure runs at Road Runner stores.

“There was a big stage that I would stand on,” he says. “We had a mobile van that we used, but we didn’t sell anything out of it. We would only go to places and set up this whole big trailer and just give coupons out.”

Then, a job opened up that allowed Olbur to travel all over Southern California and Arizona doing shoe fittings, and he found his calling. Fast-forward to now, and they’ve built it into a mobile running store and shoe-finding experience. Olbur arranges with management at different businesses in the San Diego area to offer the fit-finding service to employees. Some companies cover the cost of a new pair of shoes or insoles, others provide employees with a discount, and some simply offer the service for convenience.

Fit Finding In Action

Back in the parking lot outside the medical office building, Olbur and his team are finding more clients happy to have their feet fitted. No pair of feet are exactly alike, and almost everyone has some kind of issue—high arches, flat feet, pronation, plantar fasciitis, hammer toe, corns, calluses. Team member Kim Carter walks shoe seekers through the process.

First, the client steps on a machine called the Fit Finder. It’s a foot scanner that creates a three-dimensional scan of their feet. Road Runner says it captures six foot measurements: foot size, length, width, arch height, instep, and heel width. It also maps the person’s balance and pressure points.

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Next, Carter looks at the results on her computer. They show the customer’s size, along with detailed information about their feet, and suggest shoes that would work best.

“It’s like a mobile book fair, but with the technology to see exactly what kind of book you need to read,” Olbur says.

Carter uses the results to create custom orthotic insoles. Using a readout from the scan, she puts insoles into a small oven right there in the parking lot, which molds the insoles to their feet.

She grabs running shoes from the mobile racks that would work, slips the insoles in, and helps customers lace up and try out the shoes.

Olbur oversees and jumps in whenever a team member needs assistance. He says the reception is always positive from people who spend a lot of time on their feet. “I mean, they’re literally like, ‘Oh, my God, thank you. I’m on my feet 12 hours a day,’” he says. “The response that we get is, ‘When are you coming back? When can you come back next week?’”

Shoes That Come to You—a Mobile Running Store

Fitting shoes to feet is nothing new—nor are traveling running shoe clinics. , a five-store running retail operation in Chicago’s western suburbs, has a Shoemobile that hit the road in 1969 and still travels the greater Chicago area bringing shoe fittings to high school runners and road race participants. Companies like Fleet Feet and New Balance have also dabbled in mobile clinics. And then of course Phil Knight sold the original Nike trainers out of the trunk of his car.

Stu Slomberg, the chief retail officer for Road Runner, says the company is investing in these traveling fit clinics to address challenges in the modern sales environment. People tend to settle into a shoe brand and model and then buy the same type over and over again online. But meet them where they are–literally, at work–and you may convince them to shake things up and try something new, he says.

“The two most important things in life are a good mattress and a good fitting pair of shoes,” he says. “You are on your feet a lot and you spend, hopefully, seven to eight hours sleeping. Those are the most important things.”

But the real key to the success of the mobile running store? Slomberg says that’s Olbur. “Aaron has exactly the right energy and style for this—his enthusiasm is infectious and he knows the process so well. His history with the company really shows.”

Good Shoes, Good Life

Olbur says that getting non-runners into good shoes could motivate them to start their fitness journey, and while getting people into quality shoes is his main focus, he would love for others to find the peace he has through movement.

“Providing them with their first step of getting something comfortable underneath their feet might get them out the door to go through with that 5K walk or a 2-mile walk or walk their dog or walk with their kids or become a healthier human being,” he says. “So we’re just navigating that and providing that for people.”

On that warm sunny morning in San Diego, it is clear Olbur has found his calling. He’s on his feet a lot, too, and was wearing running shoes with his khakis and Road Runner polo. He’s expanded his passion for running into a career of meeting people where they are and getting them into comfortable shoes.

“I found my niche in running shoes where I want to spread that love, I want to spread that to everybody else,” he says. “I feel like it makes me feel better, so why not go out and help others feel better? It goes a long way for me.”

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Max LeNail was five minutes away from the end of his run when the hail storm started. He had already summited the South Fortuna peak in San Diego, California’s Mission Trails Park, a relatively easy trail run that was part of his training for the Dipsea Race in the Marin Headlands north of San Francisco.

When the hail came, it was unlike any hail storm the San Diego region had ever seen. LeNail kept going, following the San Diego River Crossing trail, which he thought would lead him back to his warm and dry car in the parking lot. But instead, he came across a rushing river and no bridge.

No one knows exactly what happened next.

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LeNail’s GPS data from his Garmin shows that he hesitated at the side of the river, then decided to cross it, likely wading into what is usually a very small stream in the summer, but what was swollen that January morning in 2021.

The next day, LeNail was found dead further downstream. He was almost 22, about to graduate from Brown University, with a premed concentration and plans to become a doctor.

His death was a tragedy for everyone who knew him—parents, friends, outdoor enthusiasts, even strangers across the San Diego region. It also led to his family taking immediate action to fix a problem that could have saved his life: building a bridge across the river. Two years later, they’re still fighting for that bridge.

“He Found Joy in Everything”

Max LeNail’s father, Ben LeNail, says his son was always athletic. He played soccer, ultimate frisbee, and was a great runner, cyclist. He also became a world-class rock climber during high school and college. One of his closest friends, Shannon Murphy, joined Max LeNail on many of his rock climbing expeditions, and says that he had a very rare combination of being focused and determined about a challenge, but never intense.

“He found joy in everything, even when it was something that he clearly cared about achieving, But he never let that take over the joy of it, which I think was one of the really beautiful things about climbing with him,” she says.

LeNail would train intensely, going to sleep early and waking up early and doing yoga and eating right, she says. “But when we were actually climbing and he would fall, he didn’t care,” she says. “He was just like, ‘oh, that was really fun.’”

LeNail was studying at Brown in 2019 when COVID struck and the campus closed. He and a group of friends made an adventure pod, where they lived in different outdoor meccas, from Lake Tahoe, California, to Bend, Oregon, and took remote classes and spent their free time outdoors. They had just relocated to San Diego and LeNail discovered Mission Trails Regional Park, an 8,000-acre urban park with more than 60 miles of trails, perfect for his ultra training.

When Trails Turn into Rivers

On Jan. 29, 2021, Max started his run around 10:30 A.M., and he ran alone, something very common in the well-traveled Mission Trails. By 12:05 P.M., he was at the top of the 1,100-foot South Fortuna Mountain and recorded a video on his phone.

“It’s a moody day,” he said, showing the gathering clouds. “Hopefully it’s not too cold.”

By late afternoon, Max LeNail’s roommates started worrying because he wasn’t home. They called him and got no answer. Then they drove to Mission Trails, saw his car in the parking lot, and instantly knew something bad had happened. They called the police, who sent a helicopter, but by that time it was 7 P.M. and dark. The police sent a helicopter with night vision, but couldn’t find him.

Max LeNail’s roommates called his parents, and Ben LeNail says they stayed up all night organizing a search and rescue.

“It went totally viral. Boy Scouts, trail runners, mountain bikers, churches, volunteers of all kinds, and 800 people showed up,” Max’s father Ben LeNail says. Max’s mother Laurie Yoler traveled from their home in Palo Alto to San Diego to help direct the search.

Max’s body was found at noon the next day. The autopsy showed he didn’t have any trauma, so it’s unlikely that he hit his head, but was instead likely sucked in a current in the river and possibly suffered , Ben LeNail says.

When Grief Turns into Action

“We’re absolutely petrified with grief. Within a day or two, we thought this could totally destroy us, and we could be broken forever,” Ben LeNail says about the loss of his son. “We could become ghosts, or we can decide not to be like that. We were very messed up, but quickly we thought, we want to be outward facing instead of people who turn inward and shut down and become completely sealed. We want to be in the world and be turned towards others.”

Within a day, the LeNails knew what they wanted to do. They were hearing from hundreds of people who had the same question.

“Everybody said, ‘it’s insane, why isn’t there a bridge there?’ It is one of the most popular trails in the park, and it’s intersected by the river,” Ben LeNail says. “Why are people exposed to this danger? There absolutely should be a bridge there.”

And so, they decided to build a bridge over the river and name it after Max.

Research led them to a frustrating discovery: the proposal for a pedestrian bridge at the place where their son died had been part of the Mission Trails master plan for a decade.

“There was total apathy in terms of, ‘we don’t have enough money,’” he says. “And frankly, I think they needed the impetus of a death, an accident, to really mobilize people and say, ‘look, we need this bridge, and we need it sooner than later.’”

A depth marker now stands in the middle of the river to show potential crossers how high the water is. But even in the winter, when the water can be four or five feet high, people cross. Many will take off their socks and shoes and wade through on a rocky, slippery spot close by.

“There was always a sense that people will cross, people will slip, and people will struggle, but nobody has come to any serious harm thus far, and we [the park administration] can kind of drag it along a little bit longer,” Ben LeNail says. “Max’s death was the impetus, and our absolutely fierce advocacy that we are not going to let go. We are going to be there advocating for the bridge and in their faces and would not drop it.”

Building Bridges

Within a few weeks, the LeNails reached out to elected officials and the . Everyone agreed a bridge should finally be built. But now, it’s been more than two years after Max LeNail’s death and construction has not begun.

The target is to finish the bridge and hold an inauguration for it in 2024. But there’s a long way to go to get there.

LeNail says they are still wading through the city bureaucracy to get the required surveys and permits done. They still have to do environmental impact studies to be sure the ground is secure and that wildlife won’t be disturbed. Once construction begins, it could only take three months to build the bridge.

San Diego City Councilmember Raul Campillo represents the area and chairs the Mission Trails Regional Park task force, and he says there is always a list of projects in the park that need to be completed, and never enough money to do all of them.

“So the bridge had not been built, but things like the visitor center had been built, trail preservation had been built, markers for hikers, lots of different things like that had been built, but the bridge itself had not,” he says. “It is one of the higher-priced items, and it requires a lot of engineering, permitting, scientific research, and analysis. And so up to that point, it had just not been prioritized like things that many other hikers and trail goers use in the park on a daily basis. I would say that we’re well within a standard deviation of time to build this type of project,” he says.

Campillo says it’s not unusual for a project like this—a bridge over a river in an environmentally sensitive area—to take this long.

Many San Diegans, including Jennifer Morrissey,  executive director of the Mission Trails Regional Park Foundation, are blown away by the fact that the LeNails have dedicated themselves to something so fully  during a time of unimaginable grief.

“They’ve channeled this tragic event into positive action, building a bridge in Max’s memory that can provide safe passage for park users for generations to come,” Morrissey says.

In early 2023, the park built a bench near the place where Max died with his name emblazoned on the front.

“This is a way for people to go and reflect and also where they can see the project, the process of construction when it’s happening,” Morrissey says. “And then eventually one could sit on Max’s bench and be looking at the bridge.”

In July, LeNail visited San Diego again to put pressure on officials. He says he’s extremely persistent, a self-described “pit bull,” meaning there’s no way he’s going to allow the bridge to not be built. He spends time every week, working on this project that is outside his normal job as a biotech consultant, and every day he thinks about his son and works to get the project done in his honor.

“He’d be pleasantly surprised, but I think he would be enchanted,” Ben LeNail says of what Max would think about this work. “He would love to have generations of athletes and outdoors people use the bridge.”

The bridge will be made of prefabricated steel, and so it will be built to last. That means in 100 years, people will walk on the bridge and remember Max, LeNail says.

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The diabetes drug Ozempic and similar prescription weight management drugs like Wegovy are getting lots of buzz–from millions of mentions on social media to rumors that celebrities are taking them to dramatically slim down. And that buzz means more people are taking them off label, potentially solely to lose weight, whether they need to or not.

That focus on weight loss can be problematic for people with eating disorders or feel pressure about their weight–a population that includes a high percentage of athletes. The drugs have brought a renewed emphasis on being thin, potentially undoing progress of the anti-diet and body acceptance movements in the last few years, and that can be triggering for those susceptible to worrying about their weight, says Evelyn Tribole, MS, RD, a registered dietician with a private practice in Newport Beach, California.

“I’ve seen the rhetoric about how diets don’t work and therefore use these drugs, so these drugs have co-opted that rhetoric,” she says. “If you’re really interested in health, why would you be taking something that can really injure your health in the long run?”

The injectable drugs work by mimicking the action of the hormone GLP-1, which produces insulin but also makes your body feel less hungry by slowing down your GI tract. People who take the drugs say they barely feel hungry and cannot finish big meals. The buzz around the drugs has caused a shortage of them for people who actually need them–a huge concern especially for people with diabetes. And they can be very pricey–more than $1,000 a month.

The drugs can have strong side effects, from nausea and vomiting to severe inflammation that can lead to hospitalization. But there are additional considerations that athletes should take before starting the drugs, says Dr. Abisola Olulade, a family medicine doctor at Sharp HealthCare in San Diego. Because drugs like Wegovy are meant for weight management for individuals with body composition-related health complications.

She says anyone considering the drugs should check with their own doctors.

First of all, Olulade says, the drugs actually mimic what exercising already does to the body. When you train, it increases GLP-1, which increases the release of insulin, which causes lower blood sugars.Ìę

“For someone who exercises regularly, you would have less resistance to GLP, so you could get hypoglycemic from that,” she says. “The medication has a similar effect, so when you’re taking Ozempic and you’re running, then you could have this exaggerated hypoglycemia. So you could have a worsening of that lower blood sugar effect, which could potentially be dangerous.”

Another impact, she says, is that you don’t experience hunger cues on the medication, which could mean you aren’t getting enough fuel before or after your workouts.

“You have a decreased appetite, so you may not be fueling adequately with food, and hydration status also is a risk,” she says. “So you could get dehydrated, and that would be another risk that we can see with this.”

Beyond the direct effects of the medicine, there are side effects to consider, including the potential for acute kidney injury and pancreatitis, which get worse with dehydration.

“Then the stomach pain, the diarrhea that you can get with it, that could also get worse,” Olulade says. “So if you’re not hydrated and you’re having loose stools, then you can get really dehydrated, which could be a problem as well.”

Those issues could lead to electrolyte imbalances and potential increase in heart rate, she added.

A spokeswoman for Novo Nordisk, the Danish company that makes Ozempic and Wegovy, says the company does not “promote, suggest, or encourage off-label use of our medicines.”

“We trust that healthcare providers are evaluating a patient’s individual needs and determining which medicine is right for that particular patient,” Allison Schneider wrote in a statement. She added the drugs have demonstrated long-term safety in clinical trials, with common side effects including nausea, diarrhea, vomiting, constipation, stomach pain, headache, tiredness, upset stomach, dizziness, feeling bloated, belching, gas, stomach flu and heartburn.

Olulade says with advice from their doctors, athletes can take drugs like Ozempic if they’re needed.

“You do still want to take precautions, which is making sure that you’re hydrated, making sure you’re eating, making sure that you are aware that even though you don’t have hunger cues, you should still have a sense of how much you’re eating,” she says. “So that it’s enough to fuel your exercise, depending on what you’re going to be doing.”

Be sure to let your doctor know that you’re an athlete if you’re talking about taking Ozempic or Wegovy, because the doctor may prescribe a lower dose, Olulade says.

“You could potentially try a lower dose first, see how you react to that,” she says.

Tribole, who also qualified for the first-ever women’s U.S. Olympic Trials Marathon in 1984, says she would not advise runners to take the drugs for weight loss.Ìę

“If you’re taking it for intentional weight loss, I think it’s really problematic, not enough is known,” she says. “If you’re a diabetic and you’re a runner and that’s going to help your blood sugar, then, yeah, absolutely, I don’t have an issue with that. If it’s taking it for the intention of weight loss, that I think is really problematic.”

Tribole says running already masks hunger cues, at least for a few hours, so combining that with Ozempic could be especially problematic by causing injury due to lack of nutrition. And for women runners, conditions such as relative energy deficiency syndrome.

“When you’re training intensely, that already temporarily blunts your hunger, and so now you’re adding something else on top of that,” she says.Ìę

She worries that the buzz around the drugs and how they’ll make you thin could also lead to more eating disorders, and convince runners who don’t need to lose weight to try them. Despite these concerns, Olulade says these drugs will likely only continue to grow in popularity, and as they get more attention through celebrities and social media, more people ask their doctors about them.“We have people that call every single day requesting them and asking about them,” she says. “And so we obviously need to be better about educating people on this and also reminding people that nutrition is also important.”

She says these drugs are meant to be taken in conjunction with changes in diet and exercise.“They are authorized to be used in conjunction with nutrition and exercise as a whole,” she says. “They’re not supposed to be used just in isolation. They’re supposed to be something that is a multi-targeted approach.”

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Tori Bowie died from complications related to childbirth by the office of the medical examiner in Orange County, Florida, where Bowie was residing. Bowie was eight months pregnant at the time of her death, and her child, a daughter, was reported as stillborn.

Just four years removed from competing in the world championships in 2017, Bowie’s death sent shockwaves throughout the sport. Although she had only raced once since 2021, she had been a world-class sprinter and long jumper for almost a decade, won three medals at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, and won the 100-meter dash at the world championships in London.

On the track, Bowie was a world-class talent who won two U.S. championships, six global medals, and was once among the fastest women in the world. Off the track, she regularly visited foster children’s homes and gave them holiday gifts, pushed for the elevation of Black women athletes, and was interested in a career in fashion and often modeled avant garde outfits. But those who knew her said she also struggled with anxiety, paranoia, and other mental and emotional challenges throughout her career.

“The track has saved my life. I would probably be dead right now,” said Bowie in an  Bowie expressed her gratitude for the sport that gave her meaning and direction in life. “I was going on the wrong path, heading for destruction,” Bowie said. “I was in the streets, you know, and wrong friends and just things like that my entire life.”

Track did end up saving Bowie. On April 23, Frentorish Bowie, who went by Tori, died at the age of 32. She was found at home in Winter Garden, Florida, when Orange County Sheriff’s deputies were called to perform a wellness check because no one had heard from her for several days.

Friends and Family Remember Tori Bowie

“It didn’t matter how much money was on the line,” said her longtime agent Kimberly N. Holland. “It didn’t matter how big the opportunity was. She really had those issues within herself that we couldn’t help with. But we were there to walk her through or help her do whatever she needed to do.” It’s unknown whether Bowie received treatment for these mental health challenges.

Sarah Strong, ultrarunner and licensed clinical social worker with Fireweed Counseling in Colorado, said many elite athletes do not seek treatment. “There’s still a really big stigma about accessing that support,” she said. “Some people think it’s just part of it, ‘this is just what it means to be an athlete, you have to have this kind of anxiety.’ And so then they don’t think it’s something that needs to be treated.”

Athletes can also think it’s a sign of weakness to seek help, Strong said. “Olympians are notorious for trying to fight our way out of our things and try not to show any vulnerability. And we downplay a lot of things,” said two-time Olympic Lolo Jones, who recalled getting to know Bowie while filming a television show for the Olympic Channel.

“Off-camera she was telling me bits of what she was going thru,” Jones wrote in . “She had just gone thru a ton of Olympic success but had a lot going on personally, and it was hard for her to run. She made it seem like she just needed a little break and time to figure some things out. She didn’t share any details of what but just runner to runner things. Like trying to find a new place to train, trying to find motivation, trying to finance her athletic career, I listened to her and tried to encourage her as much as I could from going thru the same issues on an Olympic cycle.”

Bowie’s Early Life

Bowie came from a challenging childhood in Sand Hill, Mississippi. Her mother gave her up to the foster care system when she was two, along with her three-year-old sister Tamara. Bowie never knew why, exactly, she told , when she graced the cover of the magazine.

“I never asked her about it,” Bowie said of her mother at the time. “But she was going through her own issues.”

Nine months later, the sisters were allowed to move in with their grandmother, which brought stability. “My grandmother’s number one rule was that once you start something, you don’t quit,” “From a young age, she never let me give up on anything.”

While she loved basketball and helped Pisgah High School reach the state championships, Bowie found her calling in track and field. As a senior, she won state titles in the 100- and 200-meter long jump, and anchored the winning 4×100-meter relay team.

That earned her a scholarship to the University of Southern Mississippi, where she excelled in a wide range of sprints, as well as the long jump and triple jump. By her junior year, she was named the Conference USA athlete of the year and emerged as a national star, winning the long jump at the NCAA indoor and outdoor championships.

Holland met Bowie in 2012 near the end of her college career, after a coach referred her. At the time, Bowie was set on being a long jumper, and Holland wasn’t sure about representing her.

“She convinced me with her sweet, soft voice and just wanting to work with me,” Holland recalls. They formed a bond from their very first phone call and from then on, Bowie called her “Ms. Kim.”

“When we initially talked, we talked about mostly everything besides track,” Holland said. “So there was a kindred spirit there from the very beginning. We talked for hours. I felt instantly a nurturing feeling towards her, like I wanted to help protect her. She just appeared so innocent.”

In her first year as a pro in 2013, Bowie failed to make the finals of the 100-meter at the U.S. championships, but she took fourth in the long jump and competed well in overseas meets. It was about that time that Bowie sent Holland a video of her sprinting highlights and doing speed work for the long jump, and Holland was blown away.

“I just immediately jumped up,” she said. “I was just like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is the most horrible race that I’ve ever seen in 100 meters.’ But she ran so fast, and I just got excited. If she can run a horrible race like this and run that fast, imagine what she could do if she actually trained for the sprint.’ So I immediately called her and I was like, ‘Tori, it looked like you were running from a Rottweiler, like you were running for your life.’”

Holland called Bowie, who was just 22 at the time, and asked if she’d thought about sprinting professionally.

“In her Southern accent she said, ‘No, ma’am, I just want to break the world record in the long jump,’” Holland recalled. “I said, ‘Tori, OK, I get that we can have fun with the long jump, but we can make some real moves in this 100 meters. I see all the potential. Like, you could really be the next one.’”

Holland was right. But it still took work to convince Bowie—as well as coaches and sponsors—that she had what it took. Holland secured a spot for Bowie in the 200 at the , but only after a cancellation from another runner. Because of her slower seed time, Bowie drew lane one—a difficult lane to compete in, especially for a young, inexperienced sprinter—and wanted to back out.

“She was like, ‘No, Ms. Kim, I can’t do that, I don’t even know how to set my starting block,’” Holland said. “I said, ‘No, you are going to run this 200. What I had to go through to get you in this 200, you are going to run.’”

Bowie ended up winning the race with a world-leading time of 22.18 seconds, beating Nigerian Blessing Okagbare and Olympic champion Allyson Felix. Her career as a sprinter was secured.

“She ran like her life depended on it,” Holland said. “After the race, all of these big athletes, they were all looking like, Who is that girl? Do you know that girl? No one knew who this girl was.”

As she soared as a sprinter, she suffered as a long jumper. Despite being one of the top-ranked competitors heading into the 2014 indoor world championships, she finished last in the preliminary rounds.

On Top of The World

With the help of Holland and Adidas coach Lance Brauman, Bowie reluctantly put long jumping aside and worked hard at becoming the best sprinter she could be. By 2015, she emerged as one of the world’s best as she not only won the 100 at the the U.S. championships but also earned the  bronze medal in the world championships in Beijing, China.

The next year was even brighter, as she won 16 of the 19 individual sprint races. She finished third in the U.S. Olympic Trials in the 100 and earned a spot on the U.S. Olympic team, lowering her personal best time to 10.78. At the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, she won both of her preliminary races and ran a stellar race in the finals to earn the silver medal behind Jamaica’s Elaine Thompson.

Bowie also earned a bronze in the 200 in Rio and helped the U.S. win gold in the 4×100 relay, anchoring the team of Tianna Bartoletta, Allyson Felix, and English Gardner. By 2017, she was the best sprinter in the world. She won the 100 at the world championships in London in dramatic fashion–leaning forward through the finish line to clinch first place before falling to the ground. She also anchored the U.S. relay team to another gold medal.

 

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“Every single competition we had to prep her to run, it just didn’t come natural,” Holland said. “She really had that kind of anxiety that she wouldn’t get on the track. So we had to pray with her before every single meet. We had to really motivate her, to convince her, you got this, you can do this. So that was another job in itself that we’ve never had to do with anyone. But whatever works, right?”

Holland had helped Bowie earn a lucrative contract with Adidas, and after Bowie’s success at the 2016 Olympics, her career fortunes expanded with modeling gigs for Valentino and Stella McCartney, as well as an opportunity to be photographed by Annie Leibovitz for Vogue. But, Holland said, Bowie continued to struggle.

In 2018, Bowie allegedly got into a physical altercation with a training partner, and then a serious injury curtailed her season before the U.S. championships. In early 2019, she was removed from the U.S. Olympic Training Center because of a dispute over a $6,000 unpaid debt—a that she said left her disappointed and disillusioned and in search of a new place to train.

After changing coaches and training groups, she went back to her first love of long jumping, and her physical talent and work ethic helped her shine once again. After a five-year hiatus from the discipline, she finished fourth at the 2019 world championships in Doha, missing the bronze medal by less than four inches.

“Tori was a very private, introverted person. Her circle was her management team or her family,” Holland said. “And that wasn’t because she was mean. She was afraid to trust because she really felt that a lot of people didn’t mean well by her. That’s just part of the mental health issues that she had to deal with. And that’s why we had to do the things that we did to get her to run every single race. It was work every single race, every single competition.”

Strong said anxiety is very prevalent among runners. Most recent research suggests that about 35 percent of elite athletes have either anxiety, depression, and/or eating disorders. And it’s a chicken-and-egg question of whether anxious people are drawn to running or if running causes anxiety, she said.

“Many people seek out running because it helps with mental health, and people who are endurance runners are high performers. So people who maybe did have anxiety in other places in their life will start running. They love it and it makes them feel happy,” she said. “And then once it becomes a competition and they’re doing it, suddenly it’s not about the running itself. It’s more about their identity, and they have this pressure to perform. I think elite athletes are more likely to have some of those things going on, comparing themselves with others that need to perform, that need to impress people.”

Strong said that more elite athletes are opening up about their own mental health challenges—for example, Amelia Boone and —and that decreases the stigma and brings more awareness for everyone. “Acknowledging that mental health is a thing and we can talk about it, and you can talk about it with your friends on your runs and we should normalize it,” Strong said. “Not everybody must try to deal with it on their own.”

“What I like to tell runners is, if your body can do the things that it’s doing when we’re treating our brains and bodies poorly, imagine what we could do if we treat that well,” she said. “Sure, you’re showing that you can push yourself and do this, but imagine what you could do if you were taking care of yourself and your body was functioning optimally. You could be so much more successful.”

A Track Season Derailed By COVID

Bowie didn’t compete in 2020 as COVID-19 canceled most of the track season. In 2021, at age 30, she posted modest results in the 100 and 200 and didn’t compete in the long jump at all. She opted not to participate in the COVID-delayed U.S. Olympic Trials later that year, either, which meant that just five years after being a top star in the previous Olympics, she wasn’t even a contender to make the U.S. team bound for Tokyo.

Bowie was still training in early 2022, but she was no longer a world-class sprinter. In her only race, she placed fifth in a low-key 200 in Florida in 23.60—a time that didn’t crack the top 400 in the world that year. By the fall, she was enrolled in Full Sail University in Winter Park, Florida.

Holland said the last time she spoke to Bowie was two weeks before she died, and that phone call felt like it was with “the old Tori,” with the innocence and enthusiasm Holland had heard in their very first phone call. “We laughed and talked about old times, and I was just like, ‘I just miss you so much, I really miss seeing you on the track,’” Holland said.

In that phone call, Holland said Bowie told her she was pregnant. Holland said she could tell the pregnancy was making Bowie happy, that she felt her baby would be a new beginning for her.

“You could feel the vibe, the rays over the phone,” she said. “I welcomed it, whatever was going to make her happy. And so when I got the news two weeks later, I didn’t understand.” Now Holland views that final phone call as a gift from God, one last chance to hear Bowie sound happy. “I hadn’t heard her sound that happy in a long time,” she said.

Bowie’s time at the top of the sport was brief but legendary. Her legacy as a world-class athlete won’t be forgotten, but few ever really knew the internal demons she battled. Dozens of track athletes, coaches, and friends attended , including Holland.

Holland says she and Bowie had talked about reuniting after the baby was born–Holland says she offered to help take care of the baby. Now that won’t happen, and the news that Bowie died due to complications from childbirth has sent ripples through the running world. It’s also drawn more attention to maternal mortality rates, especially for Black women.

“So heartbreaking. We need to take better care of our women, athletes, mothers. So many systems let her down,” wrote elite runner Molly Huddle on Instagram. “Not even Olympic champions can feel safe giving birth in this country. We gotta do better.”

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It was two days before the Boston Marathon, and Emma Bates was completely freaking out. At a press conference the day before she told the whole world she was a contender to win and planned to stay with the lead pack.

Then the pressure of her announcement started getting to her.

“All of that pressure and all of the chaos that was going around me all just weighed in on me and then I just started crying and I had a breakdown of just pressure and stress,” she says.

Luckily, she had someone with her to help: her boyfriend Steve Finley.

“I just let it all out and he just held me until I was able to get all of my tears out,” says Bates, 30. “And it was like 20 minutes of just full on shaking and crying and feeling out of control. And after that 20 minutes I felt fine. So it was just kind of like a release of emotions.”

She said she needed to get those emotions out of the way to focus and be relaxed and confident. Clearly it worked. Bates finished first among Americans, fifth overall in a new personal best of 2:22:10 and led the pack for several miles late in the race

And, it seemed, her boyfriend knew exactly how to help, despite the fact that he’s not a professional runner himself. In the running world, there are many famous elite running couples, from Adam and Kara Goucher to Sara and Ryan Hall. There are also relationships between runners and coaches, such as Brent and Sara Vaughn and Emma Coburn and Joe Bosshard.

Then there are runners like Bates. Her boyfriend is a runner–he founded the Brooklyn Track Club, works for Bandit Running and used to run professionally–but is no longer an elite competitor, and is not connected directly to Bates’s running career in any way.

She says that’s the perfect balance.

“He knows the pressures that I’m under and just how much I care about it, and so he’s just really good about being there and knowing exactly what I need at each moment and each phase of the days leading up, or weeks leading up, or hours leading up even to a race,” she says. “He’s also a coach, but he doesn’t coach me in any way. We don’t really talk about running any other time. It’s just more like just checking in, making sure I’m OK. He treats me like just a person. He doesn’t treat me like a runner or an athlete or anything like that. It’s just making sure that I’m supported in the way that I need to be.”

But, the fact that Finley is a runner means he still understands the way Bates needs to conduct her day to day, from nutrition to sleep to her mental state.

“It’s hard being friends or making friends or having relationships later in life just because people have their routines and their careers and they want to go out on weekends and that’s how people meet nowadays at our age, in our 30s,” she says. “And I can’t do that all the time. I’m not going to go out when I’m in full running mode. And so that’s really nice just to have somebody that understands I can’t do certain things because of my career.”

She and Finley met, coincidentally, at a bar, but at a bar during the 2016 U.S. Olympic Trials. It was at the Wild Duck Cafe in Eugene, Oregon.

“I didn’t know that Steve was a runner in any way, I just thought he was like a townie in Eugene, like just somebody random,” Bates says. “And so we had such a great connection there, but didn’t talk for years and ended up meeting back up again at the 2021 Trials at the Wild Duck.”

They’ve now been dating for a year, and Bates says Finley helps her stay calm before a race. On Saturday and Sunday before the Boston Marathon, he picked up food for her so she didn’t have to brave the crowds and hung out with her in the hotel room while she watched one of her favorite movies, Lord of the Rings.

RELATED: The Secrets to Dating a Non-Runner

 

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Having a Non-Running Partner

Other runners end up in relationships with people who have never been in the running world. That includes 2016 U.S. Olympian Kate Grace, who is married to Patrick O’Neil and has a two-month-old baby with him.

O’Neil worked in sales for Picky Bars, the company started by Oiselle-sponsored runner Lauren Fleshman and Hoka NAZ Elite runner Steph Bruce. Grace met O’Neil back in 2013 at a New Year’s Eve party when she was sponsored by Oiselle. But Grace says O’Neil doesn’t run much at all.

“He goes through bouts of running for exercise, but he’s not even an intense recreational runner,” says Grace, 34, who lives in Boulder.

O’Neil was a high-level collegiate swimmer, another individual competitive sport, so Grace says he understands her career and the mindset that comes with it.

“For someone who’s not a runner, he’s been a very supportive partner almost because of his swimming background,” she says.

 

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Grace says she and other elite runner friends Emily Infeld and Cory McGee also have husbands with backgrounds in college swimming and joke about it.

“We all say that if you’re not going to have a runner, you may as well have someone who works now but has had that background because they totally get the single-minded, individual sport focus and are very supportive of it, even though now they’re in business and don’t do anything with the sport,” she says. “The whole thing about the four-year cycle is very similar. Sometimes when you’re dating, people who just are so removed from this life sometimes don’t understand the amount of time it takes because you just think like, ‘Oh, they should just go for a run and be done.’ It was very helpful for me that even though he was not a professional athlete or a runner, he understands just what it means to be a high level athlete in a sport like this.”

Grace and O’Neil started dating in 2015 and then less than a year later moved to Sacramento together so Grace could train for the 2016 U.S. Olympic Trials. She won the 800-meter finals and earned the chance to compete in the Rio de Janeiro Olympics.

“There was a positive feedback loop because I ended up making the team and doing well (in the Rio Olympics) and being top American, and it was just pretty obvious from the start that we were able to support each other and good things came when we did that,” she says.

The couple is aligned on nutrition–Grace does the grocery shopping and O’Neil joins her in her carb- and protein-balanced meals. The bigger difference, she says, is in drinking and going out.

“I would say he’s had to make sacrifices in order to be my partner. He wouldn’t call them sacrifices, or maybe he would, but there’s a certain lifestyle that comes with it, since I’ve been a pro runner for my whole adult life,” she says. “Whereas my friends go frequently out to happy hours, I am at home. Initially, I would judge him for casual drinking, but I realized it’s actually me that was the unique one.”

Grace says O’Neil is also her support person during races and competitions, running around to get her coffee and food.

“There are so many rounds during our championships, so it was always a big thing for me to make sure I ate quickly after prelim, so he would have whatever rice bowl ready for me,” she says. “Stuff like that, where it’s very helpful, but non glamorous stuff. That has been great.”

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A Long-distance Partner

Erika Kemp, who set a record for the fastest American-born Black woman at the Boston Marathon (2:33:57) and had the best marathon debut by an American woman in Boston, says her boyfriend Myles Dungan, a Captain in the U.S. Army, isn’t always able to be with her for big races like Boston because he’s stationed in Germany. After Kemp finished the marathon, she went to visit Duggan in Germany for two weeks, and trained while she was there.

“He’s very respectful and supportive, whereas in previous relationships I had, they treated my running as if it was more of a hobby, which is hurtful when it’s your full-time job,” says Kemp, 28, who lives in Boston. “You structure your entire day around your workouts, which can seem silly to some people, but having that understanding, having them also make it a priority.”

She says even when she’s in Germany, Duggan was looking for places for her to run.

“We want to do day trips, see some things and hang out with friends, but he’s always making sure that there is timing and space for me to do the work I need to do,” she says.

Kemp met Duggan in high school–in freshman year Spanish class–and they dated throughout high school but then broke up junior year of college. Then in 2021, Kemp saw a TikTok video of Duggan jumping out of an airplane as a paratrooper. She reached out to him, they reconnected, and have been dating ever since.

 

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Duggan doesn’t run much, and Kemp says in high school they had trouble on a run together.

“Senior year he tore his ACL and was cleared to run, maybe two months before we went to college, but I needed to do my summer training, so I begged him to come with me, but he was a few months post-op, so he was so out of shape, and still struggling to walk, and I wasn’t very nice to him on that run,” she says. “So that was the one and only time we ever truly ran together because I couldn’t understand why he was so bad at it, but he was like, ‘I just got cleared from surgery last week, give me a break.’”

Now he runs once or twice a week, and they’ll occasionally run together if Kemp finds a nice trail. She says she’s eager for him to get a bike to go with her on runs, and he’s considering it.

Unlike other relationships, Kemp says Dugan has no problem with her being faster than him–though he insists he could beat her in a short distance sprint.

“He knows his limits, but he is so convinced that he can beat me in any distance under 400, which, potentially, but I run so much more than him, and so I don’t buy it,” she says.

Sounds like she needs to challenge her boyfriend to a race.

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