Lopez Lomong Couldn’t Quit the Sport That Saved Him – Runner’s World

As the rain fell onto his car in Portland, Oregon, Lopez Lomong sat inside, wondering whether he should walk away from running. It was winter 2016, and he had just finished another track workout. The two-time Olympian had been managing injuries for years. He stayed healthy enough to compete, but Lomong had been unable to make championship teams. And he was devastated by the loss of his father and two brothers who died within a couple of months of each other in his home country of Sudan.

As he sat in his car, he cycled through the reasons to quit:

I made two Olympics. A lot of people only made one.

I ran all of these times. Maybe not as fast as I wanted to, but still good.

At the same time, Lomong couldn’t shake one feeling that stood out from the rest.

Your feet brought you from death. You are here because you want to be able to tell that story and how you came to be a runner.

As a 6-year-old boy, Lomong realized the power of his feet when he was kidnapped to be a child soldier in Sudan’s brutal civil war. Desperate to escape, Lomong and several other boys fled the prison camp and ran for 40 miles to a refugee camp in Kenya. Remembering the run that saved his life all those years ago, Lomong knew what he needed to keep trying.

The sun came out shortly after.

A Champion Again

Three years after he sat in his car and thought about quitting, Lomong raced the best USATF Outdoor Championships of his career at 34 years old.

On July 25, 2019, he won the 10,000 meters in a Drake Stadium record. With a 55-second last lap, the Bowerman Track Club veteran crossed the finish line in a PR of 27:30. His closest competitor, Shadrack Kipchirchir in second, was 17 seconds behind, more than 100 meters.

Three days later, Lomong doubled back to win the 5,000 meters. On the homestretch, he surged past Olympic silver medalist Paul Chelimo to reach the line in 13:25.53, a half step ahead of Chelimo who finished in 13:25.80. Lomong had won his first U.S. title in the event.

“I was so happy to cross that line and be a champion again and be on that podium. It’s wonderful,” he told Runner’s World.

For the first time since 2013, Lomong had earned a spot on Team USA. On October 6, he will represent the U.S. in the men’s 10,000-meter final at the 2019 world championships in Doha, Qatar.

His resurgence followed years of hardship—battling injuries, self-doubt, and loss. Lomong overcame it with the support of his wife, Brittany Morreale, and the Bowerman team, and by discovering a newfound motivation for running.

“[The hardship] made me a better athlete, it made me a better person,” he said. “It made me just respect the sport that we are in.”

Managing the Pain

Lomong was a refugee in Kenya for 10 years. In 2001, he was brought to the U.S. through Catholic Relief Services and adopted by Tully, New York, natives Rob and Barb Rogers. As a 16-year-old, Lomong barely spoke English, but he learned quickly and found his stride on the cross-country and track teams at Tully High School.

After winning multiple state championships, Lomong earned a scholarship to compete for Northern Arizona University (NAU). In 2007, Lomong was reunited with his parents in Sudan, where he also met his younger brothers Peter and Alex, born after he was taken by rebel soldiers. In 2009, he helped Peter and Alex are currently standout runners on the track teams at NAU and Ohio State, respectively.

When Lomong made the 2008 Olympic team in the 1500 meters, his teammates honored him by voting him to carry the flag at the opening ceremony in Beijing. Since then, he’s been featured in multiple news accounts and two documentary series. His life is the subject of the forthcoming movie Running For My Life, which is due for release in the spring of 2020 and is based on Lomong’s bestselling autobiography of the same name.

Lomong’s impressive speed was well known through his college years at NAU, where he earned NCAA titles in the 1500 meters and indoor 3,000 meters. But during the 2007–08 seasons, he began to feel pain in his left hamstring. For many years, Lomong continued to compete while managing the injuries with physical therapy and recovery treatments.

“Every time I raced 800 or 1500 meters, I’d keep on tearing it,” he said. “We couldn’t just stop. We had to train and we had to race.”

Through the injury cycle, Lomong managed to make the Olympic team in 2008 and 2012 (in the 5,000 meters), and run a 1500-meter best of 3:32.20 in 2010.

“I think my PRs in the 1500 and the 800 are all on a bad hamstring. I was just pushing myself and trying to run well,” Lomong said.

During the 2014 indoor track season, the hamstring issue caused pain up and down his body: sciatica, achilles problems. “It was a mess,” Lomong said.

By 2015, the injury cycle had taken its toll. Lomong finished sixth in the 5,000 at the U.S. outdoor championships and failed to make the team for the world championships in Beijing. After being part of Team USA at global championships in 2008, 2009, 2012, and 2013, he was forced to the sidelines.

“It was terrible,” he said. “I just went somewhere and disappeared. I didn’t want to watch it.”

The 2016 Olympic year was filled with worse heartbreak: His father and two brothers died as a result of tribal conflict in Sudan. By the time Lomong lined up to compete at the 2016 U.S. Olympic Trials, he was in mourning and trying his best to honor their memory by earning his third Olympic spot. But he ended up 10th in the 5,000 final, far from contention.

“That weighed heavy on him,” Morreale, 31, said.

Since 2007, Morreale has witnessed the highs and lows of her husband’s running career. The couple met in Colorado Springs, Colorado, where he was training under his coach at the time, John Hayes, and she was a student at the United States Air Force Academy. They married in 2014, and she is currently serving a three-year tour of duty at a base in Japan.

Lomong and Morreale try to see each other every three months, and they communicate through FaceTime. She will be in Doha to cheer him on at the world championships.

For the past few seasons, Morreale could sense the buildup of pain and frustration that her husband was experiencing on the track. In the summer of 2016, she asked the question, “Do you still love it?”

His immediate response: Yes. No question.

“I’ve overcome so many other things in my life,” he said. “This is a joy. I’m just going to go do this.”

Embracing His Purpose

After reestablishing Lomong’s commitment to running, the couple decided to focus next on their family members who still needed help. It helped them deal with the grief over losing his father and brothers. In fall 2016, they decided to begin the process of adopting his niece Angelina, 8, and nephew David, 5, who currently live in Nairobi, Kenya, with their mother, Lomong’s sister.

“We were able to mourn and say goodbye but also look forward for the future generation,” Morreale said.

Currently, the siblings are attending international school and are in regular contact with Lomong and Morreale who use WhatsApp to communicate with them every day. They are about halfway through the adoption process, and the couple expects to bring Angelina and David to the United States after the 2020 Olympic Games.

“It’s given me a sense of purpose, like what I do, it means something,” Lomong said. “Seeing them ask me questions, they’re growing, they’re learning, they’re motivated, they’re excited. Sometimes it brings tears to my eyes.”

In October 2018, Lomong also went to Sudan to help bring his family members to safety in Nairobi after their village was attacked.

Family isn’t Lomong’s only concern. Since 2011, he has been giving back to his home country through the , with a mission to provide clean water, education, healthcare, and nutrition to the people of South Sudan. The foundation partnered with World Vision to create the 4 South Sudan project, which has raised almost $4 million through Oregon’s , according to . This year, the World Vision team raised over $1 million at the relay race.

Finding Joy in New Challenges

In his running, Lomong became inspired by the experience of pacing Eliud Kipchoge during his first sub-two-hour marathon attempt.

In May 2017, Kipchoge ran faster than anybody in history when he finished Nike’s Breaking2 event in 2:00:25. The Kenyan champion averaged 4:36 per mile pace with the help of a team of 30 alternating pacers that included Lomong and American record-holder Bernard Lagat, among other Nike athletes.

Seeing Kipchoge’s dedication to the team, discipline while training to break the barrier, and humility throughout the process inspired Lomong to commit himself to running in a new way.

“He chose to carry everybody to that promised land where if you work hard, if you do all the small little things, you can be successful as well,” Lomong said.

After pacing Kipchoge, Lomong adopted a more disciplined lifestyle approach to training. He changed his eating habits to a basic African diet that includes nutrient-rich foods like ancient grains (which are considered to have been minimally changed by selective breeding over the years). He also places a higher priority on sleep, recovery, and rest between training sessions.

After he missed the world championships team in 2017, Lomong’s coach, Jerry Schumacher, suggested he focus on the 10,000 meters for the 2018 season. While the event proved difficult at first, the decision was a turning point in Lomong’s career. He was healthy at last, and he found new motivation in the challenge of 25 laps around the track.

In his debut at the 2018 Stanford Invitational, Lomong struggled from the 7K mark on and finished second overall in 28:21. But he was excited by the prospect of improving in the distance.

Putting in 100-mile weeks combined with hours in the gym to stabilize and strengthen his weak spots, Lomong competed in the 10,000 at the 2018 U.S. championships in Des Moines, Iowa, and won. He competed at the NACAC Championships that summer and won again.

By this year’s U.S. championships, Lomong was healthy, had confidence in his training, renewed perspective, and more excitement for the sport than ever before.

“I’ve been in this game for awhile now,” he said. “And sometimes you go down and then you go up. It’s not a straight line all the time.”

For Lomong, who refers to himself as “the grandpa” of the Bowerman group, a lot of his excitement comes from his teammates’ recent performances: ’s clocking the Canadian national record of 12:58, Shelby Houlihan’s winning the 1500 meters and the 5,000 meters in Des Moines.

“When she won, it was like I won another title,” Lomong said of Houlihan’s 5,000-meter victory that followed his own.

Woody Kincaid also recently notched the 5,000-meter Olympic standard, as did Lomong and Matthew Centrowitz, when the trio ran 12:58.10, 13:00.13, and 13:00.39, respectively, at a special race set up in Portland.

“It elevates everybody,” Lomong said of his teammates’ breakthroughs.

Running for Others

On October 6, Lomong will compete at his first world championships in six years. This will also be the first global event in which he will compete healthy, opening possibilities for the runner who has already accomplished and overcome so much. While the world stage is familiar territory for him, he’s missed it for a long time.

But for Lomong, it’s always been about more than medals or times. Running has enabled him to help people and provide hope to those that need it most.

Soon he’ll get the chance to chase it all once again.

“Every strike I make on my feet, I’m doing it for [my father and brothers],” Lomong said. “And I’m doing it for these kids who we are trying to help and for the people who are still struggling all over the world.”

Taylor Dutch is a freelance writer living in Chicago.