It’s no secret that, at 33 years old, Lopez Lomong doesn’t exactly have time on his side as he works toward pivotal seasons in 2019 and 2020. 

The two-time Olympian desperately wants to become a three-time Olympian, particularly after coming up short at the Trials in 2016, and 2020 will likely be his last shot on the track. The clock is ticking for Lomong, and after missing out on a global championship team for the third straight time in 2017, that steady ticking sound became louder than ever before.

“Last year in 2017, I missed making that (5K) team in Sacramento, and it killed me,” Lomong told FloTrack over the phone. “I really wanted to make that team. Oh man, I put everything out there.”

Lomong’s frustration about finishing fifth in the 5,000m at the 2017 USATF Outdoor Championships was not simply about missing that year’s World Championship team by two places. After struggling for nearly three years with off-and-on hamstring injuries that constantly interrupted his training, Lomong was used to operating at less than 100 percent. But that didn’t take the sting out of once again losing to competitors he had beaten before.

“It gets to the point sometimes you just feel like, ‘Man, what am I doing?’ All these people, all these athletes I should be able to beat, they’re beating me now,” said Lomong. “Sometimes when the body cannot respond to the work that you put in, maybe it’s another way to tell you it’s time for you to hang up these shoes and do other things.”

But now healthy in 2018—a season he entered seemingly at a crossroads in his career—Lomong is beginning to overcome those doubts by turning back the clock. 

At the 2018 USATF Outdoor Championships in June, Lomong won his first outdoor national title since 2010 in just his second career 10,000m race. Then, on August 3, he ran 3:53.86 to win the Sir Walter Miler, a meet record and the 33-year-old’s fastest mile in over five years.

“I started feeling good again. I started enjoying the sport all over again,” said Lomong.

His bounce-back on the track in 2018 arrived after two tough years, both athletically and personally, in 2016 and 2017.

In the span of a month ahead of the 2016 Olympic Trials, Lomong's biological father and a brother passed away in Africa, and he was unable to attend their funerals. 

He wanted to make them proud by earning his third trip to the Olympics, but now they were gone, and he didn’t even get a chance to say goodbye. Life proved much more important than track during that time for Lomong, but, combined with his injuries, his despair cast a dark cloud over the season.

“It was just like, ‘Wow. I did all these things to be able to hopefully tell them I’m a pretty good runner, and now they are gone and I’m not even there for their funeral,’” Lomong said. “It was the lowest moment for me personally; not in the athletic side, but it affected me athletically as well.”

With the weight of the world seemingly on his shoulders, Lomong finished 10th in the 5,000m final at those Olympic Trials. He wasn’t healthy, and for the first time, he missed qualifying for the Olympics Games. Another year on the mend in 2017 and another missed team finally brought an end to the two hardest seasons of his career.

“I started pushing myself like, ‘I don’t know man, I think maybe this is it,’” he said.

It’s not as if Lomong’s last few seasons before 2018 were entirely unsuccessful—he finished top-10 in the USA outdoor 5K final in 2015, 2016, and 2017, and had some nice times in between—but the constant, careful maintenance his body required back then just to get him to the starting line intact wore his patience thin. 

The fact that his extra efforts aside from training—strengthening exercises meant to mend his faulty hamstring and repair compensation issues—were not coinciding with consistent results on the track left Lomong questioning how much longer he could take the routine.

“Every time when I [went] to the gym, I go workout and try to strengthen that hamstring, the next day I wasn’t able to run. I was limping in the morning… It just became a big thing,” he said.

Frustrated and sensing an ultimatum after 2017, Lomong had to get right. He leaned on Phoenix chiropractor John Ball to fix his broken body, and Bowerman Track Club head coach Jerry Schumacher to map out an offseason training plan that would increase his mileage to the highest volume he'd ever attempted.

For the better part of a year, Lomong has been regularly shuttling from his home in Portland, Oregon, to Phoenix to seek treatment with Ball, while simultaneously running longer in training—he sat at 110 miles per week uninterrupted for 17 consecutive weeks.

“We changed everything with Jerry. We put more mileage in and didn’t really care about speed at that moment,” said Lomong.

Both have produced tremendous results. Ball’s work has quieted Lomong’s once-frequent flare-ups in his lower body, which has allowed him to implement brand-new speed development work during the season. Speed-specific gym workouts and end-of-session 150s are now staples for Lomong, and combined with his strong base, they've allowed him to use his refreshed wheels to thrive at a new distance: 10,000m.

The former mid-distance star was uneasy about Schumacher entering him in the Stanford 10,000m in March, even after enjoying such a wonderful build-up. He had never raced 25 consecutive laps on the track in his life. 

But Schumacher reminded his pupil of a conversation they had a month earlier in February, when Lomong urged his coach to let him run the USATF Cross Country Championships as a fun fitness test. Despite Lomong’s protests, Schumacher said no to the cross country race, but by early spring, the coach decided his athlete was ready for the distance.

Recalling the conversation, Lomong said, “I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, no way. This is not good.’ (Schumacher said), ‘Remember, you wanted to do the 10,000m.’”

Lopez Lomong's 10k debut at the 2018 Stanford Invitational:

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The former miler’s reservations about the 25-lapper weren’t immediately erased after the Stanford test, even as he debuted with an impressive 28:21 to secure the USA standard and finish second in the race. The laps felt never-ending for Lomong, and his body let him know in the days that followed how punishing it had been.

“I was just so exhausted. I was sore for days,” he said. “I was just like, ‘What am I putting myself into? This is terrible. I’ve never felt this before.’”

But by the time Lomong out-sprinted Shadrack Kipchirchir—the fifth-fastest 10K runner in American history—for the USATF 10,000m title in June, his attitude about the race was changing. 

In a tactical battle in Des Moines, Lomong gave the crowd a blast from the past by scorching Kipchirchir with a 54.16-second last lap to win in 28:58.38, all the while becoming the first American in over a century to win both 1,500m and 10,000m national titles. Suddenly, the 10K didn’t seem like too tall of a mountain to climb.

It's been 102 years since a U.S. man won the the 1500m and 10k in his career.
2010/2018 - Lopez Lomong (@BowermanTC)
1915/1916 - Joie Ray (Illinois AC)

— FloTrack (@FloTrack) June 22, 2018

“It’s like a tempo and then a little finish at the end,” Lomong said. “You need a lot of patience, because I like to go out hard and just hammer. But 10,000m is more about patience to just wait for the right time to be able to move.”

The fact that it happened in a year without an outdoor global championship meant little in the moment to Lomong. The victory was the culmination of several years of hardship, and it showed the world that the man once famous for his finishing speed still had fuel in the tank. With some changes to his training and help from his chiropractor John Ball, the new Lopez Lomong was looking a lot like the Lomong of old. 

That was especially true on August 3 in Raleigh, North Carolina, at Sir Walter Miler, as the oldest man in the field by more than three years dusted some of the top milers in the U.S. The 3:53.86 was his fastest mile since 2013.

“When I crossed the line and I looked back I was like, ‘3:53? Wow! Where did that come from?’ That was really amazing,” said Lomong.

“It tells me, wow, my speed is still there.”

With just under a year until the 2019 USATF Outdoor Championships, there is still a long journey ahead for Lomong as he gears his training toward qualifying for his third outdoor world championship team. Lomong may consider the 5K/10K double at USAs, but for now, his primary focus will soon return to the 5,000m, a race he feels he has unfinished business in. A healthy and stronger-than-ever Lomong would seem to be a tough beat in a championship 5K right now, but even for a rejuvenated athlete, a year is still an awfully long time.

But that’s all fine for him, as Lomong is thrilled that a career that once seemed to be slipping away is in the midst of a second act. At 33 years old, he’s right back on track to finish his career in the way he always envisioned it.

“I want to be able to walk out on the stands one day and say, ‘OK, I did everything I can and this is the best I can do,’” said Lomong.

“Because if you walk away from the sport thinking, ‘I should’ve done this, I should’ve done that,’ you still walk away from the sport that you absolutely love with some sort of regret that you didn’t do everything that you wanted to do.”