Gary Martin Isn’t Coming Back

 

A DyeStat Story by Dave Devine

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Gary Martin knew it was coming, but that didn’t make it any easier.

He knew that lurking somewhere ahead on this wooded gravel trail was a hill with a name. And in cross country, only the difficult hills get names. The ones that cause you to question, about halfway up, your dedication to this sport. To slow your pace, consider walking. Gasp for air. Wish you’d stuck with soccer.  

This particular hill, situated several hundred meters past the one-mile mark at Philadelphia’s storied Belmont Plateau, is entrenched in local running lore:

Parachute.

Martin, at the beginning of his sophomore year at Archbishop Wood (Warminster, Pa.) in the fall of 2019, had heard all about this hill from older runners. He’d run a handful of seasons at the Plateau in grade school CYO races, but those had all unfolded on the park’s outer loop. This was his first race on the full, 5-kilometer high school layout. And even though he knew Parachute was coming, that knowledge had done nothing to alter his race plan, rudimentary as it was:

Go out with the leaders, try to hang on.

High school cross country had been something of a lark — he’d been talked into coming out by his buddies at the end of freshman track. And his pre-season preparation? Well, that had been less than ideal. He’d spent the summer running once or twice a week, supplemented by full-court runs in a local basketball league. And now he was attacking this course instinctually, the only way he really knew, on the razor’s edge between ability and ambition. 

And here was Parachute, right on cue.

“I mean, that hill hits,” Martin says now, “and it’s like you’re getting slapped in the face. It was —” He pauses, seeking a word to summarize the impact. “It was rough...”

How rough?

He went through the mile with the leaders, and then finished in 74th place — 24:57 for five kilometers.

And after reeling through the finish chute, Martin deposited the remains of his lunch on the grass near the finish line.

He would vomit after his next three races, too. 

But he would also gradually race himself into shape.

By the end of the 2019 season he’d whittled his time on this course to an impressive 16:58, winning the District 12 AA individual title. And at the subsequent PIAA state meet the soph crossed a promising 50th place, top runner on Wood’s team.

One year later, during the COVID-altered 2020 season, he’d win the AA state cross country title outright, a meteoric rise from Philadelphia Catholic League also-ran to one of the best ever from southeastern Pennsylvania.

The story of that rise, the ways in which Martin has learned to both harness and unleash his burgeoning racing instincts, is as much a narrative about dedication and relationship as it is about training plans or race strategies. It’s a story that features words which might seem old-fashioned these days — not exactly cool or hashtag-ready — but words that are nonetheless inextricably woven into the process of young people finding meaning and success in sports. 

Words like hope. And faith. And trust.

HOPE

Gary Martin was hoping to play baseball. Maybe soccer.

As he prepared to enter Wood in the summer of 2018, he was not interested in cross country or track. He’d competed sporadically in those sports as a kid growing up in Warminster (a suburb about 20 miles north of Philadelphia), but with only moderate commitment and little indication of precocious talent.

“I had some speed as a little kid,” he recalls, “but I wasn’t anything crazy.”

The plan for high school was to play ball sports — soccer and baseball — so he spent the summer before freshman year working out with Wood’s soccer hopefuls. When he decided, in late summer, that soccer wasn’t for him, he switched immediately to fall ball, training through the winter as an outfielder with the Vikings baseball team.

Eventually, though, he decided baseball wasn’t his sport either.    

“It was a last-second decision,” Martin says. “I was like, ‘I’m really not feeling it, I don’t think baseball’s for me.’ So, I went out for track instead.”

Neither of Martin’s parents, who own a heating and air conditioning company in Warminster, were runners growing up. His dad, Rob, played soccer and volleyball in high school. His mom, Heather, was involved in a variety of activities, but didn’t participate in athletics.

When he arrived for the start of spring track, Martin’s inexperience with the sport was evident.

“My running shoes weren’t the right ones,” he says, “they weren’t even real running shoes. I didn’t know you had to wear spikes for racing, things like that.”

Paul Streleckis, Wood’s head cross country and track coach, had started at the school the year before Martin arrived. A collegiate runner at Drexel University in the late 1970’s, he saw, in Martin, a promising, if decidedly unpolished, diamond in the rough. 

“He was this gangly-looking freshman kid, you know?”

Without much to go on, Martin fell back on events he’d run in eighth grade: the 400 and the 800. He made steady progress in the one-lapper, eventually trimming his time down to 54.98 and qualifying for the district championship.

That taste of success was encouraging, but it wasn’t what caused him to commit more fully to running his sophomore year.

“I had some decent times,” he says, “but I fell in love with the team, the team culture, and those kids ended up talking me into running cross country.”

His sophomore cross country campaign began with that spate of post-race vomiting and ended with the 50th-place finish at the state meet. The one constant was his aggressive approach to racing, bolstered by his hope to eventually keep up with the top-tier guys.

“Every race I’ve ever run,” he says, “I’ve gone out with the leaders and tried to push myself. Even if I know I’m not matched, I convince myself mentally I can hang with them.”

He was leading that 2019 state meet, too, fronting the field at the mile before eventually tumbling backward through the pack. Streleckis clearly remembers the talk he had with his pupil after the race.

“I told him, ‘The difference with you keeping up with everybody is they probably ran 500 miles over the summer, and you — ah, didn’t run at all.’ But he’d had a little bit of success there, and that’s really what started turning him around.”

Martin got more serious about his training. Began to take care of the small things that would make him a better runner. Backing up hope with action.

He started believing that the fast starts were sustainable. 

The most prominent sign came when he took fourth in the mile at the Pennsylvania indoor state meet a few months later, coming out of the slow heat with a then-personal best 4:22.16.

“That was a really big moment,” Martin says. “It was a realization for me. When I looked at other people’s training, what I had been doing was significantly less. So, I knew that if I started working as much as everyone else, I could be good at this.”

That state indoor meet was on March 1, 2020.

If the 4:22 breakthrough was, as Streleckis says, “the real epiphany for Gary,” what followed was something almost no one could have predicted.

“The whole world ended up getting shut down.”

FAITH

In Philadelphia track circles, it’s nearly an article of faith. 

If you work hard enough, if you’re dedicated and fast, you’ll have an opportunity to run at the Penn Relays. Local high schoolers know that if you can make your team’s 4x400 relay, you’ll almost certainly have a lane at Penn. For talented prep distance runners, the meet’s annual mile and 3,000-meter races offer a chance for breakout performances in front of big crowds.

As a freshman, with that 54-second 400 speed, Martin was picked to run a leg on Wood’s 4x400 relay in the Philadelphia Catholic League section of Penn’s mid-Saturday relay marathon. A “USA vs The World” race was slated immediately after, which meant the stands were packed and raucous.

“The environment was incredible,” Martin recalls.

He was hoping for another chance in that packed stadium in the spring of 2020, but as Streleckis points out, everything shut down.

A full year later, with all the progress he’s made, Martin would have almost certainly been a candidate for either the mile or 3,000. It might have been a chance to author an indelible moment in front of a home crowd, but the 2021 Penn Relays were again canceled, another casualty of the enduring COVID crisis.

“That’s one of my biggest disappointments for him,” Streleckis says. “In our sport, there’s not many opportunities to run in front of 30,000 or 40,000 fans.”

Another missed opportunity for a runner who was already a late arrival to the national scene.

Back in March 2020, when the scope of the novel coronavirus impact was first becoming apparent, Martin was coming off that indoor mile breakthrough. As the spring season rapidly unraveled, he and Streleckis eschewed the possibility of an uncertain season of makeshift events to focus on banking miles for the fall.

Cautious about running with others, Martin spent months running completely alone. He powered through solo sessions on familiar testing grounds: Pennypack Park, Tyler State Park and Bradford Reservoir. Entertaining dreams of a place among the top prep distance runners in the country. There were no trips to high-altitude training camps. No training plans from private coaches. No organized meet-ups with other national elites — he wasn’t at that level, yet. 

“It was really just me,” he says, “running in Warminster.”

Elevation: 315 feet.

His one modest whiff of success, that 4:22 mile at the indoor state meet as a sophomore, sustained him for months.

“He did the work over the summer,” Streleckis says. “And then this past cross country season he really came out and became a — uh, you know, a known entity.”

Even though racing opportunities were sparse through the fall, Pennsylvania did host a state meet. The field sizes were reduced, races conducted in flights. Martin won the second of four AA flights in 16:12, and then held his breath through the subsequent heats.

“It was nerve-wracking,” he says, “sitting and waiting. Watching for the times to come in.”

When the clock for the final flight ticked past 16:12 without a finisher across the line, Martin had his first state title.

A one-year ascension from 50th to first.

“It was kind of shock and disbelief,” he says. “It felt like a turning point, honestly.”

Two weeks later, he competed in the RunningLane Cross Country Championships in Huntsville, Ala., his first meet against national-caliber competition. Once again, Martin placed his faith in the approach that got him there. Go out with the leaders and try to hang on. In this case, the leaders included eventual Gatorade national cross country runner of the year, Parker Wolfe of Cherry Creek, Colo.

Martin was with him for almost two miles.

“It was surreal to be racing against some of the top guys,” he says, “and to actually be in the top pack and hanging with them.”

He battled home in 24th place, but his 14:52 finish was a massive personal best, believed to be the third-fastest cross country 5k in Pennsylvania state history. Another confidence boost, another indication that the kid from Warminster belongs in the national conversation.

Of course, that conversation — like everything else — has been altered dramatically by the lingering pandemic.

After the Alabama race there was no Foot Locker regional meet to pursue. No Nike Cross Nationals to further cement his reputation. At best, a fragmented indoor season awaited in Pennsylvania. Another canceled indoor national championship. No Millrose high school mile. No Penn Relays. More time spent toiling mostly in anonymity, keeping the faith that racing opportunities would materialize.

But what have the last 14 months been, if not an exercise in faith?

A belief that this work will pay off at some point down the road. That all the miles will have been meaningful. That there will be an end to this pandemic, something that resembles “the other side,” even if that reality seems difficult to imagine at present.

Streleckis, when he rattles off Martin’s strengths as a runner, mentions his junior star’s uncanny ability to live inside this uncertainty. The capacity to remain dedicated and optimistic, even when the path forward seems unclear.

“The way I explain Gary to people is like this,” Streleckis says. “Every day I have this little group of prayers that I say, and one of the things I pray for is my coaching. I ask for humility, confidence and wisdom.” He pauses here, setting up the punchline. “And I think God knows me, so instead, he sent me Gary.” 

TRUST

Besides running, there’s another passion that occupies space in Gary Martin’s brain.

“I’m a huge Philadelphia sports fan.”

Phillies, Eagles, Flyers, Sixers…Gary follows them all. But there’s a special place in his heart for the 76ers. For a time, he maintained an Instagram page dedicated to covering his hometown hoops team. And now, with that team currently clinging to a precarious lead in the NBA’s Eastern Conference, Martin is allowing himself the measured optimism all Philly fans are cursed to possess.

“I’ve been feeling good about the Sixers,” he says. “Hopefully they can all stay healthy. And hopefully they have a good playoffs. And hopefully (Ben) Simmons can do what he needs to do, and — I mean, hopefully, right?”

But if Sixers fans have long relied on hope to bridge the lean years, they’ve been asked, in recent years, to embrace a different virtue: Trust.

Trust the Process.

It’s become something of a catchphrase for the Philly faithful over the last decade, but it’s also an approach Martin has adopted in his own life. He’s had to learn to trust the miles. Trust the training. Trust the recovery. Trust that the plan he’s developed with Coach Streleckis will get him where he’d like to go.

So far, 2021 results have shown that trust to be well-placed.

Against a backdrop of fluctuating winter prospects in the Philadelphia region — “Indoors was all messed up,” Streleckis says, “it was just so confusing.” — Martin emerged for his first mile race in nearly a year at an outdoor “Polar Bear” meet hosted by league-rival La Salle College High School in late January.

On a brisk, windy day, running mostly solo through the second half of the race, Martin dropped a 4:12.56.

It was, at the time, the top mile mark in the country.

His next big moment came in February, at the newly-created adidas Indoor Nationals meet in Virginia Beach, Va. Again taking on elite-level competition, he paired a 4:11.72, third-place finish in the Mile, with a runner-up 9:02.93 in the 2 Mile. Those marks, indoors on a 200-meter track, represented astonishing improvements from his sophomore campaign. In less than 12 months, he’d catapulted to the top of Philadelphia Catholic League all-time lists, and begun zeroing in on historic Pennsylvania marks.

One of those marks belongs to Wissahickon star Ken Lowry, who, almost 40 years ago, ran a 4:05.24 mile to win 1982 Golden West Invitational.

Five years after that, Archbishop Kennedy's Paul Vandegrift burned a 4:03.22 to win the 1987 PIAA AA state meet 1,600 title.

Those two marks remain Pennsylvania’s four-lap standards, unassailable even by recent standouts like Craig Miller, Drew Magaha and Noah Affolder.

Which makes Martin’s winning 1,600-meter time at the recent Downingtown West Whippet Invitational all the more remarkable. Charging out alone — again — and gapping a deep field, he leap-frogged nearly every runner in state history save Lowry and Vandegrift, crossing in 4:07.20.

La Salle High coach Greg Bielecki has had a front-row seat for many of Martin’s races, including the Downingtown West 1,600, and he marvels at the junior’s intrepid approach.

“I have always been struck by how relentlessly he races,” Bielecki says. “He doesn't run scared, he doesn't run recklessly. He looks calm, composed, and completely engaged in exactly what he is doing that moment…It's an awesome thing to watch.”

All of this from an unassuming, tousle-haired kid who competes for a high school without a track.

Martin and his teammates — those same teammates who convinced him to run cross country two years ago — train mostly on a cinder oval at a local middle school.

“I know there are some guys at this level who train on their own away from the team,” Martin says, “but I don’t think I’d be able to do that. I just like seeing my team every day.”

It’s a grounded, team-centered focus, but it doesn’t mean Martin hasn’t also connected with some of his talented peers around the country, mostly via social media. 

“I’m someone who, maybe more than I should sometimes, obsesses over times and being aware of what everyone else is running around the country.”

Streleckis is attuned to that inclination, and helps to counter the understandable urge to compare and virtually compete.

“We have to avoid the distraction of competing on Strava,” Streleckis says. “He’ll send me stuff someone else did, and you know — it’s like a 12-mile progression run ending in four-something per mile, and it might not necessarily be fitting into exactly what we’re trying to do that day...” He trails off, laughter suggesting that it almost never fits into what they’re trying to do. “He’s so engaged in the sport. He just wants to succeed at such a high level.”

But whenever Martin wonders if he’s doing enough, if there’s more training he should be cramming into an already busy week, he circles back to the trust he’s engendered with Streleckis — recognizing that their relationship is the reason he’s here at all.

“I talk to Coach Paul about it,” Martin says, “and he talks some sense into me, reminds me to stick to the plan. It’s worked so far, and I know that.”

Stick with the plan.

Trust the process.

There’s a sense that if Martin continues do that, if he can engage with the plan while holding patience for the process, there will be an increasing number of races in which his penchant for taking off at the gun doesn’t fall apart.

In which the field doesn’t ever close the gap.

In which that old, rudimentary plan: Go out with the leaders, try to hang on, becomes something else entirely:

Gary Martin isn’t coming back…

“He’s just so fearless,” Streleckis says. “If you said you could fly in the top guy in the country right now and meet somewhere at a track, he’d be like, ‘Oh yeah, let’s go.’”