6/13/08

The hardest part of all was just sitting still.

In a bungalow on the island of Crete, home of the U.S. track team for the 2004 Summer Olympics, Alan Culpepper flicked on a television and settled in as his wife, Shayne, stepped up to the starting line for her 5,000-meter preliminary heat.

Instinctively, his thoughts began to drift toward his own event, the marathon, the ancient finale of the Athens Games, when the former University of Colorado All-American would retrace the first steps of the original marathon man.