Pushing to extreme limits
Puzey plans to test himself in last chance for Olympic Trials
Thomas Rivers Puzey doesn’t look anything like a marathoner. His bushy beard alone appears to weigh as much as the spindly East Africans he’s going to chase in the Chevron Houston Marathon. At 6 feet and an almost burly 170 pounds, he’ll be easy to find among the early front-runners, and that’s a good thing because Puzey’s penchant for testing his limits to the extreme, for keeping the pedal to the medal until he’s ready to literally drop, makes him a fan favorite wherever he’s racing.
In his Houston debut a year ago, the gregarious free spirit from Flagstaff, Ariz. won the city’s heart by selling out totally for the first 18 miles, running at a clip far faster than his personal best — he would have finished in 2:14 had he maintained it, compared to 2:18 — then cracking spectacularly. You’ve heard of hitting the wall, right? Well, Puzey’s face-first collision, just as he had made the turn onto Memorial Drive heading back toward downtown, could be heard as far away as The Woodlands.
“The lights went out,” he said. “But it wasn’t the first time it had happened to me. I’m a big guy. It takes a lot of energy to carry this much meat for 26 miles. And, when you exceed certain thresholds, there are systems in the body that just shut down.”
It wouldn’t be the last time, either.
“I was fit and ready to run, and the same thing happened,” he said of his most recent start, the California International Marathon six weeks ago in Sacramento. “But I made it to mile 24 there. First, my right leg started to seize up. I was like, ‘Oh, come on. Not yet. Not yet.’ But, once your legs seize up, you can’t do anything about it. You’ve just got to pull the reins back. It’s like, ‘OK, do I have enough money in the bank to just get to the finish line?’ ”
He did, but not before going down on all fours three times, landing flat on his back once when he tried to stand up too quickly and briefly fainted. Ultimately, he fell about a minute short of the 2:19 time he needed to qualify for the U.S. Olympic Trials on Feb. 29 in Atlanta. As a result, Houston becomes his last chance to make that field.
“It would be really fun to be in Atlanta,” he said. “It’s like going to party, a big celebration, that all of your friends will be at, except you need an invitation to go. But, honestly, it doesn’t make any difference in terms of my life. Look, I’ve got a doctorate in physical therapy. I’m a dad. I’ve got three little girls. I have a good, normal life.”
At least now. As a younger man just out of high school — he’s 35 now — he lived for years in South America and worked as a “cultural anthropologist.” His world there was a rough and rowdy one, populated by drug lords and their cartels, and corrupt government officials. Still, while living one step ahead of trouble, he became fluent in four languages. He’s hardly a one-dimensional distance-running drone.
And he runs to take his own measure, not to chase trophies (or cowboy hats, which the Houston winners receive). He knows he can’t win Sunday against this caliber of a field. But he has tasted success in other races, having won back-toback in the Arizona Marathon in 2016 and 2017 and the Las Vegas Marathon in November 2019.
“What gets me most exciting about running are the possibilities of reaching my own full potential,” Puzey said. “There’s a quote from George Eliot I really like: ‘It’s impossible to know your full potential without going too far sometimes.’ So last year was probably the most important race I’ve ever run because what I learned was that I can do 18 miles at a 5:06 (per mile) pace. So rather than that being a failure in my mind, it was an epiphany instead.
“I’m motivated by finding out what my 100 percent is. I realized last year that my 100 percent at a 5:04 pace was 18 miles. Now, I’d love to see what my 100 percent is for 26.2 miles. I just have to go back to the lab and figure out how to get eight more miles of durability out of my body.”
It’s guaranteed that “Rivs,” which is what his friends call him — and also the name he’ll be wearing on his bib — won’t err on the side of caution. But, while he may seem a little bit crazy, he’s not stupid.
“I can say with confidence I know what’s happening when the lights go out,” Puzey said. “It’s not my heart. There’s just not enough (oxygenated) blood to go around. (What happened here last year) was accidental, honestly. I felt really good. The road surface here is very hard, with lots of concrete. That’s the reason the course is so quick. Concrete is more dense than asphalt so, when you step, you get more energy return back up into your body.
“The start was fast, way too fast, but I felt comfortable. I knew the guys around me were running faster than I should be running, but I also know it’s more efficient by about 10 percent being in a pack rather than being out by yourself, like a sail in the wind. It’s a judgment call. Should I keep running faster than I should but be more efficient, or do I go off on my own and have to work extra hard to run the pace I want to run? So I just told myself, ‘Let’s just see how long we can do this.’ And it really did feel comfortable … until it didn’t.”
Puzey lurched across the finish line, staggering rather than striding, and was immediately administered to by the medical staff — not that he recalls much about any of that. Again, the lights had gone out.
Asked why he chose marathoning, given how poorly suited for it his body appears to be, Puzey laughed.
“My older brother Jake got into it because he was chasing a girl on the crosscountry team — literally,” he said. “I was a soccer player, but you don’t have a lot of choice when your older brother chooses to do something. You look up to him so you want to be like him. We’re built about the same and it’s a real struggle for both of us to stay under 180, 190 pounds.
“I give him hell about it all the time. I like to remind him that we could have done something else, something that’s way cooler than distance running.”
Too late.