In May 2002, Webb quit school and turned pro, trading his college eligibility for a reported six-year, seven-figure sponsorship deal with Nike. It was a controversial move that raised eyebrows in the professional running community and among his former teammates at Michigan. "I was definitely disappointed that he left," says Kevin Sullivan, 34, a four-time NCAA middle-distance champion for the Wolverines who was training as a pro and moonlighting as Warhurst's assistant coach that season. "But he was unhappy, and Ron was having to put more attention into making him happy and taking away from the rest of the guys on the team. It was just not good across the board."

Perhaps more surprising was Webb's plan to reunite with Raczko, who was still coaching boys' track at Reston's South Lakes High School. It was as if Derek Jeter had walked out on the Yankees to train with his Little League coach—but Webb didn't care. He just wanted to get his groove back, even if it meant putting his professional career in the hands of a guy who taught fourth-period gym.

"Everybody gave me so much crap for leaving [Michigan]. They'd say, 'Your high school coach is your coach?!' " Webb recalled. "They thought it was really weird. But Coach has this amazing ability to see the big picture, and plan far ahead, and I didn't want to give that up. Whatever it took to train with him again, I was going to do." Sullivan, for one, saw the logic in Webb's loyalty. "One of the most underrated things in sports is coaching, and there isn't any magic to it," he says. "An athlete and a coach that have chemistry will be successful. And Alan and Scott have real chemistry."

The South Lakes High track is your basic oval: a quarter-mile around with painted white lanes and concrete bleachers and clumps of disinterested teens in too-tight jeans, lorded over on a drizzly October Friday by a stern, buzz-cut gym teacher with a clipboard. A month has passed since Webb's win at Fifth Avenue, and he's on hiatus in Reston, recovering from the 2007 season before Olympic training starts in earnest in January.

"This is where it all began," he says, gesturing to the track as he climbs out of his Honda hybrid (vanity plate: "1-mile") in the school parking lot. Webb was born in Michigan but grew up in this woodsy planned suburb 20 miles west of Washington, D.C. The second of three brothers, he swam competitively for most of his childhood and started running as a freshman in high school. He stood out immediately. That year, he won the state championships in the two-mile; the next, he broke the national sophomore record in the mile.

The gym teacher blows his whistle and walks toward Webb. It's Scott Brown, his high school swim coach. "What's goin' on, man?" Brown asks in a smooth Virginia drawl, raising his hand for a high five.

Webb cracks a wiseguy grin and slaps Brown's palm. "Chillin', reminiscin' . . . Old times!"

In a lot of ways, Webb's life now isn't much different from a decade ago. He owns a house just a few miles from the nouveau colonial he grew up in, where Steve and Kathy Webb—a World Bank economist and speech pathologist, respectively—still live. His roommate, Joe Zak, has been his best friend since kindergarten. He still runs at South Lakes occasionally, kicking out long strides on the track where he first learned to race, and he's still taking orders from Scott Raczko, the guy who bossed him around when he was a gangly adolescent with braces and zits.

"Coach Brown was pissed when I quit swimming," Webb says, pointing toward him.

"I tried. I tried so hard to do both!"

"I know you did," says Brown. "But you had another ear pushed on you at the same time. Who was that, I wonder?" He pauses and scowls in jest. "His coach."

Webb and Raczko—who's at nearby Westfield High today, where he works as the head track coach—make an odd couple. While Webb is all sharp angles and goofy enthusiasm, Raczko, 36, a former college runner, is barrel-chested and borders on chubby, with hooded eyes and an off-putting reticence. He left South Lakes in 2003 to coach Webb full time, but has since returned to coaching students again, too. At the Fifth Avenue Mile, in his black warm-up pants and matching windbreaker, Raczko looked more like a nightclub bouncer than the guy attempting to mastermind an elite athlete's comeback.

At first, that might have been part of the problem. When Webb moved home from Michigan, he and Raczko were both new to the professional scene. Desperate to get Webb's running back on track, they experimented with everything from counting calories and reducing Webb's mileage to decamping to Albuquerque so he could train at altitude. Nothing worked. "I did terrible in almost every race I entered in 2003, and all the media buzz basically fizzled," admits Webb. The low point came that summer, when he was sidelined with appendicitis.

That fall, they decided to go back to what they knew best: training hard. Webb's daily routine included running eight to ten miles a day and weight- and cross-training sessions at the local YMCA—with only one day off per month for recovery. The mileage was just as intense as it had been at Michigan, but his training was more varied, and he was back with Coach—just the way he liked it.