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Outside Magazine July 2003

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Run For It
It sounds too good to be true: a star miler turned criminal goes to prison, links up with a legendary track coach, trains behind bars until his feet bleed, and earns a spot on the U.S. Olympic team. Is the real world ready for Jon Gill's dream?

By Andrew Tilin


	(Photograph by Jake Chessum)

ON A PERFECT DAY FOR A JAILBREAK, Jon Gill snugs up his running shoes and takes a few deep breaths. It's a warm March morning in 2002, and under a sunny Oregon sky, Gill jogs past some prison guards and ratchets up his speed, moving faster until he reaches both optimum velocity and a familiar dream state. His body continues to trace the perimeter of the small compound, but in Gill's mind, he's busted out. Gone. Not only from the Department of Corrections' South Fork Forest Camp but from Oregon, the Northwest, the entire continent.

Gill's vision takes him to the Olympic Stadium in Athens, Greece. It's August 2004, and the crowd is coming to life as he and a stellar field launch into the final of the men's 1,500 meters. Gill's spikes claw the track, his Team USA shorts slap his thighs. Kids everywhere dream about winning the Super Bowl or the World Cup. Gill, a 34-year-old convicted felon serving a 70-month sentence for robbing a pizza joint, thinks about only one thing: victory in the Olympic 1,500.

While Gill runs, I watch his form. His route comes within 50 feet of where I'm standing, just beyond the fenceless boundary at South Fork. I've come to the prison, 60 miles west of Portland, to see if Gill really is what he claims to be: a world-class runner, talented enough not only to make the United States Olympic team but to win a medal against the best middle-distance athletes on the planet.

Gill certainly looks good, with the bolt-upright stance and springy feet of a champion. He kicks up puffs of dust with his too-small New Balance shoes as he rips by again. He's about an hour into his workout now, and before long he'll have to wind down.

In Gill's fantasy race it's a different story: He's fast approaching the finish line, chugging hard with 400 meters left. Morocco's Hicham El Guerrouj, the event's world record holder, accelerates into the lead. Gill doggedly drops into his slipstream—a wise move in the 1,500, arguably the toughest event in track. Athletes run dangerously close to their maximum until, amid the confusion created by flying elbows, burning muscles, and oxygen-depleted brains, each runner makes a split-second decision about when to go all out for the tape. Miscalculate that breakaway and your overtaxed legs will seize so badly that you can barely keep moving.

Entering the homestretch, Gill gains a step on El Guerrouj and pulls even. He can see the finish, which the great British miler Roger Bannister once described as "the faint line...that stood ahead as a haven of peace." With his back arched, Gill crosses the line just ahead of El Guerrouj. The crowd goes nuts as Gill pumps his fist and settles into a victory lap—the whole glorious, melodramatic Olympic Moment bit.

Then Gill slows to a jog and, just like that, the daydream fades away. Chest heaving, he's back inside the drab boundaries of reality: all alone in front of the South Fork mess hall.

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