Grace is probably the antithesis of what Nike Corporation is feeling toward Gabe at the moment.  His running contract is under review and they are considering suspension.  It’s all because Gabe Jennings said he wanted to get there by himself.  He’s designing his own training regime.  Consequently, the twenty-four-year-old broke contract.  He won’t be seen racing in the conventional venues this spring/summer, the penultimate track season before the Olympics in Greece.  Part of Gabe’s challenge took place on a bike - not on the track - where he pedaled six thousand miles to the tropics.  Solo.  As a professional runner it’s outlandish, a totally uncharted road he chose to take, but that’s my son – extreme, risky, controversial.  It was his odyssey back to the cradle of Western competition via the Pan American Highway.

            “This trip is the vision quest,” Gabe told Sieg Lindstrom, managing editor of  Track & Field News, on the day before his departure to South America in late January.  “My dream is in place, but I’ve got to still go through some hurdles on my own – without anybody’s influence, with just my own vibration – grinding it out on this bike getting aerobically fitter than I’ve ever been.”  I remember Gabe had a similar dream once.  “Jennings has the blind passion of a top distance runner,” wrote Tim Layden in Sports Illustrated way back in 1998.  But then something happened in Sydney and he forgot to dance.  Heck, forget the dance.  He didn’t race.  For whatever reason he didn’t engage and couldn’t hear the rhythms of life.   Did he drop the torch, lose it, give it away, or did he merely plant it in Mendocino’s leached-out pygmy soil where only miracles can grow?

     Gabe realizes now that biking to Brazil was a necessary step in recovering psychically and rebuilding confidence.  In order to become a world contender in the 1,500 meters he must first defend his U.S. Olympic Trials Championship.
As he trains along the headlands and through the redwoods he is recapturing his focus, and is determined to medal in Athens.                                                 
                                                                                                                                           Gabe, Feb. 2003 photo Track & Field News

          I’m on fire!  he says. 

          My challenge, like Gabe’s, is to stay present, but the past keeps flaring up – from cold to hot, off again  . . on your mark, get set . . . oh, dear God, the future can be daunting as well.

         “Why does it always have to be all or nothing with Gabe?” Stanford Coach, Vin Lananna, asked me in a rare moment of exasperation following his protégé’s depressing performance at the 1999 NCAA Cross Country Championships.           

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