Why Luke Puskedra Is Coming Out of Retirement for the U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials

Can Luke Puskedra come out of retirement and make the 2020 U.S. Olympic team by finishing in the top three of Saturday’s U.S. Olympic Marathon trials? If you ask Luke Puskedra, even he thinks it’s a long shot.

“I can’t see it,” Puskedra says. “But, maybe. I don’t have the pressure that I did in 2016, where it was life or death for me.”

At the U.S. Olympic marathon trials in Los Angeles four years ago, Puskedra entered the race as a strong contender, owning 2015’s fastest American marathon time with a 2:10:54 at the Chicago Marathon. But Puskedra fell short, finishing in fourth place and just nearly missing out on a spot on the team for Rio 2016 by 72 seconds. After the race, he boarded his flight back home to Eugene, Ore., and told his wife, Trudie, that he would need to make some sacrifices to ensure his place on the team for 2020. The three men who finished in front of him either went to altitude to train or spent time in warm weather to prepare for the conditions, he explained. He would need time away from his family to train. But before they could make any decisions, the Puskedras received harrowing news.

Shortly after the trials in ’16, the Puskedras' seven-month-old daughter, Penelope, was diagnosed with Neuroblastoma, a cancerous tumor most commonly found in the nerve tissue of children. Many members of the running community donated more than $77,000 to a GoFundMe account set up by a Puskedra family friend to help cover rising medical costs. Luke and Trudie spent most of their year bringing Penelope to get treatments; running was far from Puskedra’s mind. By June, after undergoing surgery to remove the tumor and two rounds of chemotherapy, Penelope was in remission.

After Penelope’s full recovery, Puskedra resumed racing, but struggled in his three marathons in 2017 and ’18. At the Houston Half Marathon in Jan. 2019, Puskedra ran 67:44—more than six minutes slower than his personal best and 14 seconds behind the top American woman. Last February, he sat down with his wife and made the decision to retire from professional running to focus on a career in real estate.

“It was an emotional rollercoaster where I wasn’t getting the same rewards from running that I had been getting,” Puskedra says. “I felt like I was hitting my head against the wall and just trying to train more and more...I really just wasn’t enjoying it anymore.”

As a professional runner, Puskedra would sleep 12 hours at night and nap three hours during the day. But after retiring, Puskedra found himself with more time in his day—he woke up at 4 a.m. but couldn’t start making work calls until about 8 a.m., so he’d fill his time with business planning. But his legs got restless.

At church, the Puskedras met a group of men who regularly gathered for 6 a.m. morning runs during the week. They nicknamed the club, “The Worst Pace Scenario." Puskedra describes the group as “a group of older guys who are professionals and the best at what they do in their community.”

The men taught him how to run easy, something he never actually learned from training alongside the likes of Olympic medalists Galen Rupp and Mo Farah. At the University of Oregon and throughout his post-collegiate running career, Puskedra’s “easy days” consisted of runs at a 5:30 to 5:40 pace per mile. But his new running partners forced him to run slow—as leisurely as an 8-minute pace per mile for an hour. Once famous for running up to 140 miles per week in training, Puskedra now averages 90 to 95 miles of running over just six days per week. Instead of extreme cross training sessions, he spends his time cold calling, door knocking and selling homes.

“Looking back, I was just so focused on doing more,” Puskedra says. “When I started feeling good near the end of training, I thought I needed to work harder and push harder. It was psychotic looking at it now.”

And yet, despite the drastic decrease in training and intensity, Puskedra now feels reconnected with and rewarded by the sport of running again. It’s the reason why he’s ended his retirement to take a shot at making the U.S. team for Tokyo 2020. And although he might not believe in his chances, his supporters do: The Worst Pace Scenario members booked their flights to Atlanta 16 weeks ago, and his wife and two daughters will be there too. And regardless of the result on Saturday, it won't be nearly as high pressure as it was four years ago.

“I’ve gotten this new joy for running that I never thought I was going to have because I only thought of it as a job,” Puskedra says. “If I [don't] make the team, it would be nice if I could still compete at a semi-elite level and do it for myself. Running is now more of my thing that I get to do.”