Flagstaff wasn't working out. Jen Toomey, one of the best 800-meter runners in the world in 2004 and '05, had been living and training in Arizona for a year, trying to regain her form after a knee injury followed by an adductor strain disrupted her training and ended her hopes of competing in the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens.
Though Toomey had lived happily in Salem since her 1994 graduation from Tufts, she and her husband decided to move across the country in the fall of 2005 so she could train at the Center for High Altitude Training with renowned distance coach Dr. Jack Daniels.
"I thought I needed something different," Toomey said.
Now it was nearing the end of 2006, and Toomey was 34 and going nowhere. Her race times were slow and injuries dogged her. Even workouts became crushingly difficult.
"I'm used to running 80-90 miles a week," she said. "I would go out to run and I couldn't make it a mile. I would have to walk home."
Toomey ran through a string of injuries: stress fractures in both feet, groin pull, torn meniscus in her left knee. She isn't sure whether it was the intensity of the workouts, or the altitude, or the difficulties of her husband's job in Flagstaff that contributed most to her fragile state of mind and body. But it felt a lot like homesickness.
"Ultimately, it didn't work out," she said. "I tended to be injured a lot. When you're out of your element, stress plays a role in you not recovering.
"I'm 36 years old. I went through the whole period of, 'What the heck am I doing? I'm an adult. I want to have a family someday. And I'm sitting here on a bike for 4-5 hours a day and I don't even know if I can run again.' I had been hurt so much I had to take a good look at whether I wanted to continue. Finally I called up my old coach, Tom McDermott, and asked, 'Will you take me back?' I came so close to the Olympics last time. I have to see it through or I'll regret it the rest of my life."
So, Toomey came home to Salem, and she said that since her return some 15 months ago, she has not had a single health issue. Tonight, she'll be back at the Reggie Lewis Center, the oval she calls her home track, to compete in the mile in the Reebok Boston Indoor Games. It will be her first competitive race in two years.
"I've been out of racing for so long, I feel rusty," said Toomey, who has run in several low-key events at Harvard and Boston University on recent weekends. "I ran an 800 last weekend [at Harvard]. My time was not on fire [2:05], but it was good to run."
Jen Lincoln grew up in Branford, Conn., and started her running career at 25, taking on the Boston Marathon on a bet. She beat the coworker who threw down the gauntlet - though she said he never coughed up the $100 - but it was not elite-level stuff. "You know, in Boston we have these bandits in the race . . . ," she said, "and I got beat by a giraffe."
Toomey had demonstrated her talent as a freshman on the high school track team, reaching the Connecticut state final in the 400, but the prerace nerves, the throwing up and all, got to her. She quit and took up diving, ultimately winning a state championship. Then she went off to college, and after graduation she was working for an Internet start-up when the marathon challenge came along. At the time, her physical activity was limited.
"Umm, I rode my bike - not too much," she said.
The marathon - and the six weeks of training she devoted to it - piqued her interest in running again, and she joined a local club. That's where she met her future husband, Mike Toomey, a former state mile champion at Lynn English and an All-American at UMass-Lowell. It was he who pushed her to the middle distances. "He made me hop into the 800," Toomey said. "I said, 'Hmmm, two minutes is better than four hours' . . . so I became an 800 runner."
Toomey trained with Bob Sevene (who had been Joan Benoit Samuelson's coach) for six years as she transformed into a world-class runner, competing in two world championships. The nervousness didn't go away, but she learned how to handle it.
"As a kid, you can't process those feelings," she said. "You don't understand that they're totally normal. I still get nervous, but now I understand. I've come to realize those nerves help you compete at your best."
In 2003, just as Toomey realized she was an Olympic contender, Sevene moved to California.
"I had to scramble to find another coach," she said. "I called up my husband's high school coach, Tom McDermott, and said, 'Hi Tom, this is Mike Toomey's wife. Do you think you can coach me?' That year I won two national championships, all this fairy-tale stuff."
In fact, in 2004 Toomey became the first US athlete, male or female, to win the 800- and 1,500-meter indoor national titles in the same year, and she set the American record in the 1,000 (2:34.19). (She won the 1,500 indoor title again in 2005.) She qualified for the Olympic Trials in the 800 and 1,500 in 2004, but it was then that untended injuries caught up with her. In the first round of the 800 at the world indoor championships, Toomey was clipped from behind by a competitor, landing hard on her knee. She kept running through two more rounds, finishing fourth overall, but the knee continued to swell. With only four months before the Trials, she could not fully heal, and she didn't get out of the first round in the 800. She rebounded to finish second in the 1,500, running a personal best, but the time did not meet the Olympic A standard and she missed out on a trip to Athens.
"I think the [Olympic] standard this time is softer; it's two seconds slower," said Toomey. "The 1,500 for women is wide open, there are a lot of girls who are in that 4:05 range. You have to respect everyone. I've learned through experience who can get to the line healthiest is who is going to win."
Toomey is healthy again, and happy to be running. Toomey said she and her husband, a high school coach, often talk about the number of talented young runners from Massachusetts, few of whom reach the elite level of competition.
"The kids just don't know," Toomey said. "It just takes something a little more, a lot of faith, diligence. You have to keep at it all the time."
Barbara Matson can be reached at matson@globe.com.
