John Trautmann, 46, will attempt to break Brad Barton’s age 45–49 indoor mile world record of 4:16.83 on Saturday at Boston University’s Valentine Invitational. The record is looking like a realistic possibility after last weekend, when Trautmann set a meet record of 4:18.72 and won the masters mile by more than four seconds at the New Balance Indoor Grand Prix.

Six years ago and 62 pounds heavier than he is now, Trautmann would not have predicted that he’d be running competitively again, let alone chasing records, even though he was once one of the best runners in the country.

Trautmann doesn’t remember the exact details of how his comeback began, but it was probably the summer of 2009 when he made a trip from his home in Manhattan to Rye, New York, to visit his old college coach, Frank Gagliano, who had recently moved to the area.

“I went up there to hang out,” Trautmann says. “I had a pair of running shoes on and he actually had me out there doing some 90-second quarters—all 205, 210 pounds of me.”

Onlookers never would have suspected that Trautmann once broke Steve Prefontaine’s high school 3,000-meter national record or outkicked Bob Kennedy to win the 5,000 meters at the 1992 U.S. Olympic Trials.

“Ninety-second quarters were tough. I was huffing and puffing,” says Trautmann.

At the time, Trautmann wasn’t dreaming about breaking records again.

“I was like, ‘I’m 40 years old, I feel unhealthy, and I really want to lose some weight.’ I didn’t think about running competitively at that point, but I did want to feel better,” he says.

At his high—or low—point, working as a bond trader on Wall Street, Trautmann was packing 210 pounds on his 5-foot-10 frame. His weight didn’t cause him to stand out in a crowd, but he bore little resemblance to the competitive runner who raced at 137 pounds in his prime, in 1992.

“The guys I used to work with [would] laugh at me and say, ‘This guy was on the Olympic team.’ And they’d say, ‘What was he, a shot putter?’” Trautmann says.

He recalls eating poorly. “I’d have like five Krispy Kreme doughnuts and my boss at that time would line them up like the Olympic rings and call them the ‘Olympic breakfast,’” Trautmann says.

As a distance running star for New York’s Monroe-Woodbury High School, Trautmann had once seemed unstoppable. He set the national high school 3000-meter record and held it for 18 years, until Galen Rupp broke it in 2004.

He went on to Georgetown, where Gagliano coached him to an NCAA 5000-meter title in 1990 and additional success that earned him a spot in Georgetown’s Athletic Hall of Fame.

Trautmann made the 1992 Olympic team but was forced to drop out of his 5000-meter semifinal in Barcelona due to an injury to the first metatarsal on his left foot. The injury never really got better. Though he continued to try to run professionally through 1996, he was never able to fulfill his potential, starting a slow and cruel end to his professional career.

“It was a bad breakup with running,” Trautmann says. “I just wanted to get away from running as much as possible, so I lived a lifestyle that was nothing like an athlete’s. I didn’t follow running anymore, and I just ate a lot of bad food.”

Trautmann took a job on Wall Street and immersed himself in it and his newfound sedentary lifestyle.

When he attempted to return to running years later at age 40, he found that he had to take it easy at first. He says he couldn’t run every day “because I was heavy, [which caused] pounding on my knees. Everything would ache afterwards.”

He ran three days a week and cross trained the other days. Trautmann estimates that it took him a year and a half to lose his first 50 pounds, and says it was hard work. He now weighs 148 pounds.

“I set little goals of losing weight, and I continued to build on those goals,” Trautmann says.

Though he wasn’t thinking about records, Gagliano, known by his athletes as "Gags," was.

“After I started to get going, I think Gags brought it up," Trautmann says. "Gags will make you believe things; he’s the greatest motivator I’ve ever met. He makes you believe things and then you do them. I credit him for 90 percent of it.”

For a long time, a comeback wasn’t even a possibility. The foot injury that had ended his career was still preventing him from running.

“I basically wore away all of the cartilage in my toe,” Trautmann says. “It was bone on bone. I couldn’t get on my toes at all.”

Shortly before he turned 40, Trautmann had surgery to repair his condition, which is known as hallux rigidus. He had the surgery not with the goal of getting back into competitive running, but simply to ease the pain he was experiencing.

“[The surgery] fused my toe so there’s no pain anymore, but I can’t bend my toe, which is pretty essential in running,” Trautmann says. “But I found a way to roll out from the outside of my foot up on my toe. My stride isn’t affected as much as you would think, but it is affected a little bit.”

Trautmann is clearly enjoying his rebirth as a runner, and says he rarely compares himself to the runner he was 20 years ago.

“I took so much time off. It’s really like a whole separate career for me,” Trautmann says. “If my career when I was younger had gone into my 30s, I probably wouldn’t be running now, because I’d slowly see my times fall off. But now, since I started up, I’m seeing my times improve every year. Obviously that’s going to stop at some point, but that’s what keeps me motivated, seeing improvement still. It’s because I took so much time off and got so out of shape—that’s what makes it fun.”

On Saturday, he will race in a field comprised mostly of collegians, but that’s something he’s used to, because he does most of his track workouts with members of the NJ/NY Track Club, a group of young professional runners Gagliano coaches.

In addition crediting Gagliano, Trautmann credits his training partners, whom he meets once or twice per week, for his success.

“I love working out with these guys; they help me take it to another level. I get race jitters every time I come to workouts,” Trautmann says.

Sometimes he’ll run with the women. (“When we do speed stuff, they kick my butt,” he says.) Other times he’ll run with the faster men, but he’ll do a modified version of their workout.

“A few weeks ago, one of the guys was doing 8 x 800 in 2:10, or maybe six, and I did four, so I had about five minutes rest and he had like two minutes rest, or something,” Trautmann says.

Trautmann has the flexibility in his schedule to be able to work out with the NJ/NY Track Club now because in July, the company he had been working for shut down his desk.

“At that point, I was like, ‘You know what? I have an opportunity now to actually train like I used to train,’” Trautmann says. “I decided I would give 100 percent to running for six months and see what happens. Once the indoor season’s over, I’ll hopefully go back to work. And if I’m going to run outdoors, bank on a lot of the fitness I’ve gotten over the past six months.”

Trautmann estimates that in his prime, he’d average 100 miles per week leading up to his season, and drop that down to 80 miles during the racing season. In the fall, he averaged about 80 miles per week, and now, during his racing season, he’s down to 55 to 65.

At his best, Trautmann ran the mile in 3:58. He thought he could run faster at the time, but it was never his primary event. Last winter, at age 45, Trautmann ran the mile in 4:17.30, just .47 of a second slower than Barton’s record.

“I think I’m a lot fitter this year. I’m definitely fit enough to get [the record], it’s a matter of doing it,” Trautmann says.

Trautmann says he’d also be interested in seeing what he could do for the 800 and 3000, but his primary focus at the moment is surpassing the mile record, and he’s not thinking too far beyond that.

“My body’s pretty much good for one season a year,” Trautmann says. “If I can keep going through outdoors, I’m going to try. But my philosophy is to train pretty intensely for about six months, get the most out of my body, and then I really need to take some down time, at this point in my career.”

In the bigger picture, however, Trautmann would like to continue running competitively for many years.

“If I accomplish [my] goals, I’ll probably take it easy for a couple years and kind of ramp it up again when I’m 50. [I wouldn’t] get out of shape, but [I wouldn’t] train as hard,” Trautmann says. “I’d like to keep running until I’m older, until I’m in my 60s, but I don’t think I can consistently grind out the training I’m doing now. I think I have to take some years where I kind of back it down a bit.”

Trautmann says the training he did 20 years ago is very similar to the training he does today, partially because Gagliano’s coaching philosophy has not changed. He does, however, run his recovery days slower.

“I run very slow, but I also run hard three days a week. I can’t recover unless I run 8- to 9-minute pace,” Trautmann says.

He does most of his recovery runs in Central Park or, during the winter, on the treadmill, due to his dislike of the cold.

Trautmann also says that in addition to his coaching philosophy remaining the same, Gagliano himself has not changed too much over the past 25 years.

“I think he’s mellowed out a little bit, but he’s the same guy,” Trautmann says. “He’s great. He’s just a great motivator and gets you do things you never thought you could do. Ask anyone who’s ever been coached by him. I can’t say enough good things about him.”

Though his first exit from the sport was a painful one, Trautmann is thankful to have a second shot at high-level running and he has made peace with his professional running career.

“I did what I could do,” he says. “The injury I had, there was nothing I could have done about it, so I really don’t have regrets. I’m glad I didn’t get that injury in 1991, because then I never would have made an Olympic team. It came along in '92 and at least I made the team. Of course I wish I could have run in ‘96 in Atlanta and maybe 2000, but there are a lot of guys who didn’t get the chance to run in one Olympics who probably had a lot of talent. So I can’t look back with any regrets.”

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io