The IAAF World Championships begin on August 22 in Beijing, China. Nick Willis of New Zealand begins his quest for another global championship medal—he won silver at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing—with the first round of the 1500 meters on August 27. As doping allegations cloud track and field this summer, Willis has been outspoken about performance-enhancing drugs on social media and in the press. Running Times profiled Willis in the July/August 2015 issue as he prepared for the 2015 outdoor season and beyond.

It’s a freezing Saturday evening in Boston, early February, and the city shivers in a bone-chilling wind. The streets are dark, deserted, the ice-rink sidewalks flanked on each side by imposing, 5-foot mounds of snow. A few thousand track fans begin filtering out of the Reggie Lewis Center in Roxbury, hunching their shoulders and holding their arms close, trying to preserve heat.

Inside the arena, after the fans have gone home, one of the world's best milers runs lap after tedious lap with fluid precision, sweat pouring down his face. His blank expression shows little sign of the extraordinary stress his body endured a short while ago, nor is there any euphoric afterglow at his achievement. An hour earlier, Nick Willis of New Zealand had set a national indoor record for the mile, destroying a world-class field over the final two laps to win in 3:51.61.

His work wasn't done. After the race, everyone wants a piece of the champion—a handshake, an interview, an autograph, a selfie.

Willis, 32, is no stranger to this. More than a decade has passed since he ascended to the sport's top tier. His 3:32.68 1500m in Rome in 2004 marked him as a 21-year-old with a bright future and a bucket of talent—even though he'd already come pretty close to throwing it all away.

By now he knows, better than most, what the view is like at the top. In 2006, Willis won the Commonwealth Games 1500m and became a star in his native country. Two years later, in Beijing, he won the Olympic silver medal.

His longevity, though, sets him apart. Willis' improvement curve still arcs upward despite accepted wisdom insisting he should be in decline. Last year, at the age of 31, he ran personal bests for the 1500m (3:29.91)—he improved that personal best on July 17 of this year with a 3:29.66—and mile (3:49.83). Time has so far given him a free pass, and much of that is due to the three people who make Willis tick.

His own little holy trinity is present that night in Boston, positioned on the infield as Willis laces up his running shoes and prepares to click off his postrace workout of 10 x 400m in a controlled 64 seconds with a 100m jog recovery. There, still beaming over his performance, stands Willis' wife of seven years, Sierra, the woman whose devotion to his career sees her fulfilling several roles—nutritionist, chef, coach, psychologist, and more. In her arms is Lachlan, their son, 19 months old. He's the reason Willis sleeps a little less these days, but he's also the reason he approaches the sport with a fresh, balanced perspective, unburdened by the stresses he carried in the past.

Just across the track from them, a silver-haired man stands in isolation, observing his protégé from beneath a navy University of Michigan hat. He looks on as Willis leans forward, clicks his watch, and breaks into his elegant stride. The smile Willis wore for much of the past hour is gone, the race already consigned to history, his attention shifted as fast as that of a deli worker turning to another customer. Next.

As Willis circles the track, the coach, Ron Warhurst, pivots, following him with his eyes, studying his pupil. There is no denying it: Willis looks better than ever.

Nick Willis spikes up before the 2014 Michigan Track Classic mile, a race he organized and would go on to win. Peter Hoffman

It could have been different. Rewind 13 years, back to the day Warhurst first laid eyes on the cocky, hyped-up kid from New Zealand. Truth be told, the Michigan coach wasn't all that impressed. He went to the airport with one of his athletes, Tim Broe, to collect the incoming freshman, and Warhurst can still remember the words he quietly said to Broe upon catching sight of the new arrival: “He looks a little soft.”

A few days later, he put Willis through his first workout. Upon seeing him run, Warhurst again turned to Broe: “Timmy, he might look a little soft, but he can run like hell.” The only problem with the freshman was that he could also drink like hell.

His drinking habit went back to his teens, when it wasn't so much an indulgence as a way of life for many youngsters in Lower Hutt, New Zealand. “Basically, since I was 12, I binge drank twice a week, every week,” he says. “It's what all my friends did, and I thought, ‘Do I find a new group of friends, or do I join in?’ So I dived in, headfirst.”

By the time he got to Michigan, Willis found that the freedom allowed by Warhurst only added to his hedonistic tendencies. “I was the kid trying to get everyone out to parties,” he says, “trying to teach these young rookie Americans what the real world was like. I justified the drinking because I always went to bed at a good hour, but it made me do stupid things.”

Warhurst is matter-of-fact about that time. “For one year, Nick was full-out, like most 19-year-old kids away from home,” he says. “He got it out of his system. As they get older, they grow out of that phase, and if they don't, they've got serious issues.” By then, Willis already did have relatively serious issues, though on the track his talent was so great that it papered over the cracks. He had been a standout junior, having run a 4:01 mile at the age of 17, with a hard-wired desire that couldn't be coached. It was there as far back as he could remember, back when he began competing as a 5-year-old.

That burning desire, Willis believes, was spawned from the void felt by the absence of his mother, who passed away from cancer when Willis was 4. “I had an unnatural amount of motivation,” he recalls. “I've always used sport as a means to get respect and adulation from the community after my mum died. I wanted to feel like I had some means of significance. There was something in my mind, some innate desire. I had to win.”

Willis rarely lost, but at Michigan he became aware that his drinking was leading him down a dark path. “I asked myself, ‘Is this who I really want to become, a fella that uses and abuses people?’ I realized, if my mum's up there in heaven, then there must be a God up there, too.”

Willis was brought up as a regular church-goer, but he always had to be dragged there. Now, he wanted to take the leap of faith. His older brother, Steve, put him in touch with a group called Athletes in Action, a Christian sports ministry on campus. Willis also began to finally deal with the grief of his mother's passing, which he had stored up throughout his adolescence. “It was a really healthy process,” he says. “I started to actually enjoy crying and remembering my mother. My outlook on how I approached university life was completely different from then.”

It was a complete turn. Willis hasn't touched a drop of alcohol since, and he also decided to take two full years off from relationships. “I had nothing to do with girls other than hanging out in a group,” he says. “I had to learn to be a man first.” It wasn't long after, while walking through the Michigan campus, that he crossed paths with Sierra, a tall, slim, black-haired English major with a wide smile. “I thought I had no chance,” Willis recalls. They were part of the same Christian organization on campus, but they didn't know each other.

When Willis plucked up the courage to ask her out, he did so in his usual manner—by going all-out. “He gave me an over-the-top invitation to a dinner party for me and my friends,” she says. “They got dressed up, bought us flowers, then had a swing dance instructor come in and give us a private lesson. After that, I pretty much knew.” Eleven months later, they married.

“Unfortunately,” Willis says with a smile, “I've never lived up to that sort of romance again.”

Willis spends time at home in Michigan with Sierra and Lachlan, who keep him grounded. Peter Hoffman

Over the past eight years, the couple—who split time between Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Lower Hutt, New Zealand—has traveled the world together, becoming a two-person cog in the wheel of the movable show that is the track and field circuit. Indeed, it can occasionally feel like a circus—new place, new stadium, new fans, same performers—but the couple are acutely aware of how lucky they are to live this life. “I love it,” Sierra says. “It's a strange little bubble of a world. I felt out of place to begin with, but as time has gone by I've gotten to know people better, and I feel at home.”

Being able to feel at home on the road is one way Willis maintains his enthusiasm for the sport. Running fast might have given him this life, but he's determined not to narrow his existence to that alone. Willis cultivates friendships all over the world. In Spoleto, Italy, for example, he is a hero to local runners, owing to an encounter in 2010 with the proprietor of a local newsstand, Piergiorgio Conti, a 2:22 marathoner he met while based in the city between races. They remain close friends today, and Willis paced Conti through much of the New York City Marathon in 2013. “Things like that make us excited about going to Europe every year,” Willis says, “not just to race, but to catch up with friends.”

Along with that, Willis tries to strike a balance in his life—which can, by its nature, feel sometimes narrow—by maintaining outside interests. In his spare time, he participates in speed golf, a sport where your time around the course is as essential as your precision with a club; he finished 13th in the world championships two years ago.

Willis has tried his hand at meet directing. For the past two years, he and Sierra have organized the Michigan Track Classic, a small-venue event that boasts an elite field. The race was initially created to help Willis prepare for the 2013 world championships without having to travel to Europe after the birth of his son. It proved a massive success, but they have since taken leave of the organizational burden. “You've got so many issues with liabilities,” he says. “Those stresses burned me out quite a bit afterward, dealing with the anxiety that if something went wrong, you could get thrown in prison or sued.” Willis now plans to stick to competing in races for the next couple of years as they travel the Diamond League circuit every summer.

While traveling, they prefer to rent apartments rather than stay in designated meet hotels. That way they can better immerse themselves in the local culture. When you've been on the track merry-go-round for over a decade, it's one way to keep things fresh. “We basically get to be tourists on someone else's dime,” Willis says. “It can become a bit routine, so you need to enjoy the culture if you're doing it as long as I have.”

Indeed, little has changed, with the exception of Sierra and Lachlan joining him, since Willis began living the professional athlete lifestyle over a decade ago. Sure, he got faster, richer, and more recognizable, but he drives the same car now that he did when he first turned professional 11 years ago—a $13,000 Pontiac Vibe.

As with his coach, his training, or his life in Ann Arbor, Willis sees no reason to change. He's found the formula now; he knows what works.

Ron Warhurst (left), who has guided Willis for 13 years, discusses the workout of the day at the University of Michigan track. Peter Hoffman

“Everything he's learned has been from me,” Warhurst says, “and he learns about himself from the training. He trusts me explicitly with workouts and I trust him with his judgment, so he could probably train himself. But every athlete needs someone to ask, ‘Am I doing it right?’”

Recently, Willis has trained like a 5,000m runner for much of the year, finding that it produces the best results over 1500m. He covers 85 to 90 miles a week in six or seven training sessions, and he usually takes a rest day. One day is devoted to an 18-to 20-mile long run. Unlike most 1500m runners, Willis does just two workouts a week, but both will be double workouts in the Warhurst style. One will be a tempo run followed immediately by track intervals; the other will be hill reps with track intervals to follow.

Shortly before that opening race of the year in Boston, for example, Willis completed a 4-mile tempo run at 5-minute pace, then ran four 1,000m reps in 2:50, two 300s in 41, two 400s in 56, and closed it all with a 600 in 1:21—at 7,000 feet above sea level in Flagstaff, Arizona. “I like to finish workouts with faster running,” Warhurst says. “The whole thing about international racing, from 600 home, you gotta be able to run fast.”

On his easy days, Willis lets his body tell him how fast to run. “It can be 5:40 pace or 7:40 pace,” he says. “I have a theory: You run as fast as you can handle, without hindering your workouts.”

Though coach and athlete usually come to a consensus on training, the one constant source of friction is race tactics. “Get off that rail, stay off that rail!” Warhurst has said the words so often that they've almost lost their meaning. “He's stubborn,” he says of Willis. “His mentality is: ‘I'm running a shorter distance.’ I say, ‘It doesn't matter a shit what distance you're running if you can't move when you want to move and use your speed.’”

Warhurst may seem like a tough nut, and he is. Before beginning a 35-year coaching tenure at the University of Michigan, he served in the U.S. Marine Corps and earned two Purple Heart medals for service during the Vietnam War. One time, though, late in the summer of 2008, Warhurst's star protege managed to make him cry.

“We've got video evidence,” says Willis, referring to the aftermath of the Olympic 1500m final in Beijing, in which he took the silver medal behind Kenya's Asbel Kiprop. That effort still ranks as the undoubted highlight of his career, though it has been a career marked by enduring achievement overall. Last summer, he fulfilled a lifelong ambition to run under 3:30 for 1500m when he clocked 3:29.91 to finish seventh at the Monaco Diamond League meet. “That was my Roger Bannister moment,” Willis says. “All runners have that number that you dream is possible, and you think, ‘Do I dare to dream?’”

That feeling of finally being able to call himself a 3:29 man was one of his ultimate highs. There have been lows, too. In 2009, Willis underwent surgery on a hip so ragged he could barely walk. In 2010, surgeons cut him open again to repair the meniscus in his knee, and again in 2011. In 2013, he popped a calf muscle in an early-season race and was unable to regain top form for the remainder of the season. For many of those years, his creaking body kept his ambition in shackles.

And then there was London, the 2012 Olympics—the one that got away. That hurt. Seven weeks out from the games, he was flying, and completed one of the best workouts of his life—400m, 800m, 1200m, all run at 59 seconds per lap, followed by 2 x 200m in 26, 2 x 300m in 38, and 400m in 50.5. The problem was, it was too good.

“We got greedy,” he says. “I thought in order to win gold, I needed to be in sub-3:30 shape. I should have waved the red flag and gone back to mileage for a few weeks.” He didn't. Instead, he pushed all-in, which left him running on tired legs in the 1500m final. He finished ninth. “It took close to two years to get over,” he says. “It was only just recently I've been able to go back and watch the race.”

Other aspects of the sport can be a source of frustration as well, such as the scourge of doping. Eight months after the 2008 Olympic final, in which Willis crossed the line third, race winner Rashid Ramzi tested positive for the blood-boosting drug CERA, the next-generation form of EPO, and Willis' initial bronze medal was upgraded to silver.

Did Willis know, standing on that starting line, that Ramzi was dirty? “There wasn't a doubt in my mind,” he says swiftly. Wasn't he angry? “The idea of anger never crosses your mind. Most people who are connected to the sport have a pretty fair idea what's going on, so the anger is when people are getting away with stuff. When someone gets caught it's a time for celebration.”

Today, Willis believes the sport is cleaner than in the past. “I obviously think it still happens, but it's more obvious now [when someone is doping] because you'll have one or two people way out in front, whereas in the past everyone was on it, and they were all up in the front, bunched. I'm fortunate that I haven't had to face that temptation [to dope] that people from certain countries do, or sections of our sport who have managed to set up these walls of protection where there's secrecy around what they're doing, where that temptation is much greater.”

At age 32, Willis shows no sign of losing his foot speed. Peter Hoffman

There was a time, not long after the London Olympics, when Willis thought maybe he should pack it all in—go back to school, find a job, sit at a desk—but he soon snapped out of that phase and recommitted to training. “His personality is so intense,” Sierra says. “He's an all-or-nothing guy; it's impossible for him not to give 100 percent.” And so, at 32, he runs on. Back inside the Reggie Lewis Center, reeling off 32-second laps, Willis' eyes maintain a focus up the track. He knows that the seeds sewn here will eventually be reaped come summer. As he runs, Warhurst maintains his gaze from the infield. He's four decades Willis' senior, but there's a hint of admiration when he speaks of him.

“He's a real cerebral kid, real bright,” Warhurst says, indirectly explaining how Willis is so good after all these years. “He takes good care of himself. We train pretty hard, but we pick certain times where we really hit it. I think he can run 3:28—there's nothing that tells me he's any slower than he was.”

Across from Warhurst, Sierra puts Lachlan down on the track and, as soon as the toddler's feet touch the ground, he bolts from his mother's grasp. “People say he looks like me,” she says, “but the energy levels and the physical exertion are more like Nick. He has that intensity, and he's very driven. He gets on his little bike and wants to practice and doesn't want to stop. I see a lot of Nick's personality in that.”

Meanwhile, slowing to a stop on his 10th and final repetition, Willis is shaking hands with his training partners, among them top American miler Will Leer, after a successful night's work. There's a content look in Willis' eyes. He knows that race was just a checkpoint, a midterm exam that he has passed with ease. The bigger fish, the mile predators who truly pose a threat, will lie in wait later this summer—Kenyans like Kiprop and Silas Kiplagat, America's Matt Centrowitz, Algeria's Taoufik Makhloufi. They're all several years younger and will pose a challenge that Willis must overcome if he is to medal at the world championships in Beijing in August or at next year's Olympic Games in Rio.

He already has an Olympic medal, but what fuels him now is proving it was no fluke. “It'd be a way to stamp my career,” he says. “Quite a few people who win a medal are one-hit wonders, and I'd really like a backup medal. London was an opportunity to do that, and I screwed it up.”

Opportunity looms again. Willis intends not to squander it, and nothing in his form suggests it's an unrealistic goal. Earlier this year, he ran the fastest 100m of his life, 11.5 seconds, in training. He is that rare species—an athlete who has developed wisdom at an age when he's still young enough to use it. What his body might have lost in powers of recovery, his mind has gained by developing an intuitive understanding of what works and what doesn't. “For a long time, I wasn't wise enough to do the right training,” he says, “but as you get older, you have so much experience to make wise decisions.”

It's for this reason the finish line is still nowhere in sight. “I love this sport, and I want to be involved in it to some capacity for my life,” he says. “I can't think about retiring. How many people in the world can say they have a chance at an Olympic medal?”

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