Turlock's Miguel Nuci is injury-free and chasing Olympic dream

Sprint intervals. Seven miles at marathon pace. Core work. Drills. Twenty miles of slow going.

Miguel Nuci keeps a training log, chronicling in detail his journey as one of the country’s elite marathoners.

There is one run — one singular footstep, actually — that Nuci would like to wipe off the record books.

It came four years ago, on the eve of the 2008 U.S. Olympic Trials in New York City. Waiting for an elevator at his hotel, Nuci acted on instinct.

“I decided to run up the stairs,” he recalled.

Nuci entered the stairwell, skipped over the first step and felt his right knee buckle on the second.

Uh-oh.

As fast as 1-2-3, the course of his professional career was changed. He gutted through the trial the following day, but the pain traveled from his knee to his left hip, culminating in a 31st-place finish.

Now Nuci, with his smooth stride and impeccable physique, is back.

The 32-year-old Turlock resident will toe the line at Saturday’s Olympic marathon trials in Houston, rubbing shoulders with favorites Ryan Hall and Meb Keflezighi, whose strides over the last four years have earned them worldwide acclaim and lucrative sponsorships.

The top three finishers earn a spot on the Olympic team that will compete in London this summer.

“Everyone wants to be in the top three, but at the same time I’m trying to be realistic,” said Nuci, who spent his final workout Tuesday circling the storm basin at Walnut Elementary School in Turlock. “I just want a great race, and with a great race anything can happen.”

Nuci’s story is different than most, his career arc seemingly changed by an ill-fated decision to take the stairs four years ago.

The injury set off a wave of setbacks to his legs and a sickness only doctors at the Stanford Medical Center could explain, Nuci said. Sponsored by Adidas and touted on running message boards as a darkhorse contender going into the 2008 trials, Nuci back-slid.

He has completed just four marathons in the last four years and took a “DNF” in another. He’s also retired twice, convinced his body — a 5-foot-9 frame with muscles strung like wire around his legs and arms — was damaged goods.

Each time he’s come back, though, because his will to compete and passion for running still burns.

“All the experiences I’ve had in racing, all these years of hard training, I think I still have it in my legs,” said Nuci, a former runner at Cal State Stanislaus who works part-time at Togo’s.

Injuries pile up

Maria Nuci laughed nervously at her own joke, afraid she had just jinxed the man she married in 2006.

“We’re hoping there’s not a dark cloud over his head,” she quipped Monday.

The shadow of injury and illness can be long.

Nuci has seemingly endured it all in the wake of his signature performance.

In 2007, he finished 15th on running’s biggest stage, the Boston Marathon. He was the second-fastest American finisher (2 hours, 20 minutes, 18 seconds).

Life was good.

The pace, however, was just too quick. Nuci, who logged 200 miles per week at the height of his training, never gave his body time to recover after Boston and suffered a micro tear in his right knee during build-up for the ’08 trials.

Then came the stumble in the stairwell and host of other setbacks.

Nuci injured his right ankle during the 2008 New York City Marathon, but still finished in 2:25.53. He clocked a 2:19.36 at the California International Marathon later that year, placing sixth on that downhill track, but a post-race check-up revealed Nuci’s right foot was in dire shape. He had a stress fracture on his talus bone, tendinitis in his ankle and arthritis through the top of his foot.

“After that, it was a struggle to get healthy,” he said.

The worst lay in wait.

At the 2010 U.S. 25K Championships in Michigan, Nuci misjudged colitis — an inflammation of the large intestine — for butterflies. He raced anyway, placing 10th pumped full of painkillers and bravado.

“That’s how mentally tough he is,” said coach Roberto Quintana, a professor of exercise physiology at Sacramento State. Quintana, a former assistant coach at Humboldt State and Northern Colorado, has worked with Nuci since 2006. “He’ll go to places others can’t.”

It would cost him dearly, though.

He spent the next week at Emanuel Medical Center in Turlock, where his symptoms included vomiting blood, and was referred to Stanford, where doctors finally diagnosed his condition.

Retirement No. 1 followed.

“It’s always frustrating,” Maria said, “because I see what he goes through every day. He runs morning, afternoon and night. It’s intense just doing the endurance, the distance that he goes.

“Every time, for the last four or five years, he’s been ready for a race, but there’s been something that’s held him back. Being sick. Waking up with a swollen knee. All those little obstacles along the way that have prevented him from doing what he wants to do.

“It’s frustrating because I can’t help him.”

Retirement short-lived

Nuci qualified for Saturday’s trials at the Los Angeles Marathon in March, trudging through wet conditions to post a time of 2 hours, 18 minutes and 33 seconds.

Again, he retired.

“I thought I could go 2:12, 2:13 — that was the shape I thought I was in,” Nuci said. “2:18, for me, it’s fast and it might seem I’m not happy with it. It’s a qualifier, but in the end, I put in too much time and sacrificed too many things. So I stopped running.”

It wouldn’t last long.

Casual jogs quickly morphed into training exercises.

He spent the summer at Mammoth Lakes and came home re-energized. He won three races in the fall — the Morgan Hill Half Marathon, the Move Your Bones 5K in Turlock and Two Cities Marathon in Fresno.

He feels fresh, and has shown no lingering effects from his bout with colitis.

“I feel like I can still run faster. If I can run well it’s going to be special, because I’ve gone through the injuries and sickness,” Nuci said. “I’ve been through so much.”

He has carried one important lesson with him to Houston: “I just have to be patient,” he said, “and wait for the elevator.”

This story was originally published January 12, 2012 at 10:02 PM with the headline "Turlock's Miguel Nuci is injury-free and chasing Olympic dream."