Miles to go before Conner Paez sleeps

An athletic phenom takes the league by storm as a freshman, matures and takes on a leadership role over the years, finishes senior year earning all-conference honors and rides off into the sunset.

It’s a pretty standard story, comforting in its inevitability, but by no means unique to any one program or individual.

If only it were so simple for Conner Paez.

For the senior track and cross country runner, the story started off predictably. Freshman year saw Paez established not only as one of the most promising young runners in the nation — he finished first among freshmen in cross country Heptagonals and competed in the 2011 USA Junior Championships — but as a potential savior for a program that was struggling to find footing in the Ivy League.

Everything was going according to plan. Then he ran into a setback.

A major setback.

The summer following his sensational freshman campaign, Paez was struck by a car while riding his motorcycle to a friend’s house, and went from being the man with the legs that would save Penn’s running program to a man whose legs may never walk again, let alone run.

This incident may come as a surprise to more recent followers of the program, who know Paez for his senior year athletic successes, especially his second-team All-Ivy performance at this year’s cross country Heptagonals.

But what they have witnessed is only one part of a journey that Paez has been on for years.

“It felt great to finally get there,” Paez said of his most recent successes. “It was amazing.”

It’s been almost three years since the accident, and the comeback — for all intents and purposes — is complete. As Paez noted in an understatement for the ages after this year’s Heps, he has “reached his potential.”

But how did a man previously in danger of losing his leg drop a sub-25:00 five-mile time? And how does he follow that up?

The answer is simple: by taking it one mile at a time.

Mile 1: The Fast Start

Phenom.

That’s the word that first comes to mind when thinking about Paez’s freshman year at Penn.

“Conner was the hottest up-and-coming freshman in the league,” assistant coach Robin Martin said during the 2013 track season.

The Ohio native dominated in high school, taking home outdoor track district titles in both the mile and two-mile in his senior year.

Once Paez arrived at Penn, he wasted no time making his presence felt.

In his first season with the squad, Paez finished 20th in cross country Heps, tops among freshmen. He ended his rookie year up with a strong track campaign and some U.S. national competition over the summer.

During Paez’s senior year of high school, Penn men’s cross country squad finished dead last at Heps. But Paez was doing his part to change that, and then some.

“It helped make me to come to Penn because I knew that guys like him were gonna be around,” star junior Thomas Awad said. “Even though the team wasn’t very good ... they had some help, and Paez was one guy who was running very well for himself.”

It suffices to say that things were looking up for the rising sophomore.

“My sophomore year, I was hoping to start getting a school record or two,” Paez said of his goals at the time. “I really wanted to hit the qualifying standards for the Olympic trials for 2012.”

Needless to say, he would need to adjust expectations.

Mile 2: The Setback

Crash.

That’s the word that first comes to mind when thinking about Paez’s accident.

Of course, there is one obvious reason that this is the case — it actually was a crash. On Aug. 7, 2011, a left-turning car, failing to see Paez, struck him while he was driving his motorcycle through an intersection.

The results were gruesome. His left leg and foot were mutilated — with eight different bones broken in total — and massive blood loss almost forced doctors to amputate the leg.

“It was as bad as you could imagine,” Paez’s father, Francis, said. “There were bones sticking out in three places.

“I just held his hand and said, ‘You’re gonna get through this.’”

But Paez didn’t only literally crash in his accident. He also saw all of his lofty goals — the school records, the Olympic qualifying times — crash down around him.

Despite the many long, hard hours he had spent working on his craft throughout his life, it took only an instant for all future prospects to seemingly be destroyed.

“It was hard to stay committed and keep my eye on the goal of returning to running,” Paez said.

“There were so many ups and downs,” he continued. “For about a year, it didn’t feel like I was making any real progress ... I couldn’t move my foot or ankle or anything at all.”

To make matters worse, he was forced to spend the next semester away from Penn, at home with his parents.

“[That] was definitely my lowest part,” he said. “I was pretty much laying around every day for three months.”

Paez had survived the crash, but he had gone from dreaming about Olympic competition to staring at his parents’ ceiling for hours on end.

Mile 3: The Recovery

“In a lot of places in my life, I’ve been able to set my eye on a goal and achieve it,” Paez said. “Just never giving up was probably what allowed me to get to this point.”

Talking about it nowadays, he makes it seem simple, as if all his recent success was the inevitable result of a simple strategy flawlessly executed. But for Paez, the road to recovery was long, winding and arduous.

When he finally returned to campus, he found a new man in charge: current cross country and track coach Steve Dolan. However, the two were on the same team from the very beginning.

Dolan made Paez team manager for cross country and track, and Paez was inspired to work even harder.

“I really wanted to get back to be on the team and deserve a spot,” Paez said.

“I thought, ‘Well, he’ll probably be a manager for the next few years,’” Dolan added. “[But] he knew he would run again.”

When he finally was given the green light to start running again, Paez put his head down, started training and never looked back.

“At one point, I was allowed to run one mile, every other day,” he said. “But my doctor never told me how fast I could run that mile ... So I would just run that mile as fast as I could.

“Every day I would get a little bit faster. Just seeing that progression let me know, ‘This could happen.’”

“He’s pretty much a workhorse,” Awad added. “He’s your typical first one there, last one to leave kind of guy.”

By his junior year, Paez was back on the cross country team and flirting with the times he put up freshman year.

And he was showing no signs of stopping.

Mile 4: The Pinnacle

By last summer, Paez had already completely left his accident behind.

“We don’t really talk about it anymore in our circle,” Dolan said. “He’s just Conner Paez — the runner.”

After all, there’s not much room to worry about the past when you’re trying to keep up with one of the top runners in the country.

“I really fully invested,” he said. “I was like, ‘This is my last year of running. So I’m gonna give it all I got.’”

To Paez, “fully investing” meant traveling to Colorado with Awad to train at altitude, a strategy used by elite runners to help prepare their bodies for oxygen-deprived conditions in races.

“My freshman year I think I ran, at my peak, maybe like 80-mile weeks,” he said. “Last summer I hit 100 miles.”

Despite his time in Colorado, Paez knew that he still had another, even more important mountain to climb: his senior campaign.

And all of the hard work paid off. Paez would establish himself as one of the top runners and leaders for the squad all season.

“He’s a lead-by-example guy,” Dolan said. “He’s not a guy that says a lot, but he works really hard.”

His efforts culminated with a 15th place finish at Heps and a 23rd place finish at Regionals, earning him both All-Ivy and All-Region honors.

“It’s the best possible way I could have ended my cross country career,” Paez said after Regionals. “It felt really good to kind of realize my potential.”

According to his father, though, the success that Conner achieved extended far beyond the individual honors he has picked up over the past year.

“There were a few doctors who told him [he’d never run again],” Francis Paez said. “I love that he had some nice success this year ... but it’s more about the effort that he’s shown along the way.”

It was the type of achievement that would end a Hollywood “comeback” movie.

So where does he go from here?

Mile 5: The Finish Line

If Conner Paez decided to hang up his spikes right now and never run another race, it wouldn’t change anything about his story. He would still have one of the most inspirational careers in the history of Penn Athletics.

But he’s not about to hang up his spikes. He’s currently finishing up his indoor track season and preparing for outdoor track — his final collegiate season — in the spring.

“Outdoor is really where I’m training for,” he said. “[In the 10,000-meters] I’m really hoping to get a Regional qualifying time and see what I can do there.”

Still, even after Paez leaves Penn and stops running for good, the final chapter of his story — as it relates to Penn cross country and track — still will not have been written.

That’s because when asked about his fondest memory from college, after everything he has personally been through and achieved, all he could talk about was his team.

“For me it was this past cross country season at Heps when we got third,” he said. “It’s the highest that our team has gotten in a really long time ...

“As much as I want to be on the team when they [take the next step], what I really want is for the team to continue on after I’m gone and become a powerhouse in the league.”

There’s no telling what challenges Paez will face moving forward, but quite frankly, it’s beside the point.

“He knows how tough he is,” Francis Paez said. “And there’s nothing that can stand in his way.”

Conner Paez hasn’t crossed the finish line — not even close. He still has races to run. And the rest of his life to live.

And miles to go before he sleeps.

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