Photo: Paul McMullen (Coast Guard singlet) leads his heat in the 1500 meter race at the USAT&F Olympic Team Trials, Sacramento, 2004.

Paul McMullen is back. Whether as a world-class runner remains to be seen, but back in a big way in the running community.

Writing about McMullen's comebacks has become something of a cottage industry for me. I wrote my first article - a big feature back when the Detroit News still ran big features - in fall 1997, just after he had resumed his comeback after cutting off his big toe and parts of two other toes in a lawn-mower accident just before the national championships, where he had been aiming to win his third-straight outdoor-mile title.

He was serving as a volunteer coach for Bob Parks at his alma mater, Eastern Michigan, and drove with me to a nearby county park for a team workout. Paul was going to join them, but never did. He was having a down day and decided to sit on a picnic table with me and talk.

He was down because of the pain he was suffering. He was down because the prosthetic he'd ordered was useless. He was down because his balance was off without a big toe to push off. He was down because his times weren't coming down. He was down because there seemed a real chance that the injury would defeat him.

The next time I wrote about Paul was for the February-March issue of Michigan Runner. By then the pain and doubts were gone. Fast times had replaced bad times.

I was pitching a profile of Paul to Runner's World magazine, but editor Amby Burfoot was reluctant. He didn't just want a rehash of "runner loses toes." Finally I convinced him there was a good story here. McMullen was coming back hard and RW should tell the world. I convinced Amby so well he told me he was assigning a staff writer to the story; it was too good for a free-lancer.

I blew a gasket. Amby - one of the nicest guys in publishing or running - apologized and gave the story back to me. It ran in the March issue, which hit the newsstands just days before McMullen shocked observers by winning the U.S. indoor title.

McMullen's career never really progressed from there. It didn't match the promise it showed in that magical summer of 1995, when he burst on the scene, or in 1996, when he made the Olympics. In 1995, he finished second in the NCAA mile to the University of Michigan's Kevin Sullivan, then PR'ed at 1,500 meters at a meet in Norway to nail a qualifying time for the world championships in Goteberg, Sweden, where he shocked everyone but himself by making it to the finals.

McMullen ran poorly at the 2000 U.S. Olympic 1,500 Trials and retired. He turned into a self-proclaimed couch potato and put on 40 pounds, paving the way for me to write about yet another comeback, when he began training with Ron Warhurst at U-M during the fall of 2001, during Alan Webb's only year at the school.

That spring I hung around Ann Arbor a few days to profile Warhurst and his runners for MR. To my surprise, McMullen wasn't there. He'd tweaked something or other and was taking time off. Soon, word came that McMullen had retired, again. That he had enlisted in the Coast Guard, sold his gorgeous Victorian house in Ypsilanti and moved to Grand Haven.

Setting the stage for another "he's-back" story. In winter 2004 I saw Paul's name on an agate list of finishers at the national cross-country meet in Indianapolis. He'd finished middle of the pack; not bad for a retired miler. Something was up.

I tracked him down in Grand Haven and was told he wanted to keep a low profile and was avoiding interviews, but had gotten his superiors to go along with his plan to make yet another Olympic team. He was being coached by Warhurst, doing some kick-ass workouts in the pre-dawn dark before reporting for duty, and was expecting big things.

One weekend in May, it looked as if his expectations would come true. On Friday, at the Len Paddock Invitational in Ann Arbor, despite fierce headwinds, he shaved more than four seconds off his best time of the season to win the 1,500 in 3:40.47, just .69 seconds off the all-time U-M track record.

That time broke the Olympic Trials' B standard of 3:43 and left him just shy of the 3:39 A standard.

Then Saturday morning, across the state in Grand Rapids, McMullen won the Fifth Third River Bank Run 5K and $1,000. Pushing just as hard as he had to, he ran 15:07 to nip Kevin Gallagher of Ann Arbor by two seconds.

One of the favorites to make the Olympic team, McMullen ran a poor tactical race in the first preliminary of the 1,500 Trials, getting boxed in and trapped at the rear and failing to advance despite a slow winning time. Time to retire again. Or not.

Just before press time, word came via e-mail from Tony Mifsud that he had just watched a Web cast of an interview Paul conducted with Webb, and the show format even allowed Tony to ask a few questions live.

What's up? Something called www.PaulMcMullen.com. McMullen - erstwhile bookkeeper, house painter, lawn-cutter, world-class miler, Coast Guard swabby - is now an impresario, having launched a Web site and Web cast devoted to the sport of running. I sent Paul an e-mail asking for info and offering some publicity.

He responded, in part:

"It's been a while since the lawnmower and the Runner's World article. I still have the unedited story and wanted to ask your permission to publish it and cite you. The publicity would be an unrepayable gift.

"I think I'm on to something here and have had positive contact with athletes and customers. I'm exhausted now but will contact you over the next couple days. We are going to Chicago tomorrow for Easter and I will check my e-mail a couple times.

"Thanks a million,

"Paul

"P.S. Do you still drive the Ford Probe with 500,000 miles?" Actually it was only 300,000 miles when I drove Paul to practice. His window wouldn't roll down and I had to keep the heat on to keep the engine from overheating, which is why he probably remembers it. And, alas, it died at 350,000 miles.

When Paul got back I was out of town. When I got back, he was gone, so I'll have to depend on his Web site for the rest of this. His home page reads, in part:

"Welcome to PaulMcMullen.com, a Web site with the mission to entertain, educate and inspire. It's Olympian Paul McMullen's new method of using the technology of the Internet to interact with the running public."

The site offers the Web cast, known as the "Big Kicker" show, which will offer weekly live teleconferencing combined with MP3 file sharing. It also includes "The Runner's Institute," offering free things such as diet advice, workouts and tactics, in addition to articles you can buy, such as Paul's 101 things athletes who are being recruited by universities need to know.

Paul writes on his site:

"Inspiration comes most memorably from those of us that have suffered a tragedy and then prevailed. It's the language of the spirit in turmoil that gets our attention and rarely do we hear about the climb back to the top. PaulMcMullen.com is the source of this kind of courageous motivation." Not content to just put up a Web site, McMullen also offers his services as a coach and motivational speaker, saying in the third person that:

"This classic underdog story of overcoming tragedy, self-doubt and fear sets him apart as an expert in the area of athletic achievement. He demonstrates courage by taking action against the certainty of failure. His story, and the way he tells it, describes in no uncertain terms the power of the human spirit to overcome adversity.

"Paul relates to each member of your audience as a classic storyteller, providing them with the details learned from navigating through life's hidden pitfalls of over-confidence, self-limiting beliefs and temptation. He will show you where the drive comes from to transform competitions into celebrations, quitting into going for the win, and individualism into team member ...

"Paul's presentations are more than, 'If I can do it, then so can you.' These exciting roller-coaster presentations provide both the inspiration and the proven tactics to negotiate life's untimely challenges and create your own personal legend."

For more information, check out the Web site. More to come in a later issue about his actual running. MR