I'm about to stand corrected. Here's something I wrote for MR late last year: Let's see. Kelli White wins the 100 and the 200 at the World Track and Field Championships in Paris in August but is threatened with disqualification because she tests positive for drugs, right? Yep, that's what they said. International Association of Athletics officials said she tested positive for modafinil, which she and her doctor claimed was prescribed to fight narcolepsy, an inherited sleeping disorder.

Where it gets really interesting is the modafinil was not on the list of prohibited substances agents and athletes are warned about. So she was guilty of taking something that wasn't against the rules. And threatened with disqualification and suspension for doing so.

There's a term for that: ex post facto. In America, at least, it's illegal to charge people with crimes that weren't crimes when they committed them.

In May, a tearful White apologized to the world of track and field, saying she'd let her sport, self and family down when she cheated by taking designer steroids last year. Her gold medals were stripped from her, and she was suspended from competition for two years.

Turned out she wasn't fighting narcolepsy, after all. She was fighting the natural order of things, guilty of taking drugs to allow her to train harder and race faster, and to steal glory and medals that should have gone to others.

The truth came to light in the federal probe of BALCO, the California lab charged with selling designer steroids to all manner of well-known athletes. Barry Bonds' trainer was one of them, though of course he denies that the 73 home runs - or was it 83? - Bonds hit in 2001 was anything but a product of God-given ability, eating his Wheaties, saying his prayers and working out in the off-season.

A Marion Jones check showed up in BALCO accounts, but she denies writing it, says it's all a mistake, and at press time was fighting through her attorneys to remain eligible for the Olympics this summer in Athens. The golden girl who was the darling of the U.S. media four years ago has lost her shine; the gold perhaps was brass.

So what of my premise that ex post facto should prevent someone from being punished for taking a drug that wasn't proscribed? Intention must rule. You go to a designer lab to take the newest, as-yet-undectable version of drugs you know would be illegal if anyone knew about them, then you deserve what you get.

Taking drugs is a risk-reward equation. Athletes balance the risk of doing their bodies long-term damage and getting caught, versus the rewards. Time to change the equation. Two-year suspensions aren't enough when the act is proven to be as intentional as White's. They ought to ban her and others for life.

Save the two-year suspensions for those having trouble staying awake.

The first Friday night in May, at the Len Paddock Invitational in Ann Arbor, despite fierce headwinds, Paul McMullen shaved more than four seconds off his best time of the season to win the 1,500 meters in 3:40.47, just .69 seconds off the all-time University of Michigan track record.

That time broke the Olympic trials' B standard of 3:43 and left him just shy of the 3:39 A standard. The B standard allows runners to compete if they are needed to fill out early heats. The A standard means guaranteed entry into July's trials for the Athens Olympics.

Ohio State's outstanding miler, Rob Myers, who ran 3:40.08 at the indoor world championships last winter, was tucked behind McMullen the entire race and as they came around the final turn into the wind and the home straightway, it looked as if he would slingshot past the much- larger McMullen.

But McMullen pulled away easily. Myers finished in 3:41:13. Then Saturday morning, across the state in Grand Rapids, McMullen won the 5K and $1,000 at the Fifth Third River Bank Run. Running just as hard as he needed to, he finished in 15:07 to nip Kevin Gallagher of Ann Arbor by two seconds.

At press time, McMullen, who runs for the Coast Guard, was scheduled to attend an Olympic training camp in Ann Arbor from May 31 through June 5, then run a meet in Hillsdale in June and one in Bloomington, Ind., in early July to try to hit both the A standard and the 3:36 qualifying time needed to compete in Athens.

McMullen is a nice guy, definitely a character who has his own drum playing the inner beat for him. Howie Beardsley is a nice guy, too. Too bad they didn't have a chance to find that out about each other.

Beardsley is a long-time sports writer for the Grand Rapids Press. I've ridden the River Bank Run press truck with him for more years than I care to recall. We help each other get all the splits, and he fills me in on stories he's picked up in days leading up to the event as elite runners hit town and attend to their PR duties.

Beardsley is one of those rare big-city sports writers who loves writing about running. He is passionate, even wide eyed, about his hometown event and always waxes enthusiastically about the race and its entrants.

This year, for the first time ever, the River Bank Run offered prize money in the 5K, hoping to attract interest and more elite runners. It worked. It attracted McMullen, one of his generation's best runners. Mix in McMullen's interesting background - former Olympian who survived a lawnmower accident and the loss of parts of several toes - and his entry cried out for media coverage.

And media coverage, after all, is among reasons sponsors put lots of money into events, including the generally-overlooked River Bank Run 5K.

The organizers tipped Howie to the McMullen angle and, all excited, he called Paul. But Paul isn't doing interviews these days. He refers people to his commander, who serves very well as a firewall.

Howie left messages, made phone calls and talked to the commander, who he says led him to believe they'd be able to set something up - except nothing ever happened, the story got killed and Howie was left searching for something else to write about.

I've written about Paul at length. I spent many hours with him, either at workouts or on the phone or in his house, for a profile I did in Runner's World magazine several years ago, when he was making his first comeback.

I, too, assumed talking to him this year about comeback No. 3 would be a snap. He returned one call, leaving a message saying I had to go through his chain of command. I called his commander several times. Once, by good fortune, Paul, as part of his duties at the station, answered the phone.

He spent 20 minutes telling me why he couldn't take five minutes to talk. He was very friendly, gregarious even. He told me how great his training was going, how he'd been painting houses in Ypsilanti before enlisting, how happy he was in the Coast Guard, how he and his wife had sold their old house and bought a new one on a bluff overlooking Lake Michigan.

But, bottom line, no interview: Interviews created noise in his head, he said, and the noise got in the way of him being able to hear what his body was telling him. And being able to hear his body was crucial to his goal of making the Olympics.

Howie probably never imagined he had such power, that a few questions about running could stop a runner as strong as McMullen in his tracks. Maybe Rob Myer should have tried interviewing him, instead of outkicking him, as they came out of their final turn.

It's short notice, I know, but if you can swing it, get your butt and soon-to- be-weary feet up to the Upper Peninsula for the Kewee- naw Trail Running Festival July 10 and 11.

A month before last year's festival, Runner's World ran a lengthy profile (by some local free-lance writer who also peddles some stuff to MR) and numerous photos (by MR's Carter Sherline) of the three-race, two-day event. The story brought in many out-of-state runners, caused the race to garner nearly 300 entries, a record, and forced race director Jeff Crumbaugh to close registration early.

Though Crumbaugh has since moved to Wisconsin to take a job teaching high school chemistry and physics, he will again put on the event.

"I'm an hour and a half from the U.P. in north central Wisconsin. I hated to leave, but there were no teaching jobs there," he says, adding there will be at least one new wrinkle, an expo Friday, July 9, with a guest speaker from the Montrail Ultra Running team.

Crumbaugh says he has heard from many Runner's World readers who couldn't make the trip to the U.P. on short notice last year, but who plan to be there this year. The event includes a trail 10K Saturday morning, with two brutal stretches on the beach along Lake Superior; a 3.8-mile hill (mountain) climb Saturday night that seems endless; and a 25K Sunday morning in and out of the Swedetown Gorge, with numerous descents and climbs.

Crumbaugh can be contacted at runskikayak@hotmail.com. MR