A14| Friday, March 20, 2020 THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
“He had the best knees of any-
body I knew at our age,” Goldrich
said.
Fauci, a youth basketball, football
and baseball player who was the di-
minutive captain of his high
school’s basketball team, says that
other parts of his body haven’t
fared as well.
“When I run and pound, it sort
of hurts my back,” he said on the
Pardon My Take podcast this week.
“So I walk that distance. It takes a
little longer.”
Dr. Vincent DeVita, a professor at
Yale and the former director of the
National Cancer Institute, was also
a runner until his knees made him
an ex-runner. He used his time in
sneakers to clear his mind and con-
template the road ahead.
“I’m sure Tony is doing the
same,” he said, “trying to think
about what he should say to the
American people and the presi-
dent.”
There were lots of scientists and
doctors at the NIH in those dayswho were lunchtime runners. They
even had a name for themselves:
the Health’s Angels running club.
In the 1970s, they would meet by
the NIH clinical hospital and head
to Rock Creek Park, the best loop in
the city for biking, rollerblading and
especially running. The people in
Health’s Angels were serious run-
ners. And they had to have a seri-
ous conversation with Fauci.
“Tony, if you’re going to run with
us, you’re going to need to pick up
the pace,” one of the Health’s An-
gels told him in the locker room.
“Otherwise we’re going to leave you
in the dust.”
But smart pacing is Fauci’s spe-
cialty.
The legend of Fauci went some-
thing like this: He woke before
dawn, arrived at his office around
6:30 a.m. and protected time in his
day to run at noon. “Or as close to
noon as we could make it,” Goldrich
said. Their daily routine—change,
run, shower—would take an hour.
They ate back at their desks after-ward. “I remember everyone being
worried about being as thin as we
were,” Goldrich said. “On the other
hand, if you run every day for five
miles, you can basically eat a cow.”
Fauci had ditched the Health’s An-
gels by then to run with a partner
instead of the pack, and he spent his
lunch break talking with Goldrich
about work. But there was one ex-
ception: Fauci liked to predict when
they would see birds in the spring.
“He came pretty close to when
that first robin would come out,”
Goldrich said.
Even though Fauci has said that
he’s not running during this partic-
ular crisis, Goldrich says he sus-
pects he’s sneaking in some exercise
at “ungodly hours,” while others
who worked closely with him find
themselves oddly uplifted that all
those hours of exercise have kept
him in shape for perhaps the battle
of his life.
“I’m comforted that Tony is
there,” DeVita said, “and fit and
functional.”JASON GAY
A Bike Race Went Virtual. I Raced It.
A real-life New York sporting event moves to a digital domain. Our columnist tried to compete.
SPORTS
DR. ANTHONY FAUCIhas been
running the same federal entity
through some of the worst crises of
the last half-century: AIDS, anthrax,
swine flu, Ebola and, now, a corona-
virus pandemic that has turned this
infectious disease expert into the
most influential person in American
public health.
He’s also been running for al-
most the entire time.
For most of his life, a long run
was simply built into Fauci’s in-
sanely busy schedule as the head of
the National Institute of Allergy and
Infectious Diseases, a daily appoint-
ment as routine as breakfast and
dinner. He didn’t have to remind
himself to breathe in fresh air. He
couldn’t wait.
“Not only was it every day, but
there was almost nothing that could
stop us,” said Mike Goldrich, the NI-
AID’s former chief operating officer
who also happened to be Fauci’s
running buddy. “Ice. Snow. Rain.
Heat. We were big fans of Gore-
Tex.”
Now there is something that’s
slowing him down. The greatest
challenge of Fauci’s distinguished
career is now so demanding that he
can’t pause in his 20-hour workdays
to run at lunch. It took a pandemic
for this 79-year-old workaholic to
resign himself to walking several
miles on weekends.
It isn’t that running itself is un-
safe right now. The nation’s public-
health officials have reassured the
public that running outside remains
safe, healthy and perfectly accept-
able in a time of social distancing.
Even for Tony Fauci. Especially for
Tony Fauci.
“I support any healthy activity
that helps Dr. Fauci to find the
strength, resolve, and calm that he
needs to do the job he does,” said
Joshua Sharfstein, a vice dean at
Johns Hopkins’s public-health
school.
Fauci refers to himself as a
power walker these days. But he
used to be a marathoner. His per-
sonal record was 3:37 in the 1984
Marine Corps Marathon, and he
completed New York in 4:07 the
next year and another Marine Corps
in 3:52 in 1990. And he was always
a lunchtime jogger.
“I think the benefit for me is a
stress reliever—because I have a
pretty high-stress job, Fauci told
the National Institute on Aging in- “Getting outside in the day
and hearing the birds and smelling
the grass is kind of a very pleasing
thing for me.”
Even at the height of the HIV/
AIDS epidemic, Fauci was fastidious
about his noontime run. He pow-
ered through five miles at roughly
eight minutes per mile, and he even
stuck to the same route: left from
Building 31 on the National Insti-
tutes of Health campus in Bethesda,
Md., across Rockville Pike and into
Rock Creek Park.
His runs were a convenient way
for Fauci to squeeze more work into
his lunch break. He made it a habit
to meet with Goldrich first thing in
the morning and last thing at night.
Their run was essentially another
meeting in the middle of the day.
It was a meeting far from the
halls of Congress, the White House
or the Department of Health and
Human Services, the entities in
downtown Washington, D.C., that
controlled NIH’s funding, priorities
and research. Runners from those
buildings typically take to Capitol
Hill or the National Mall. They don’t
get to run with Fauci.
Fauci’s admirers rave about his
work ethic and leadership. But
there is one compliment that only
someone who knows him as inti-
mately as his running buddy would
offer.
The coronavirus pandemic has turned Dr. Anthony Fauci into the most influential person in American public health.Dr.AnthonyFauciHas
RunThroughItAll
regular virtual cyclist, and after a
few years of laziness and carb-
binging which I blame exclusively
on my children, I’d been get-
ting myself into better
shape. I’d registered
with the easiest
bracket in the race,
and the competition
was only three laps,
19 or so miles. I fig-
ured if nothing else,
I would be able to
hang in there, finish
with the pack, and
then I’d be able to thumb
my nose at those Journal
know-it-alls at the next Google
Hangout, since that’s where every-
one in WSJ Sports lives now, with
their laptops and pajamas. I was
not cocky, but I was optimistic I
could pull it off, and do at least OK.
I didn’t do OK.
The thing about virtual racing
is, it starts like a hellacious melee.
In real life, races begin gradually,
even casually, like we’re all going
for a scone at a coffee shop, but inthe digital world, everyone pedals
from the jump like they stole a
wallet. To say I was hanging on for
dear life is disrespectful to my
dear life. I was immedi-
ately struggling, on the
verge of getting left
behind, but then, the
pack of racers be-
gantoslowdown
somewhat, and I
was able to catch
my breath.
And then, just as
suddenly, the pack
started riding hard again.
My little digital avatar got
left behind. I was dropped, pedal-
ing all alone.
I’d, uh, “socially distanced” my-
self.
I faced a decision here: Hang in
or abandon. I had 2½ laps to go.
Fifteen or so miles, suffering all by
myself, huffing and puffing in the
basement as my kids and my wife
upstairs ate tacos and played
Candy Land.
Dropping out seemed a little pa-thetic, a missed opportunity, when
everyone is craving any semblance
of exercise and community. Every
gym I know is closed; the fitness in-
structors post squats and burpees I
can do at home, but it isn’t the
same. I can pedal outside, but I’m
supposed to ride on my own, and be
extremely careful—no hospital
wants a cyclist clickety-clacking into
the ER with a busted collarbone.
What I’m saying is that it felt
important to not give up. I began
to channel the spirit of Pita Tauf-
atofua, the Tongan taekwondo/
cross-country skier/canoeist/glis-
tening flag-bearer who has
charmed the Olympic movement
with a by-any-means-necessary
will to finish. I hung in to the end.
I wound up finishing 38th out of
42 overall, which doesn’t sound
that bad, but I think racers 39, 40,
41 and 42 called it early and went
to watch Netflix.
Theracewaswonbyatalented
local rider named Mike Margarite,
who I believe finished so far ahead
of me, he had time to shower, eat
dinner and watch the Godfather
Parts I, II and III. “Zwift racing can
be really tough,” Margarite said.
“You miss the bike-handling ele-
ments, but it’s great for fitness.
It’s a lot like [real life] racing, in
the sense that riding in the pack is
usually not super tough, but a solo
move takes a big effort.”
“More intense than Prospect
Park races,” another competitor,
Eloy Anzola, told me, which made
me feel marginally better about
having to crawl upstairs after my
virtual pedal.
These races sound strange, but
they matter. This event’s organizer,
Charlie Issendorf, is a longtime New
York City promoter who has put on
races in the city for a decade and a
half; full of newbies, middle-agers,
and, occasionally, stars-to-be, they
are the grass-roots soul of the
sport. Now they are shut down
amid crisis. USA Cycling announced
this week it won’t sign off on any
real-life racing until May 3, and
who knows if that is realistic. But
Issendorf also works for Zwift, so
flipping over to the virtual environ-
ment was a snap for him.
“Without a doubt, this is the
most bizarre reason a race has
been canceled,” Issendorf told me.
“I’ve had to cancel races due to
hurricanes, fallen trees on the
course, I even had to cancel a race
because of a movie shoot sched-
uled the same day as our race...but
this takes the prize as the craziest
reason I’ve canceled a race.”
It’s an adjustment, for everyone.
In sports, in work, in home life,
we’re learning to adapt amid a sit-
uation none of us really under-
stands. We’re making this up as
we go along. That’s why, last place
or not, real life or virtual, it felt
essential to hang in there.
We’re all hanging in there right
now. Be well, everybody. ILLUSTRATION BY SCOTT POLLACKANDREW HARNIK/ASSOCIATED PRESSWell, itseemedlike a
good idea.
They’d canceled a
bike race in Brooklyn,
N.Y., last weekend, ow-
ing to the coronavirus
and new rules about “social dis-
tancing,” so now the event pro-
moter was taking it from the leafy
real-life roadway of Prospect Park
to the virtual cycling world of the
computer program Zwift. Everyone
who had intended to race outside
could now race inside, so long as
they had a bike, a stationary
trainer so they could pedal in
place, and some kind of screen to
watch the action unfold.
It felt like a thing to do. Virtual
sports have been building for
years now, on all sorts of plat-
forms, but they may take off now,
as real-life sports have disap-
peared, and athletes and yahoos
jonesing for competition are look-
ing for outlets.
I should try to race, I said to
myself, because I am an idiot.
My Journal colleagues were ex-
tremely supportive.
Is this part of your series in
which you have embarrassing fin-
ishes in bike races?the Journal’s
basketball writer, Ben Cohen,
asked me.
This your first race since Nata-
lie Morales dropped you in Rio,
right?asked my boss, Bruce Or-
wall, referring to my near-upchuck
embarrassment in an NBC Peloton
class at the 2018 Winter Olympics
in Pyeongchang.
It wasn’t. A year ago, I’d bailed
out of the Fat Bike World Champi-
onships in Crested Butte, Colo.,
owing to the cold weather, the
snow, and the fact that I am ab-
jectly terrible at bike racing.
I should be clear: I’ve raced in a
few bike races in my time, but
don’t get the wrong idea. You
know those old videos of chubby
grizzly bears pedaling tricycles in
the circus? Now imagine a human
cycling more slowly. That’s me.
Still, I had some hopes for this
virtual Brooklyn “Lucarelli & Cast-
aldi Cup” throw-down. I am a semi-BYBENCOHEN ANDLOUISERADNOFSKY
38
out of
42
Finish for Jason Gay in
the virtual Brooklyn
race.