Partlow's happy place: TJ's untouchable distance-running star would not have gone nearly as far without the love he developed for training, racing and his teammates

This is where it all begins and ends for James Partlow in this particular phase of his young life.

He’s standing in the middle of the track at Thomas Johnson High School on a warm and gloriously sunny spring afternoon.

In just a couple of weeks, he will will graduate from this very place, a thought that seems incomprehensible to him, given how fast that last four years have seemed to move.

But, right now, he is in the place he loves most, surrounded by teammates he counts among his closest friends, many of whom he has helped push to their greatest heights. Another training session beckons in just a few minutes.

First, though, Partlow, 17, is asked to make a heart shaped symbol with his hands and hold it out in front of him, in the way that basketball star Caitlin Clark does it.

It’s part of a photo shoot for this story. His teammates oblige in the background of the shot. And the forever accommodating Partlow plays along and puts up his heart, somewhat begrudgingly.

“If Navy sees this, I might get disbarred,” he jokes, referring to the place he will attend college.

It just so happens to be the perfect picture and the perfect scene to capture the essence of Partlow, a team captain, a three-time state champion, a national cross-country All-American, perhaps the greatest distance runner ever from Frederick County.

“With the accolades he’s accumulated over the last year or two and some of the times he’s been able to run, he certainly has a very fair argument,” said Alex Lombardo, a former teammate and county and regional champion at TJ who now runs distance races for George Mason University.

Some kids run track and field to stay in shape for other sports. Others do it to challenge themselves or stay connected with friends.

Partlow does it, first and foremost, because he genuinely loves the sport and everything that comes with it. Everything he does or achieves in it stems from that very fact.

It’s why waking up at 6 a.m. on family vacations to run several miles or passing on the pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving has always been worth it.

For out-of-town meets, he sleeps in a separate, but adjoining room from family to ensure uninterrupted rest. He brings his own food so there’s not much variance with his meals before races.

“If you would have told me as a freshman that I would become this good, I would not have believed it,” says Partlow, the 2023 Gatorade Cross Country Runner of the Year in Maryland and the only high school runner in state history to run sub 9-minute times in both the two-mile (8 minutes, 57.12 seconds) and the 3,200-meter (8:54.03) runs . “It’s insane to me that I am doing what I thought was impossible as a freshman.”

Partlow’s passion and drive to get better is contagious around the TJ track program.

“He’s one of those people who, when you are around him, he pushes you to do better,” said one of his closest friends and training partners, junior Jonathan Regules, who won the Class 4A East regional championship in the 800-meter run during the indoor season.

It also helps that Partlow celebrates the success of his teammates even more than his own. He counts the state team titles won by the Patriots during recent indoor and outdoor seasons among his most cherished memories.

“His mindset is just believe in yourself,” said sophomore teammate Vaughn Ditching, who recently posted his first sub 2-minute time in the 800. “Just believe in yourself and put in the work and you’ve got it. Mentally, he’s definitely changed the way I see things.”

The word amateur is rooted in the meaning “to love”, Partlow’s mother, Debbie, points out. In James’ case, it’s love of the sport, love of his team, the love of training and the love of competition.

“He is a true amateur,” Debbie Partlow said.

Built for this

Tall (5-foot-11½), lean (143 pounds) and angular, Partlow looks the part of an accomplished distance runner.

“The thing that strikes me is where his hip level is for someone his height,” TJ coach Larry O’Hara said. “His hip level is higher than most. So, he just does have longer legs in general with the rest of his frame. And then his form is just impeccable.”

O’Hara hasn’t seen many runners make it look as smooth and effortless as Partlow.

“He’s always had a nice gallop,” O’Hara said. “His knee lift was amazing, even as a freshman. It’s like, ‘Wow, this kid has just got some bounce.’ His knees get up to where his quads are parallel to the ground. That’s something that you kind of teach when you watch the elite runners. They are able to do that.”

But Partlow has also spent many hours refining his own technique. He watches videos about where his foot should be striking and where he should be pushing off the ground. He sees how he is carrying and moving his arms.

“He does have some natural gifts in terms of his general form,” O’Hara said. “But he has also worked very hard to get rid of any wasted motion. That is why he so fluid, especially these past two years.”

Combine the near-perfect form with an relentless willingness and desire to get better and Partlow’s high rate of success is easy to explain.

He almost never goes into races without a detailed plan. And, at least in the last two years, he almost never fails to execute the plan.

The last time Partlow lost a race in Maryland was May 23, 2023, when he placed second in both the 1,600 and 3,200 runs at the state outdoor meet in Landover.

During this past indoor season, when he won Class 4A state titles in those same races, he lapped most of the field in setting a record for all classifications in the 3,200 with a time of 9:15.77.

He normally doesn’t wear a watch during races so that he can maintain his focus on the competition and the task at hand. But he did for that particular race because he knew it was just him against the clock.

“I think that’s kind of what separates him,” O’Hara said. “His attention to detail and recognizing that each little thing adds up.”

Chasing a dream

Partlow’s passion for running was born while chasing a lifelong goal.

As a young child, he listened to stories about his paternal grandfather, James, and his great uncle, Robert, and their time spent at the Naval Academy. Both died before he could ask them himself.

Partlow was fascinated by the idea of one day being a Midshipman and the prestige, notoriety and physical challenges that come with it. As early as sixth grade, it became his mission to go to Navy.

“You needed to be a well-rounded person to get into the Naval Academy,” Partlow said. “I knew I was going to have good academics, and I needed something else on top of that.”

Athletics became an obvious path for him. But basketball, the sport he played in seventh and eighth grade, was not going to get him there.

Plus, “when the other boys were shooting, James was running laps,” his mother said. “He must of felt some compulsion to run.”

That led him to the cross-country team at Thomas Johnson during his freshman year of high school. He was relatively short (5-foot-5) and skinny, and his running experience was limited to the community fun runs he had participated in over the years, races he never came close to winning.

“I could just tell he had a motor,” O’Hara said. “For not really training a whole lot, he was able to stick with the seniors on some of the longer distance type stuff. He didn’t quite have the speed at a young age. That came with time.”

Partlow considered running his best chance at getting into Navy. He knew it was a sport he could become good at — and quickly.

“Of course you need talent,” he said. “But the more work you put in, the more you are going to get out of it. It’s really just a linear relationship. ... I really like that aspect of it. I know I am a hard worker, and I could do well by training. That’s just going to directly correlate with [getting better].”

At TJ, Partlow was quick to hook on with two of the senior captains on the cross-country team, Mack McKeever and Lombardo, who were willing to take a naturally curious and ambitious freshman under their wing.

It was March 2021 and the world was slowly emerging from the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Frederick County Public Schools had just rolled out a Return to Play policy, and sports were slowly restarting with abbreviated seasons featuring just in-county competition.

Cross-country runners had to adapt, training in smaller groups rather than with the entire team.

Partlow had worked his way in with Lombardo, the eventual county champion that spring, and McKeever, the county runner-up who now runs at UMBC, and was one constant member of their small training circle. He asked questions and eagerly accepted their advice and critiques. He knew it would make him better.

Lombardo lent him an old pair of spikes he had laying around and a Garmin watch later that spring for the outdoor track season.

“You saw the talent very quickly. We wanted to foster it as much as we could,” Lombardo said, referring to himself and McKeever. “Trying to teach him healthy habits at a younger age instead of letting him do his own thing and maybe leading himself astray unintentionally.”

Gradually improving

Partlow opened some eyes by finishing 10th in his first county cross-country meet.

His time was 17 minutes, 38.8 seconds, almost two minutes slower than his winning time in the Class 4A state cross-country meet last fall (15:39.3) yet solid for his first championship meet on the varsity level.

“It was like, “OK, this guy, he’s got some talent and some drive,” O’Hara said. “And, as he continues to grow, he is going to improve a ton.”

Partlow certainly did, but not as quickly as he and others might have hoped.

He battled both a hamstring injury that hampered his sophomore cross-country season in the fall of 2021 and basically wiped out his entire indoor track season. He also developed plantar fasciitis, a painful foot condition, that he is managing to this day. It flared up right before the county cross-country meet last fall. But he still coasted to victory in 16:17.7.

The injuries didn’t demoralize Partlow so much as they reignited his desire to be the best runner he could possibly be. They recommitted him to the process, which involved proper stretching, rest and diet to reduce the risk of future injuries.

“A lot of things are mindset,” he said. “Even if I had a doubt in my mind, I might have gotten as good as I did. I saw that [the process] worked.”

In September 2022, shortly after the start of his junior cross-country season, Partlow won the first race of his life at the Bull Run Invitational at Hereford High School, site of the state meet, in 16:26.1.

“That was amazing,” he said. “I didn’t expect to win. I was ecstatic ... I just hung on at the end and kicked like crazy. I don’t think I led at all until there were 200 meters to go. It showed me that my hard work is paying off.”

A little more than a month later, he won his first county title and went on to place third in the Class 3A West region and 11th in the state.

That led into productive indoor and outdoor seasons, when he finished among the top three in the state in both the 1,600 and 3,200.

And he’s been untouchable ever since in Maryland, winning his first state title at Hereford in the 4A cross-country race last November.

With a top 21 finish on Dec. 2 at the NXN Nike Cross Nationals in Portland, Oregon, Partlow claimed All-American status with a personal-best time of 15:51.9 in chilly, overcast and slippery conditions. That was good enough for 16th place, as he had to run through shin-high puddles on the rain-softened course.

“One of the best races I have ever run,” Partlow said. “The worse the conditions, especially in cross-country, the better I seem to do.”

From follower to leader

It’s hard for Partlow to wrap his head around this. But he is now in the exact same position as the older runners he used to follow — Lombardo and McKeever, in particular.

And the young runners on the TJ team are now in his former shoes, looking up to an older runner like himself for advice and guidance.

Given what he’s accomplished on the state and national levels, it’s now a big deal whenever Partlow shows up at a meet to race. Total strangers from other schools are now eager to run against him to see how they measure up.

“It’s pretty surreal,” Partlow said.

Thursday’s Frederick County championship meet at Middletown marks the start of the stretch run for Partlow.

Next week, it will be the regional meet, and the following week it will be states. Then, it will be off to the Naval Academy at the end of June to begin the preparatory plebe summer.

But, for now, all of that can wait. Partlow is front and center on the TJ track, surrounded by teammates. He’s in his happy place, and even making heart shapes with his hands.

Which all means that the next race can wait, if only for a brief moment.