The e-mail from Jim McGee included the following:
We ran in a lot of exotic places – around the pyramids of Egypt, in the Black Forest of Germany and along the ancient roads of Sparta, to name a few. All of this really had an influence on Cory and her love for running.
A few days ago, a driver on SW 2nd Ave. here saw Cory McGee running down the sidewalk bordering the Mark Bostick Golf Course and wondered how that course compares to some of the others she has darted around in her 18 years.
A freshman on the Gators' track team, McGee spent a portion of her youth in some of the world's most exotic locations. She knows what it's like to run past the Acropolis in Athens. She has jogged along the Nile in Cairo and ran along courses in the shadow of the Great Pyramid of Giza.
But McGee's most memorable day running in a foreign land came on the Greek island of Santorini. The views were magnificent on the island perched high above the Sea of Crete and home to one of the world's largest sleeping volcanoes.
McGee appreciated the scenery, but what she cherishes the most several years later is her performance in Santorini against her father, Jim, a former Gators defensive back who moved to running back before a knee injury ended his career in the mid-1970s.
That day in Santorini was the day Cory, a sixth-grader at the time, first beat Jim and started leaving him in her dust.
They had been running together since Cory decided one day in fourth-grade that she would join Jim on his regular four-mile run on Highway 90 along the beach in their hometown of Pass Christian, Miss. Jim ran the first mile, and Cory was still there, refusing to go away. Cory made it all four miles and hasn't stopped since.
Two years later in Santorini, they started their run at the edge of a beach with a mountain of stairs leading to the top of the island at their feet ready to climb.
“There are several thousands stairs leading up the cliffs from the beach,'' Jim said. “I'll never forget, as we reached the last 200 meters of the climb, Cory blew past me.''
Cory remembers the day well, even the mules they passed on the run up and down the stairs.
“It was a pretty big deal,'' she said.
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Running has been a big deal to McGee since that first run with her dad. A couple of years after taking up the sport as a 9-year-old, McGee and her family moved to Greece when Jim – now a retired FBI agent – took a position as an FBI security liaison for the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens.
Cory attended an American school there and started competing in her first official events as a sixth-grader. She showed immediate promise and dedication to a sport most kids that age don't have the discipline for or interest in to become serious competitors.
McGee's first cross-country meet was in Egypt, expanding the possibilities in her mind of where the sport could take her if she just kept running. The need to run had kicked in, too.
“It kind of became a part of my life,'' McGee said. “Thinking about not running is a little bit weird. By eighth-grade, I was running probably six days out of the week. It's something that I'm so used to doing that it would be weird if I kind of cut it out of my life now.”
McGee hasn't missed a stride since starting her college career last fall. She immediately made her mark in cross country for the Gators and is now doing the same during the indoor track season, using long, bouncy strides to run away from the competition and toward her future goal of competing in the Olympics.
McGee enters this week's NCAA Indoor Track and Field Championships at Texas A&M as a favorite in the women's mile. She won the SEC title in the mile and was named SEC Indoor Women's Runner of the Year on Monday, posting the third-best time in school history (4 minutes, 36.53 seconds) for a woman in the mile.
She prefers track over cross country, primarily because the team aspect is more at play and her attitude toward the sport.
“I prefer the faster [distances],'' said McGee, adding the mile and 800 meters are her favorite events.
After her family returned to the U.S. from Greece midway through her seventh-grade year, Jim entered Cory into Mississippi's high school state cross-country meet as an independent and she finished second. When it was time for her to attend Pass Christian High, the school of approximately 400 students didn't have a cross-country team.
McGee formed one – getting her older sister Shannon to join and three other girls to meet the requirement of five runners – and dominated the competition for the next four years.
Cory's quick ascension in the sport didn't surprise Jim McGee a bit.
“Cory is very aggressive,'' Jim said. “You will see that in her running. Just watch her start – she fights to get to the front. Growing up with three sisters probably had an influence. She is extremely dedicated, strong-willed, and very competitive.''
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While McGee quickly earned results as a competitive runner, the road to success has included more twists and turns than a winding country road in her native Mississippi.
Soon after her family returned to Mississippi, Hurricane Katrina blew through Pass Christian – a small beach town on the Gulf of Mexico between New Orleans and Mobile – and destroyed much of the place she knew.
Homes standing one day were gone the next. There was no power or fresh running water.
McGee's home was severely damaged and her grandmother's home on the coast was completely demolished. The family had to move to Las Cruces, N.M., for a while to live with her great-grandmother while repairs were at home.
The McGees eventually moved back to Pass Christian and Cory continued her running career with the help of coach Yousri Elmejdoubi, a former Southern Mississippi runner who is from Morocco. When Elmejdoubi later moved to Oregon, he still trained McGee via phone.
By that time McGee had developed Olympic aspirations of her own, driven in part by attending several events at the 2004 Olympics and watching “King of the Mile'' Hicham El Guerrouj win gold in both the 1,500 meters and 5,000 meters in Athens.
“You have to think about the reward in the end,'' McGee said of her aspirations. “Being exposed to [Olympic success] when you are young makes you realize it's a realistic goal. Maybe I can do it.''
Florida women's cross-country coach and track assistant Todd Morgan connected with McGee right away. Morgan grew up in a small town in North Carolina where long-distance runners and friendly places to run didn't grow on trees.
McGee experienced the same growing up in Pass Christian.
“Where she's from, people probably thought she was from Mars,'' Morgan said. “She is from a beautiful part of the country, but running is just not a normal thing in that area. She had to really want it because there weren't a lot of nice places to go train.''
McGee trained mostly on Highway 90 down by the beach, spending hour after hour pounding her sneakers to the ground. She didn't know at the time she would run her way into a scholarship at Florida.
“Running in Mississippi was a challenge,'' Jim McGee said. “Not many trails, but we made it work and Cory never complained. After Hurricane Katrina, Cory ran through the debris piles and really set an example of perseverance for the whole Coast.''
Morgan first saw McGee run at a Foot Locker meet in North Carolina. He later discovered her father was an ex-UF football player, hoping that provided an “in” during the recruiting process.
It certainly didn't hurt, and McGee is now running past places like Ben Hill Griffin Stadium and the UF law school on her way to SEC titles and potential NCAA crowns.
“There is nothing that is going to stop her from being successful,'' Morgan said. “That is evident. You can talk to her for five minutes and get that vibe from her. I knew she would come in and be a factor pretty quickly.''
Still, Morgan admits McGee has probably surpassed even his expectations so early in her career. If this is just the start of McGee's college career, no telling how good the finish can be.
For now, she is taking it stride by stride – and enjoying the scenery along the way.
"I wouldn't say anything is out of reach," she said. "I'm definitely seeing what I had hoped for – it's happening."
