Holliday, Texas is a small town of roughly 2,000 people sitting in the rolling plains of North Texas, just a stone’s throw from the Oklahoma border. It’s the kind of place where Friday night football fills the bleachers and everyone knows everyone. But in recent years, Holliday has become known for something a little different — and a little faster. For four straight years, a lanky kid named Noah Strohman laced up his racing shoes and did something no boy in the history of Texas high school cross country had ever done.

There’s a particular kind of excellence that’s easy to overlook. It lives in the silver medals, the third-place finishes, the podium appearances that don’t quite reach the top step. When you’re watching Macy Wingard race cross country, it’s easy to forget that version of her exists at all. On a grass course, she’s untouchable — a front-runner who doesn’t so much race her competition as leave them behind. But switch the surface to a track, and the story gets more complicated, and far more interesting.