In one 5000 meter race the indoor season of my sophomore year, Bobby Wilson, my friend and teammate, absolutely demolished me. Being 20 meters behind me with 400 meters left, he would end up running a time 10 seconds faster than I did.

But it was how it happened that made it quite entertaining to watch, even as I was getting beaten. Bobby experienced, as he described it, a second wind to catch up to me with a fierce determination, and then catch up to his friend and roommate, Andrew Kliewer. The two would battle it out for the victory in one of the most infamous intra-team duels in Emory Cross Country history - with Andrew outkicking Bobby by less than a second.

Throughout the rest of their college running careers, this battle between Bobby and Andrew has been one of the reoccurring themes of our team, with both somehow within seconds of finishing almost every race. Most recently, Andrew defeated Bobby in a road 5k, but Bobby beat Kliewer in a scrimmage 5k on the track.

"Seemingly every race I've run at Emory, Bobby and I have ended up in a battle to the finish. I always know I've gone out too hard when he shoots by me in the last mile like I'm standing still," Kliewer said.

"Bobby's ability to grind through the end of a race even when he's clearly in a lot of pain shows his mental toughness, and I can always count on him to push me as a runner."

That last part of Andrew's quote is something I'll run with in this article - mental toughness. What I've seen from Bobby as a friend and teammate has epitomized that in every respect. As a person who nearly missed his chance to attend Emory and essentially walked onto our team at the beginning of his freshman year, with significant doubts and anxiety about his ability to keep up and perform with the rest of us, Bobby has made significant strides and surprised everyone in his running and academics.

His freshman year, he ran a personal best in the 8k in 26:58 on a slow and hilly course, leading our team as our top man at the Berry Invitational. He has gone from running 40 miles at most in high school to now training on nearly 80 miles a week.

"Everyone on our team is talented and dedicated to the cause, whereas in high school there was great disparity in ability and commitment," he said. "Being a particularly long-distance runner, I also like that college running offers more opportunities for people like me, for whom the high-school 2-mile and cross-country 5k just weren't long enough. Now I get to run the 10K and cross-country 8k and can toy with the idea of trying steeplechase."

He finished the first semester of his freshman year with a 4.0 GPA and has hovered near that since. He has done all this while working at our Writing Center and being the leadership chair of Alpha Phi Omega, our community service fraternity. As for the people who have guided and inspired him through it, Bobby credited his teammates.

"As much I hate to use these clichés, my teammates have a been nothing but a family to me; they've made Emory a home away from home," Bobby said. "I'm so thankful that, in my end-of-senior-year anxiety, the offer to join the team still stood. With the team camaraderie I enjoy now, I can't imagine my college experience any other way."

"Every day, I'm surrounded by inspiration. The way my teammates strike the balance between school and running with aplomb never ceases to amaze me. They're a constant reminder that being a good student and varsity athlete does not have to be an either-or."

I like to joke with Bobby and insult him about how he dropped general chemistry after one day in the class his freshman year, changing his career goals almost immediately. Initially, when he first got to college, he wanted to go to medical school, but two days later, he changed course and decided to go to the Business School. It is a decision he does not regret.

"Before coming to Emory I had been back and forth between medicine and business as careers. I knew I wanted to help people in some capacity, but I also knew I had a keen business sense," he said. "After much debate, I discovered that my ideal career would be a combination of the two: healthcare administration. My goal is to become a hospital CEO one day. In this field, I would thus be able to channel both my intellectual strengths and my desire to help others."

In addition, Bobby is nearly fluent in both Spanish and German. In fact, he tutors students with papers in these languages at the Writing Center. His proficiency in languages is something that he pursued arduously in high school and has continued to do in college, which, as we all know, requires an immense amount of self-motivation and determination, indicative of, again, his unwavering mental toughness.

"Healthcare is also such a diverse, global field that I would be able to pursue my passion for languages, hence why I'm studying German and sharpening my Spanish," he continued.

The other week, actually, I had gone to the Writing Center and unexpectedly had an appointment with Bobby for a paper in an advanced Spanish literature class, in which he vastly improved my knowledge of grammatical conventions and helped correct holes in my logic.

Unfortunately, I was greatly disappointed after handing in the paper without looking at it again. Bobby only helped me get an A-.

Where Bobby got his mental toughness stems from his upbringing and family background. Growing up in a small town in northern New Jersey and having lived there his whole life, Bobby has always enjoyed close-knit communities.

"I attribute a great deal of my success to the supportive environment in which I was raised," Bobby said. "My parents instilled in me and my sisters an unwavering work ethic and refusal to accept mediocrity - academically, athletically, and otherwise.”

Currently being on the team and double majoring in philosophy and business, while also being the leadership chair of a service fraternity, Bobby is clearly very overloaded and arguably overcommitted. In addition to these commitments, Bobby works nearly 10 hours a week at the Writing Center, tutoring struggling students like myself in foreign languages like German and Spanish. We both have to miss Wednesday practices this semester because of class conflicts, and Bobby is completely occupied from 8:30 AM to 7 PM. We have to make up our run when it is pitch black outside.

It still boggles me how Bobby juggles it all and does it so well - he is a goddamn machine and, again, mentally probably one of the toughest people I've met.

However, one consequence is that he tends to stress over small problems that he is very capable of handling. Some nights, he'll be lucky to sleep 4 hours because of his sheer obsession with detail, and this is something that has possibly cut into his running. As for what has helped him maintain his perspective and sanity this whole time, he again credited his team and his family.

"I would also attribute my handling of success and failure to the team. Our team culture centers on taking what we do seriously without taking ourselves too seriously," he said. "I've found it hard to get too bogged down in rough patches when the guys running beside me are hammering tough workouts and still cracking jokes."

"While pushing me to do my best, my family has also reminded me not to be too hard on myself, that life does not have to be all work and no play," Bobby ended. "At times when school or running has been overwhelming or disillusioning, a simple phone call has given me perspective whenever I had lost it. My family reminds me to use common sense when, in times of stress, it slips my mind."