Standing among the lithe and gangly masses in the elite corral at this year's inaugural New York City Half Marathon, Rich Velazquez looks a bit out of place. With a compact body busting with muscles, Velazquez might be better suited to the professionals lifting circuit than to a test of the fleet of foot. Can this guy really do 6:00 pace for 13.1 miles?, one dubious runner seems to ask with his glance askance and his brow furrowed.

It's doubtful that runner saw Velazquez cross the finish line at a pace quite a bit faster than that -- 5:36 pace, to be exact, for a chip time of 1:13:23. After all, only 29 of the 10,302 runners who raced that morning actually finished ahead of Velazquez -- and almost all of those were professional runners. Well practiced in the art of self-effacement, Velazquez just shrugs and giggles when complimented by fellow runners for his fine finishes. And there are a lot of fine finishes. Velazquez has been the alpha runner on FRNY for more than two years; in fact, the last time a fellow team member actually crossed the line before him in a race was August 2004.

His running achievements alone could fill up this entire profile, but doing so would be paying Velazquez considerable disservice. What's really interesting about Rich Velazquez -- what gaunt runners everywhere have been learning for years -- is that he defies expectation, in running and all else.

For starters, there was a time in his life when Velazquez had to actually work to get noticed. The middle child in a family of three boys, he claims to have been a victim of Jan Brady syndrome. "That's the reason I developed my loud laugh," he says. "It was the only time I would get attention as a kid."

And somewhat shockingly, Velazquez was not the standout star of his high school track team either. Geographically cursed, Velazquez went to the same Suffolk County high school as many highly gifted runners, most notably New York City professional runner Anthony Famiglietti. But that did not dampen Velazquez's love of running. He ran on the track team for all four of his years at Appalachian State University, a college tucked away in a North Carolina mountain town called Boone, where he competed in distances of quarter-mile to two miles.

Always more buff than wispy, Velazquez struggled at that time of his life to look more the part of a fast runner, dieting strenuously to morph into the skeletal frame of an elite racer. "I was on the losing end of a battle with anorexia," Velazquez says. "The pressure to look like a distance runner really took its toll on me mentally and I took it to an extreme and dangerous place." Now a muscular but lean 160 pounds, Velazquez, who is about 5-feet 6-inches tall, actually plummeted to 131 pounds when he was in the throes of his eating disorder.

"After getting healthy, I decided I wanted to help people in similar situations," he says. "This is how I came to major in heath promotion and exercise science." Now at 26, Velazquez has been successfully changing people's lives (and bodies) for years. He currently manages the Equinox gym on 63rd street in Manhattan's Upper East Side and aspires to grow in the company, potentially ascending to a regional or national manager.

Even though Velazquez has a busy and erratic work schedule, he finds time to stay in the best shape of his life. Okay, maybe that isn't such a surprise given that free gym membership is a bonus of his day job. He claims that his weight training has been an absolutely integral part of his recent racing breakthroughs. "I do a lot of power training," he says. "That's heavy weight, low reps, and very explosive. It allows me to develop my fast twitch muscle fibers which most distance runners don't do." True, and this explains how Velazquez can start his races slowly (these are, of course, relative terms) and speed up efficiently throughout the race.

And to think that when he first graduated from college, Velazquez was running a mere three times per week and for only twenty minutes at a clip. He attributes the spike in his enthusiasm and his increased focus on training to joining Front Runners. Now isn't that just about the best testimonial the club could ever hope for?

Random Data:

Non-Running Exercise: Pool volleyball

Non-Exercise Activity: Movies

Best Movie This Year: The Illusionist

Object of Desire: Paul Walker ("I forgive him for all his bad movies; he's so cute!")

Running Goal: Sub-2:45 in the 2006 New York City Marathon

Advice to Fellow Front Runners: Even though we all have goals and want to train hard, listen to your body and REST."