BESTIE VIBES ONLY

Every time I board a plane I’m very attentive to the other people on the flight. I’m always on the lookout for the freakshow. The flights to Eugene are always especially fun because it’s such a bizarre little city full of weirdos: a purple hair kid in first class, a woman with a completely homemade outfit asking the flight attendant unnecessary questions, a guy with double n95s adhered to his face who doesn’t want to make eye contact with anybody for fear their gaze could transmit COVID, and an abnormally skinny kid with a foam roller in a middle seat.

When Olli Hoare was 10, he boarded a plane to Perth for cross country nationals. Across the aisle he saw a kinda strange looking kid: He was little, very small, and had frosted tips to the style of a teenage Justin Timberlake, his big ears poking out from under his hair. He was eating a hot cup of noodles and reading a fat Game of Thrones book. “This kid was definitely a vibe,” Olli said to me. It was a long flight from Sydney to Perth and Olli kept his eyes on the weird looking kid because he was his competition. The kid was Morgan McDonald and he eventually won the race. 

More than 15 years later and now they’re besties. They’re inseparable. They’re kind of like Keanu Reeves and River Phoenix in My Own Private Idaho but without the subtle prostitution and drug addiction. Like Scooby and Shaggy but real. Like Harry Potter and Ron Weasley except neither of them are ugly or would ever have a pet rat. They also can’t cast spells. Like Timothee Chalamet and Armie Hammer in Call Me By Your Name but like before their friendship turns into a passionate love affair. Whatever. If this were a Tumblr post I’d continue the list. The point is that they’re tight and that their friendship started when they were 10. 

A few years after that flight, puberty paid Morgan a home visit and he looks totally different, but he’s still always had some part of his appearance that sets him apart from other people. “This kid was definitely a vibe,” as Olli said earlier. “But he was never trying to be. A lot of people follow the status quo, and he’s never been interested in that.”

Morgan’s got this little rat tail now. (A rat tail so strong it ended up on the cover of Our Magazine.) He’s got his ears pierced. In college he shaved off his eyebrows. Another time he visited his freshman roommate on his family farm before they showed up to campus for the first time, and they were shooting guns, and in classic non-American fashion he had no idea what he was doing and pulled the trigger without knowing the force it’d produce. It came back and smacked him in the face, leaving him with a bruised eye and blood running down his nose and over his mouth. I’m sure he smiled. (Joker moment.) Morgan arrived to college wearing an eyepatch. He couldn’t have planned that one if he tried. But maybe he would’ve if he’d known it was a possibility.

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“As a freshman in college Olli pissed me off so much. He used to do so much dumb shit,” Morgan told me. “I tried to look out for him, but I was definitely kind of mean to him sometimes.” Morgan was mean to Olli?! It feels like that could never be true. 

Morgan is a tyrant about keeping the house quiet after 9:30 at night. The other day I texted him at 9:22 thinking I'd get a response but I should've known better. He tucks himself into bed pretty early and then reads his fantasy series books until he falls asleep. Every night. He loves routine. I guess it’s an admirable quality that he takes his recovery so seriously, but his rigidity definitely feels excessive. Anyway, Olli gets to college and is the only freshman on the team and is living in the dorms by himself and has basically no friends, so he naturally starts hanging out at Morgan’s house a lot—so much that it made more sense some nights for him to sleep on Morgan’s bedroom floor. Olli woke up at 6 a.m. and FaceTimed his girlfriend in the dark and woke Morgan up. “He looked up with such disgust and I instantly knew I’d fucked up,” Olli said. 

So maybe Morgan had a reason to be mean to Olli. “Mean” to Olli. The meanest thing Morgan could think of that he did to Olli was a prank that to me feels mostly harmless. (Although it’s absolutely humiliating.) Olli’s addicted to Mountain Dew. Like actually addicted. I was taking some sneaky notes about how they interact in their kitchen and I was sitting at the table right next to a crushed Mountain Dew bottle that Olli had forgotten to throw away. Anyway, Olli had just arrived to college and was living in the U.S. for the first time and his coaches helped him open up a bank account. Morgan and his confidantes told Olli that the coaches could see the transactions he made on his debit card, so Olli would go to the corner store and take out cash from the ATM to buy his Mountain Dew without a paper trail, off the billing statements. He didn’t want the coaches to know how much Dew he was merking. That lasted an entire year. 

Is that mean? Yes. But also not really. I don’t think many people would be able to earnestly describe Morgan as mean. My impulse is that his capacity for meanness is really limited, but it makes sense that teenage Olli would receive the slight amount of wrath Mogan could muster when he behaved like a little twerp. I asked Carmela if Morgan’s ever mean to her and she said Yes. I saw them bicker in the aftermath of a board game-related debacle and Carmela was trying to plead her case but Morgan spoke over her: “What are you saying Carmela? What are you saying Carmela? What are you saying Carmela?” Until she eventually stopped talking and smiled. I asked her if Morgan could hold a grudge and she said he doesn’t have enough memory for it. Morgan said it’s because he treats Carmela like one of the guys: Says what he means even if it’s impolite but then drops it 10 seconds later. He said he only brought it back up because, “I thought you were thinking about it more than I was so I wanted to apologize.” He’s perceptive. Harmony of course is always the priority.

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One of the things that brought Ben and I close is that we share a rare obsession for niche internet personalities that make our brains rot. We both have an inclination for spectacle. We love being surprised by ridiculous stuff. Basically when Nikocado Avocado bodies like 15 pounds of Taco Bell on camera, we're going to watch. When Icy Wyatt gets arrested as a publicity stunt, we stan him. 

One vlogger Ben really likes is Hard Rock Nick. He’s a tough, masculine real estate mogul who relishes in his own riches but looks like a Bratz doll. He threads his eyebrows, wears fake eyelashes, and trims his beard into intricate patterns that resemble crop-circles. He kinda looks like the sadistic guy who controls the torture that happens in the Hunger Games. Anyway, Ben was playing some Hard Rock Nick vlogs on Morgan and Olli’s TV for them, and Olli was mesmerized. He asked Ben all sorts of questions about Hard Rock Nick, laughing constantly, eyes glued to the TV. Olli searched Hard Rock Nick on his phone. He needed more. Morgan snuck away to his room, I thought because there’s no way he could possibly find this man funny. But then as he reentered the living room, Hard Rock Nick yelled, “ALL THE RICHEST MEN IN THE WORLD WEAR PINK,” and Morgan laughed. “50 CENT WEARS PINK.” Morgan laughed again.

“We have the same kind of niche humor,” Olli said of Morgan, and maybe it’s true for a lot of people’s friendships. They definitely share a boyish sense of humor. They draw dicks on stuff, which feels very adolescent but simultaneously feels timeless and will probably be funny until I die. There’s a framed certificate for some academic award hung up on Morgan’s bedroom door, and there’s dicks drawn all over it. We were leaving for our run one morning and Olli was like, “Ahh, who drew this dick on my car?” and later, when we found out it was actually Carmela, Olli said he knew it couldn’t have been Morgan because the shaft was drawn uncharacteristically. We were about to begin recording our episode of the Coffee Club Podcast and Morgan was counting down from three. “3…” “Penis,” Olli interjected. “2…” “PENIS!” “1…” “Peeeeeeeen,” which Morgan interrupted with what felt like a rehearsed sense of detachment: “What’s up guys? Welcome to episode 30 of the Coffee Club Podcast.”

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I’m eating lunch at their kitchen counter. Morgan is wiping up crumbs, organizing clutter, as I eat. 

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Olli brought up this Instagram reel he’d seen where this guy wrapped a bowl and spoon in plastic wrap before using them to eat soup. “He doesn’t have to wash anything!,” Olli said. I waited for him to ridicule the frat bro for being incapable of washing a dish or for wasting his time, but he never did. He thought it was cool. 

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I was talking to Morgan while he was getting a massage. An hour and a half massage. I asked why it was so long and the massage guy Al said Morgan is special. He’s been injured on and off for nearly two years. He needs extra attention. I was wrapped up in my conversation with Morgan and there were times I forgot Al was right in front of me, rubbing Morgan’s exposed hamstrings then his quads then the rest of his legs. I asked Morgan a question about being injured in college and he lamented a time he had to watch Olli win an NCAA title from his living room, and Al interjected with an earnest speech that had a momentum that made it feel practiced: “Your life is fantasy. You do whatever you want. All you do is run. You have a beautiful girlfriend who’s French. You’ve traveled the world.” Al took a breath. Morgan waited a moment to make sure he had nothing else to say and then let a few words escape his lips, “You’re right. I’m not denying that. I’m very privileged, I’m very gracious.”

“It still feels like we’re kind of in college,” Olli said, weighing in later on the situation Al described. They are, after all, living with their friends, five to a house, organizing their day around the run and then the second run, and in between trying to occupy themselves with hobbies that won’t tire them out. They play video games, listen to music, have coffee, read fantasy novels, have coffee again, podcast. They’re mostly living a college lifestyle. Except they don’t have to go to class or pay tuition or do any of the other things required of college that people usually resent. It seems like a pretty sweet gig. 

I’d say they’re creators. Olli’s a dreamer. He has a tendency toward grand vision, toward proposition. “Olli has like great, wild ideas,” Morgan said. For example, Olli has an idea for a fantasy novel that he’s been sitting on for awhile. It’s about envisioning a different world, drawing on influences from other books he’s read, from movies he likes. He began writing a prologue but it’s been a long time in the works. Morgan says it’s less natural for Olli to actually execute an idea, which in this case means putting pen to paper. Morgan feels like the opposite. He derives a lot of energy from trying to execute an idea. He likes being alone and loves to just experiment splicing together a video, adding little edits, doodling. He feels more oriented to action. “We compliment each other in that way,” Morgan said, alluding to how they’re a strong creative partnership.

Morgan hasn’t always been creative though. “I was not a creative person at all my whole life until after college, but I’ve more recently come to see the value of it I guess,” he says. “Activities that are stimulating and creative make me feel like I’m getting smarter, growing in a certain way,” he says, referencing basically every hobby of his that I know about. 

Millennials everywhere are going to hate me for this statement since the internet has them all in a stranglehold—obsessed with being online but simultaneously self-loathing about hOw ThE iNtErNeT pSyChOlOgIcAlLy cOnDiTiOns them, their online personas apparently inherently disingenuous and different from their True Self. Morgan’s YouTube channel to me feels like a perfect representation of who he is. His vlogs are narrated in his normal voice, exactly how he’d talk to you in his kitchen, and the edits are always so quirky: In the latest video he cut from a grainy alligator spotting to some kind of public domain Portuguese educational cartoon which explained that alligators were first born in Egypt, in the Nile. Expect the unexpected. He throws in these twists and turns like a David Lynch movie. Morgan said he feels much more comfortable editing his videos than being in front of the camera, actually producing the vlogs. He’s super comfortable being alone and could totally just sit in front of his computer (Twitch stream powered off) for hours and edit his videos.  

Olli says, “When a new Morgan video comes out, you don’t know what you’re going to get. You know the style but it’s like watching your favorite show. You don’t know what he’s about to do.” Bro I felt that. Morgan’s channel rips. He seems to always have the camera rolling at the right time, capturing mundane moments from his vantage point that feel more sincere than manufactured. It’s personal but never confessional. He somehow makes super banal things entertaining and depicts his friends in a way that always reflects well on them, always pulling out good pieces of their characters. Olli described it to me and said, “He gets these snippets of other people in there and makes them attractive to the audience.” 

Olli is dummy charming. He laughs at one of your jokes and then you want to tell him like seven more because he’s not shy to affirm you, even if it’s not necessarily a verbal affirmation. You want to latch onto that man and just like hang out and do nothing. And Morgan totally captures that in his vlogs. The first video he ever posted to his channel was about Olli being the first man to ever break 4 minutes in the mile on Colorado soil. Olli ran 3:56 and then keeled over in the grass on his hands and knees, vomiting and spitting, and Morgan came in like a wrecking ball, phone in hand, recording, and said, “This is for my documentary.” Olli didn’t look him in the eyes and just dispensed an impersonal Fuck You and then Morgan giggled and left Olli in peace. Later he filmed Olli at home, cradling a 2-liter Mountain Dew bottle in the living room. “What are you gonna get from McDonalds?,” Morgan prompts him. Olli doesn’t think about it: “Two Big Macs, 40 chicken nuggets, a McChicken, two large sodas, four fries.” Mukbang alert. (Move over Nikocado Avocado.) “I’m gonna eat all that and then I’m probably just gonna pass out,” Olli said. 

It feels like all of Morgan’s hobbies exist somewhere between creative and escapist. He likes to create things: He draws, vlogs, podcasts. And they all feel like activities you have to be present for, tapped into reality, into what’s immediate. But he also likes to feel like he’s somewhere else, this escapist impulse. I’d usually clown on fantasy novels. We all know that one kid in school who read Eragon like six times. But Morgan (Olli too) feels abnormally sophisticated for somebody who’s interested in the genre: “In terms of art in general, my favorite thing is to be transported to a different universe, a different world. Dalí, for example, has his own universe. When you look at his art you’re in his universe. Fantasy can take it even further. Every form of art that’s what I like.” 

He said over the past year he’s read all 17 books in some fantasy series I don’t remember the name of. Video games make him feel something similar. It’s not an accident that they’re dummy addictive. They’re kind of like drugs in that they’re like a guaranteed respite from reality. Even EDM music can connect with Morgan’s inclination to be elsewhere. He said, “The vibe just takes you somewhere. It’s often related to a memory. I’m very obsessive with my music. If I go through my playlist it’s chronological so I can relate music to certain times in my life, and in that way it totally takes you to a different place.” 

Running strangely does both of those things simultaneously. It grounds you because there's a tangible physical sensation involved, but your mind can also drift, be elsewhere. 

Morgan is definitely like chill vibey creative guy, but he’s also got this cutthroat kind of competitive edge to him. You’d expect him to not care about something like a trivial game of Catan but then he’s like abruptly demanding that people give him sheep cards and is always very close to flipping the board over when he unexpectedly rolls a 7 and has to give up half of his cards. They were recently playing bocce ball in their basement and Morgan got worked by Olli and he threw the white ball at the TV and the screen shattered right in front of them. “That’s a loss he’s actually willing to take,” Olli said, referencing the money Morgan had to spend replacing the basement TV. (It’s a massive TV.) They recently played a board game called Codenames with Carmela, and she was Morgan’s partner and apparently cost them the game, and naturally Morgan got mad at her and left the room. Olli said, “He’ll complain and pout and talk shit and walk off but then come right back and start another game.” 

It’s an easy and cheap conclusion to say that being competitive is a good trait to have if you want to be a champion on the track, but the degree to which Morgan is competitive actually makes that conclusion appropriate. 

But Morgan’s competitive spirit doesn’t seem as unwavering as Olli’s. Morgan seems more generally competitive, like he’d be much more concerned with finding the most eggs at the cousins’ Easter egg hunt, like he always wanted the best grades in the class, but Olli’s competitive nature feels more strictly sequestered to the track. He’s like an angry mfer on the track. He gets this look on his face standing on the starting line like he hates everybody he’s racing and then he grits his teeth a little bit and goes straight to the front and just stays there until he wins or Jakob Ingebrigtsen beats him. I was low key a little nervous to meet him because I thought he’d be abrasive or slightly standoffish but it turns out that’s just how he looks when he’s racing and he’s super sweet and welcoming. 

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Olli feels like it’s natural for him to be around other people all the time, but he said he really cherishes his alone time as well. He says spending time with his dog (GUS!) is a sacred time of the day for him. “I can enjoy his company and be alone at the same time,” he says. Olli said he plays video games and reads and writes, but his main alone time hobby—which he feels disconnected from at the moment—is surfing. “If I was a monk and meditating I’d want to be out on the ocean. It was such a refresh on my soul. It’s the place I can kind of think about things,” Olli says. 

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“When I think of Morgan I have this image of a guy with a smile and those eyes. They look at you and give you a sense of mischief. He’s mischievous. He makes me scared but excited,” Olli said. “I remember seeing him on the porch sipping his coffee and enjoying his time to himself. The Oakland porch in college. He’d be staring out at the fall. The leaves. AirPods in. He was very content and happy with life. He knows what he wants and likes what he wants. He enjoys the little things but also wants to be part of something bigger too.” 

Olli has had years to study Morgan and nail this description, but it’s astute. Morgan has this mischievous closed-mouth smile and these abnormally large, wide-open eyes that look at you, suggesting he’s going to grant you this special kind of sustained attention, as though he’s really sincerely interested in every word you have to say. 

Olli said, “Morgan was always the instigator.” Always experimenting, just trying stuff out because it seems fun. In college, he apparently just lubed up this medicine ball and started kicking it around in the shower and all of a sudden everybody else was kicking the ball too. Shower soccer. Morgan got this ridiculous game of shower soccer going. “He’d always come up with stuff like that,” Olli said. “You don’t know what’s going to happen with Morgan sometimes. It’s a bit of an adventure, it always is.”  

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Olli’s bedroom kind of feels like he’s done the Marie Kondo technique. He has a copy of Dune on his bedside table, which he said he has to finish reading before he sees the new movie.  

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Only a shitty writer would detail an athlete’s entire athletic career and try to call that a story. I’ve used every muscle in my body to resist that template because it’s tired and we’ve all seen enough of it, but some of these details are important. I’ll keep it short. Morgan was really good as a kid in Australia, and Olli wasn’t on the same level. Morgan went to Wisconsin and that honestly made Olli think that moving to the U.S. to run was a possibility. Morgan put in a good word with his coaches for Olli to get him on the team at Wisconsin because they were friends back home and because Morgan believed in Olli’s ability. Olli came to Wisconsin and had a string of bad races as a young buck. There was even one meet where he ran 4:20 in the mile. My jaw dropped when Morgan told me that. But Olli ended the year on a high note and broke 4. Sub-4 as a freshman is cracked by all standards. I’ll die on that hill. 

Morgan was strong right away for Wisconsin: He was winning Big Ten titles and securing All-American finishes. But then he got injured. At this point Olli was a sophomore and he really stepped up for the team in Morgan’s temporary absence. His times dropped like crazy and he kind of came out of nowhere as a national-caliber runner. Olli won the 1500 national title that year. “As a teammate I was so happy for him, but you also have this feeling like, ‘Fuck man I wish I was doing that.’ That’s normal,” Morgan said. “It’s inspiring. It also puts you on your toes and raises the bar.”

It did raise the bar: Morgan came back the next year, his fifth year, and tore it up like never before. They fought each other for a Big Ten cross country title, way ahead of everybody else. Recounting that race, the first time it felt like Morgan and Olli were both at the top of their game simultaneously, Morgan said, “With 2k to go, Olli made a fat move and dropped me a bit, and I was just chasing him. If you were watching it you’d think he was gonna win.” But Morgan won. Barely. Olli definitely skews more toward middle-distance expertise than Morgan, but he hung on. In the grass. That’s a monumental moment. Morgan went on to win the NCAA cross country title later that fall. And then two more NCAA titles indoors. And another one outdoors. Four national titles in one year. 

Morgan went pro with Under Armor, the sponsor of Wisconsin, and stayed in Madison to continue training with Olli. Things were working out when they were together, so why interrupt that momentum? When the time came, Olli turned pro for On and knew he was going to move to Boulder. Morgan wanted to move with him. Still sponsored by Under Armor, Morgan joined Team Boss but continued living with Olli. Looking back on that time, though, Olli said, “Things weren’t going as well for him and I noticed that. He wasn’t the same Morgan from college and high school.” Morgan wasn’t running poorly but he wasn’t channeling his Four NCAA Titles In A Single Year energy.  

Morgan had to make a change. Morgan said, “Olli vouched for me a lot at the time. He finagled for me to get a deal with On and join the team and be reunited. I knew I wanted to be a part of OAC and what was being created here. And a big part of that was being with Olli.” Tender as helllllll. 

As teammates at OAC last year, they both qualified for the Olympics, which might seem like it’s singularly worth celebrating. Olli ran an astonishing 3:32 over 1500 and qualified for the final. Morgan ran the 5,000 and ran solid. Reflecting on the situation, Olli said, “Morgan made the Olympics injured. He was one spot away from making the final and he had a fractured pelvis and a messed up ankle.” He continued, comparing himself to Morgan, which only feels appropriate after 15 years of running together, “Yeah, I made an Olympic final but what he did was more impressive in my book. He’d never admit that, but that amount of resilience is never talked about, seen, documented.” 

Now they’ve entered a period of steadiness. They’re both (mostly) healthy and training together again, as teammates. At this point, they’ve both made names for themselves as some of the world’s best runners. Now they’re ready to see what they’re both capable of. Speaking of Morgan, Olli said, “He’s gonna be so good if he keeps doing what he’s doing with Dathan. People forget he was beating Grant Fisher every day of the week.” Looking forward, Morgan hyped up Olli the same way Olli hyped him up: “If you know Olli and know how good he is, when he’s running his best he’s not losing any race.”

They’ve shared something really meaningful over their long athletic careers so far. Although the stakes aren’t the same, it reminds me of how that guard of 80-year-old men went to war together and now can’t talk about anything else. Or people who go to rehab together. Those situations are much more tragic, but all these experiences usher in this kind of exposure or vulnerability that fosters a closeness no matter what. And then you're like friends for life no matter the circumstances, regardless of minor degrees of incompatibility or whatever else, because you've lived through something serious together. 

“We both know how it feels to be on both ends of it. And everybody is going to be around and happy for you when you’re winning but not everybody is going to be checking on you when you’re down, when you’re having prolonged difficulty,” Olli said. “And it’s hard to be there for your mates sometimes when you’re down. Running is such an individual sport and learning to enjoy other people’s success is hard. I’ve been more open and aware of that lately.” 

This part almost made me shed a tear. 

“There are ups and downs in running but it’s so nice to be on the roller coaster with your mate. You celebrate the good things and with the bad things you’re able to come together and grow together,” Olli said.  

“I know that guy. I’ve known him my whole life. I can tell my friends, my family, my kids. Oh I know that guy. I was there when he did that.” 

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I’ve written a lot about Morgan and Olli’s beautiful friendship and I could definitely continue, but I had such a good time with them that I’ve decided to turn them into my new style icons so I’m selectively adopting a few of their admirable traits and pretending they’ve been mine all along. I tried Mountain Dew and hated it, but I am starting to develop something similar to Morgan’s rigor for bedtime, and since 9:30 is approaching I’d better wrap this up.