Sidney Crosby has a fear about running the mile. A fear so deep it has kept him awake at night and has caused him to vomit in dread and exertion. He doesn’t think he’s a good runner but is “okay” with that. Something else gets under his skin.

“The mile run is my ultimate nightmare,” he said and shrank lower into his chair. “It’s something I can’t get over. It’s a phobia.”

He hates that it’s just him against the clock. He cannot chase anyone. No one chases him. He doesn’t consider competing against himself true competition.

“I’m not a good runner, and I’m okay with that. But I want to win so badly it bothers me that I can never beat the clock. Even if I beat myself, I haven’t accomplished anything.”

O’Brien has never told him to start running. He starts his stopwatch when Crosby decides to go. Sidney has stood on the start line for fifteen minutes unable to move. “That’s how much it scares me.”

When Crosby was chasing 100 points, O’Brien left him a message that if he made it, Sidney could pick the date to run his first mile.

The previous year, he ran at a track in the Dartmouth neighborhood where his grandmother Linda Crosby used to reside, in the same house Sidney and his parents lived in when he was just a baby.

“I liked that. It helped me by reminding me why I was there,” he said. “Now I always run there. But I still get freaked out. I’ll never be able to change that.”