After winning the 400-meter title at the U.S. track and field championships Saturday in Eugene, Oregon, Jacory Patterson returned to find his phone filled with congratulatory messages.

Among the well-wishers were some of Patterson’s former co-workers. They had seen him operate under pressure at a fast pace before — at a UPS distribution center in South Carolina.

As Patterson, 25, showed in Oregon after cruising one lap in 44.16 seconds to win his first individual national title, his speed is unique. Yet his decision to fund his training via a graveyard shift packing boxes into the back of UPS delivery trucks is rooted in a reality that is common throughout his sport.

It’s hard to make a living in track and field.

“I can definitely say it’s a little tougher being unsponsored for sure, because you have no money,” Patterson said in an interview Sunday. “Everything is coming out of your pockets. And then, having to balance that with getting into meets, paying for gear, paying for spikes and all the things that go into track? And then having to pay your own bills, too; you know, rent, car bills, gas, groceries, like the whole nine yards.”

In many major North American professional sports, a single entity such as the NBA, NFL or MLB collects revenue from media rights, merchandising and other licensing and pays out a share to its athletes under the terms of an agreement that has been collectively bargained with their union. Track and field, however, has no single, premier league, and their athletes also have no union. The combination makes established and aspiring pro runners alike the world’s fastest freelancers, whose income is dependent on a piecemeal combination that can include endorsements, appearance fees, prize money and money earned from social media and grants.

As Patterson can attest, not all of those revenue streams are guaranteed.

At last week’s U.S. championships, it was not uncommon to see some of the sport’s highest-paid and most-decorated athletes, including champion sprinter Noah Lyles, competing alongside peers scratching out a living. On Sunday, Dylan Beard made the U.S. team that will compete in September’s world championships in Tokyo in the 110-meter hurdles. To go to the meet, however, the unsponsored hurdler will need to ask for time off from his day job in the deli of a North Carolina Walmart.

Patterson left the University of Florida powerhouse campus in 2023 with a pair of NCAA relay championships but his times were not fast enough to earn an all-important sponsorship contract with a shoe company. Shoe companies provide the bulk of money for track athletes though some, but not all, companies utilize so-called “reduction clauses” to cut an athlete’s earnings if certain performance marks are not met.

These contracts are almost never made public. The most lucrative, such as the one Adidas holds with Lyles, and a five-year, $11 million deal signed by former Olympic champion Andre de Grasse with Puma, are the exception, not the rule, and even then would make them firmly middle class by NBA, MLB and NFL standards.

The 2024 Olympic Trials presented a breakout opportunity for Patterson to make the case for himself to brands, but he didn’t advance out of the first round. It didn’t shake his confidence in his potential, but he did question how much it would cost him out of pocket to realize it.

So, as the world watched the Paris Olympics, Patterson moved to his hometown of Columbia, South Carolina, and last August began a job at UPS. From 10:45 p.m. until nearly 5 a.m., Patterson stood alongside a conveyer belt, picking up boxes containing everything from couches to refrigerators and loading them into delivery trucks. He could pack up to four trucks in a shift, he said.

Patterson did not find the work discouraging, instead persuading himself that while his peers literally slept, he was getting stronger. His mother joked to Patterson that his night shift was like his second workout of the day. That was because, hours earlier, he’d already had a first.

After sleeping for three hours following his shift with UPS, Patterson would wake and start training from around 8:30 a.m. until just after lunch. Then, he would fall asleep until the evening, and start the process over.

“I would be on the trucks, late night, loading the boxes and not one time did I think, ‘I want to stop this, this is too much,’” Patterson said. “Not once did I ever let that thought cross my mind. I always knew I was gonna keep going with this, because this, it’s in my heart.”

“You’ve got to just have faith the size of a mustard seed, and just keep the ball rolling,” he added.

An injection of new money into the sport was supposed to make earning a living from track easier. Several new competitions announced their intentions to stage new meets in 2025, the most lucrative of which was Grand Slam Track. Fronted by former Olympic champion Michael Johnson, and backed by an announced $30 million in funding, the circuit announced it would host four meets and would not only pay out $3 million in total prize money, but crucially also pay a group who agreed to sign on a contractual, six-figure salary.

When Patterson opened his season in April by running 44.27 seconds at a meet in Florida, potential sponsors began to call his agent, he said. It helped him earn a wild-card entry a month later to a Grand Slam Track meet in Florida, where he ran a personal-best 43. Only two men in the world have run faster in the three months since, making Patterson a legitimate threat to win a gold medal at September’s world championships in Tokyo.

Even better, the race also earned him $50,000 — a career-changing sum in a sport whose longest-established, and highest-profile meet circuit comparatively paid Patterson one-fifth that amount for winning a 400 at one of its meets in late May.

Yet months after he earned the money, the $50,000 owed to Patterson by Grand Slam Track still has not been paid, he said, adding he believes the money will arrive in September. Under a funding shortfall, the circuit ended its season after only three meets, and it has yet to pay any athletes for prize money from its first two competitions, in Jamaica and Florida. The company is “recapitalizing,” a spokesperson said in a statement, and “is anticipating investor funds to hit our account imminently, and the athletes are our top priority. Once these funds are received on our end, we will work to immediately process them to the athletes.”

What Patterson’s performance at Grand Slam did provide, more immediately, was an overnight spike in attention from potential sponsors. By late May, Patterson quietly put in his two weeks’ notice with his UPS manager. On June 5, the day after Patterson announced his long-awaited sponsorship with the sportswear giant Nike, he worked his final day loading boxes.

“Everybody (at UPS) was like, man, go chase that dream,” Patterson said.

Part of that dream was realized when he won the U.S. title Saturday while crossing the finish line in a Nike singlet.

“It’s not always gonna be easy,” he said. “If it would, you know, everybody would be U.S. champion.”

Patterson said he understands why his time UPS has drawn so much interest. The notion of an athlete needing a second job to fund a first love is largely unheard of in major domestic leagues. Still, he said he wants to be known for more than just what he did at his former workplace. And he will be at September’s world championships, should Patterson deliver the goods, once again.