GOSHEN — The Goshen College guidance counselor couldn't keep a straight face when Justin Gillette laid out his goals for four years of schooling.

“I only have two goals,” the then-freshman recalled saying. “Run as fast as I could to be able to make a profession out of it and find a lady to get married to.”

She laughed, but he wasn't kidding.

He wasn't fazed by her response. It was hardly the first time someone doubted his potential, and it certainly wouldn't be the last.

If anything, Gillette, now 28, internalized the skepticism, compartmentalized it with similar comments thrown his way over the years and turned it into a fire that would fuel 38 marathon wins, the third most of any runner in America.

Most recently, Gillette ran back-to-back marathons on Nov. 11 and 12 on a bum foot that had been smashed by a pin oak log earlier that week. He won both, pushing his total marathon wins this year to 15.

“I'm not the best marathon runner in the country,” he said. “By no means am I saying I'm the fastest. But what I can do at my level is that I can run a lot of them and place well.”

And he's just getting started.

MOTIVATED BY DOUBTERS

Once upon a time, 13-year-old Justin Gillette was sick of getting picked on by a handful of bullies in his physical education class in Missouri.

He was a slightly chubby teenage boy, a prime target for middle school locker room teasing. Despite doing situps until his back bled, he couldn't sculpt the perfect six-pack abs he so desperately desired.

He made it a goal to beat those kids, not with his fists, but with his feet.

So on Valentine's Day in 1996, he dashed ahead in the PE mile run and finished in five minutes and 51 seconds, faster anyone else in the class.

His first race, his first win.

Fast forward three years, and Gillette was eyeing his first marathon in Arkansas. His mother put her foot down, saying that a marathon is no place for a 16-year-old.

“She was probably right, but she didn't know me too well, I guess,” he said, cracking a grin. “When I'm determined, I'm going to do something.”

So Gillette and his friend hopped a train to Arkansas under the guise of visiting the friend's grandmother. The next day, Gillette called his mom and told her he just ran a marathon in three hours and 19 minutes.

“Needless to say, the marathon hurt a lot, but the punishment from my mom hurt a lot too,” he said. “I definitely got ripped a good one then.

The theme of his journey becomes clear with every anecdote he rattles off about a trash-talking rival or a company that denied him a sponsorship because he wasn't an elite enough runner: He's motivated by doubters.

“If I (gave in), I'd just be part of the in crowd,” he said. “I got to go against that.”

While at Goshen College, he persisted a fellow distance runner named Melissa for three years, trying and failing time and time again to convince her to go out with him.

“I told her before we started dating that I was going to marry her,” he said coyly. “And apparently, that was a scary thing to say.”

He finally talked her into one date. They were married in 2007 and ran a marathon for their honeymoon trip.

CAREER OF WINNING

It's hard to take two steps in the Gillette household in Goshen without running into matching trophies accumulated from any one of several dozen marathons they've run — and won — together.

Their 2-year-old son, Myles, half-runs, half-skips around the house, gleefully bouncing through finish line tape from the Atlanta Marathon that Justin strung across an archway for the play-race.

The pairs of trophies look more like something from a Pier1 catalogue than a race: Stained glass from Rochester, N.Y., silver plates from Little Rock, Ark., and an urn from Maui, Hawaii, to name a few.

When he's not running, Justin's official job is a stay-at-home dad while Melissa gets her graduate degree from Notre Dame, where she's focusing on molecular biology and breast cancer research. Since earnings from races can range from $1,000 to $2,000, Justin helps on Melissa's father's family farm in between races for extra money and is an assistant cross country coach at Goshen College.

With no office to drive to, no boss to report to, no 8-to-5 schedule to maintain, Justin relies on himself, encouragement from Melissa and the training program from Goshen College cross country coach Doug Yoder to keep him focused. After all, each race is a paycheck.

“No one cares about your own individual goals as much as you do,” he said. “You don't want to have to rely on other people to achieve them. You can't have people downplay your ambition.”

Justin's ambition trickles over to Melissa, who started off running mini-marathons before making her way up to the full 26.2 miles.

She called her husband “crazy” for his decision to run the back-to-back marathons on consecutive days but said his willpower was a motivation to her.

“I ran that (second) marathon too,” she said. “It was a tough day out there because it was windy. I was struggling in the wind, and I kept thinking, ‘Justin's out there. He ran a marathon yesterday. I have nothing to complain about. I can't run poorly here.'”

When they can find a babysitter for Myles, Justin and Melissa will travel together for a race.

Their routine is the same every morning: Wake up two hours before the race, Justin showers and Melissa makes oatmeal in the hotel room's coffee pot.

At the starting line, Melissa said Justin will scout out her competition and remind her to never count herself out of the race. Then they're off.

The feeling of hearing both of their names called out as winners for their respective divisions has yet to get old, Melissa said.

“It's exciting,” she said. “We get very excited for each other. I get very excited for him when he's able to do well and run well.”

FUTURE PLANS

Justin is just two wins away from becoming the second winningest marathon runner in America, something he hopes to accomplish by the end of the year.

He's staying mum about his future beyond then, though, but hints at big plans in 2013, the year he turns 30.

He knows at some point he has to slow down, to focus on his family life and realize that, at his rate, an injury is increasingly likely.

But for now, he is maintaining his running blog at www.gilletterunning.blogspot.com. and is itching to try another back-to-back marathon weekend.

“Just to see if I can run faster,” he says.

Marathons the Gillettes have run and how they placed:

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