OTQ :: The chase.
As with many obscure sports, every four years brings us the Olympics and a brief moment of acknowledgement. For competitive marathoners either you’ve made the cut (Olympic Trial Qualifying Mark), and will be at the trials or you won’t… and either way you will be trotting out your commitment to this honorable, albeit arbitrary pursuit. It’s a lifestyle, not a hobby, after all.
From both sides of the time standard, athletes that have never once received a pay-check for their efforts, are crafting press releases and monologues as if they've arrived at the climatic moment of a heroic running saga. Messages of self-sacrifice, recounting losses and triumphs along the way. Perhaps they are throwing around heavy threats of retirement or promises of victory – whatever all that might mean in a sport that rarely supports professionalism. Whether on the starting line or as a spectator, each athlete is filled with relief and anxiety to be on the precipice of such a great battle.
In all this indulgent self-analysis, we find this is ultimately to be a performance for one -- a personal victory or loss. This is a sport whose fan base and financiers are the participants. It ultimately exists as something you must prove to yourself, for yourself. No one is on the other side to vindicate your experience.
Marathoners can be incredibly neurotic; more specifically narcissistic. I've lived intimately with this shifting standard for 15 years, and if I'm lucky I may have the pleasure of chasing it around for another four or eight years. Those around me have come and gone at different times, if their dedication didn’t match mine. Everything revolves around this representation of my capacity for focus, strength and resilience. If I can’t succeed here, how will I succeed in anything? I’ve put in enough time and made enough choices to confirm the selfish nature of sport. Careers, partners, coaches, family, friends, all relationships – people either accept your choices around competitive running, and they love you for it – and if they don’t, then they may not have a place in your life.
Photo Credit :: The Oregonian.
My relationship to the OTQ standard has evolved since our first encounter in 2011. At that time I was invited by my College coach to go for the standard during my first Marathon. I was already backed up against the deadline to hit the time, and would have to wait another four years for the Olympics to come back around if I didn't try now. With a “Nothing to Lose/Can I Cover this Distance?” mindset I drove the course with my boyfriend the day before and felt so intimidated. I cried. I hadn’t ran over 18 miles consecutively at the time. However, on race day when I turned the final corner and missed the time by 27 seconds I was filled with hope and excitement. I had been brave and powerful in my pursuit of the standard.
It’s ironic that the pure moments were at the beginning. It also turns out that feeling was not reliant on achieving the time standard. I had made the initial climb to the peak of Mount Stupid, right before entering the Valley of Despair (Dunning-Kruger Effect). The moment’s that followed have been complex and gritty and confusing at times – turning points and cornerstones of the person I’ve become – perhaps this is life? Things get complicated and accumulate and we start to carry parts of all of the people and times that were, into what we are. This makes the process dynamic, rich and charged. Which is also fulfilling. However, the simple joys of novel experience were gone as I traveled the long slope of enlightenment.
The 2024 version of my story is straight-forward: a missed qualifying time – the first since 2011. However, this time it carried fifteen years of chasing, and represented all sorts of things that it had not in the beginning. After enough marathons I've built expectations and a fragile ego to match. A sense of entitlement, accompanied by pressure and baggage. Each time I start to think I know the system and have solidified my place within it -- the marathon reminds me, in the most precise way, that I have done neither.
I am rooting for everyone to have their day, with all the big and small feelings — one that surprises and empowers you, and also shakes and scares you. I am rooting for you to continue grow and fail forward. For you to experience all of the versions of yourself that live in this pursuit.
