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On February 3rd, 2024, the United States held their Olympic Marathon Trials in Orlando, FL to determine the team they will be sending to the 2024 Summer Games in Paris, France. Once every four years the best in the country  race head-to-head where the top three men and top three women are chosen to represent the country at the Olympics. Not many countries select their team this way and it’s got to be an absolute pressure cooker of an environment for athletes, but for fans of the sport it promises some of the highest quality athletics entertainment. Carolyn considers herself a fan of the sport but nowhere near the level of her older brother, Kevin Beatty, who accepted our third invitation to the show to break it all down with us. 

This topic of the US Olympic Marathon Trials is admittedly quite nerdy and likely only interesting to diehard fans. Luckily we had Kim asking excellent clarifying questions, preventing us from going too deep in the weeds, and even coming up with some very insightful takes of her own!

In this episode we discussed:

• How to qualify for this race
• Why it’s such a big deal
• Who the favourites were on both the men’s and women’s sides
• How each race played out
• Notable DNFs
• Surprise underdog performances
• Shakespearean tragedies that were tough to watch. 

We realized afterwards that beyond discussing the qualifying standards, there was virtually no mention of the athletes’ finishing times, which speaks to the thrilling nature of championship style racing.

Kevin’s previous episodes on the podcast:

• Ep 3 | Treating Running Like a Sport 
• Ep 78 | Pacer for Carolyn’s Las Vegas 10k Win 

Resources discussed in the episode:

• Ep 104 | The Anatomy of a DNF 

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