Yah its funny you start out with crazy dreams as a kid and then the real world hits you hard in the face and you start to realize just how crazy impossible the task of making an Olympic team is. I mean at the top level EVERYBODY works hard, EVERYBODY has talent, EVERYBODY is pretty darn lucky, so you sort of except that your second tier and that you just have to settle for personal goals that maybe aren’t as glorious but that help you reach your personal limits. Then to go out and reach the most aggressive of those goals, for me finishing top 10 at the trials, and sort of realize the doors that are cracked open in front of you. I got back to the hotel after that race and took an ice bath in the tub in my room, it was the first moment alone I had after the race and I was just glowing at what had happened and then it hit me, I was just 4 places away from the OLYMPICS!!!! Slowly then from the dissapointment of that moment I started to realize that I was only 27 and that I should really be hitting my peak a few years down the line. I had to actually consider myself a threat to make the next Olympic team. It scared the HELL out of me! I mean it is an impossible goal and for a guy like me, 5th man on his high school cross country team, never top man on his division 2 college team, never an all american even though I went to D2, that was a scary amount of pressure. That was the sort of expectation that the kids who won national titles in HS and college were supposed to have, the guys who had laid out ungodly times and shown talent beyond imagination from the time they lined up at their 5th grade gym class mile. It was so far beyond daunting for just a normal guy like me! Then it became exciting.
The last few years have been hell. I have failed again and again to fix this leg and now in the closing months before the trials I’m making my last ditch effort at getting healthy at last. I may still pull it out, I may not but that is what makes it so hard to make an Olympic team. You can have enough talent, you can figure out the best training for you and make huge breakthroughs, and you can have one little lost corner of your body functioning a bit out of key and all your years are for not, all your work is dust. Still regardless of how the next few months go I’d not give back a moment. I was the proverbial 10min two miler in high school and I worked HARD to do that and I had a lot of wrong turns and hurdles since but I got to run professionally, I was top 10 in a couple national championships, and I got to wear the USA colors at a world championship which is the single greatest honor I could ever hope for
Nate Jenkins!!!