Ruairi Moynihan: Lessons from failing to qualify for the olympic marathon trials

In today’s episode, we’re bringing you a story from an incredible athlete who spent years of training to accomplish his goal of competing at the olympic marathon trials by running an OTQ time - and ultimately fell just short of that goal during his most recent attempt. This athlete happens to also be one of our own coaches here at RunnersConnect and his name is Ruairi Moynihan. Ruairi came so close to hitting the 2:18 standard back in 2022, running an impressive 2:21 marathon while training mostly for trail and ultra race distances. Most recently though, under the guidance of his coach - and former RunnersConnect coach - Dylan Belles, the two crafted more focused plan to chase the OTQ standard at the 2023 CIM marathon in December. 

We brought Ruairi and Dylan on the show to recap how they approached training and then get their thoughts on what runners can do to learn from races that don’t go exactly as planned. Ruairi is an absolutely inspiring athlete who shares an honest story of failing to hit your dream goal that will be relatable to just about anyone listening. During this interview we discuss some lighthearted and more serious topics including:

• Why the olympic trials was an important goal for Ruairi and how it felt falling short of this objective
• Why Ruairi and Dylan were confident an OTQ time was achievable based on the previous training block
• Why the camaraderie between Ruairi and Dylan makes them an even better team
• And what went wrong on race day including thoughts on how runners can bounce back from a disappointing performance

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