To continue to earn a pay check?

The weird thing for me is Colleen Quigley is now unattached.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

Is she though?

I mean she's clearly not going to make any olympic team. And is not a top tier professional runner.

She left Bowerman.

Clearly. See she announced it on instagram on Thursday. (Only just went over there to see it)

On Gwen?

I remember someone telling me [on this board] that Steph Bruce was a B Level Pro [after she won the US Half Marathon Championship] and B Level Pros race a lot because they need appearance fees and race winnings. Well, that seems to be where Gwen is now.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

Well then, Houston, we have a problem because Jerry doesn't doesn't let his runners race often. closing in 76, 77 and 77 is not going to cut it.

She's likely sponsored well enough to go until it's finally on her dime. Her and Patrick are pretty damn smart financially and so I think she's just going to go until she finally is done with it, and then go give some corporate motivational speeches or crunch some numbers.

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

We don’t know how much mileage she had in her legs. People respond differently to altitude camps. Noticeably absent from social media since!

I think if she has 3 or 4 below par races there will be a clearer picture.

She has no chance of making the Olympics. If she wants to be on top of the podium she has to go back to triathlon. I get she doesn’t want to travel so ITU is off the table, but she could be a decent 70.3 racer and there are a lot of US races that would suit her strengths.

I think winning the gold in Rio gave her a ton of flexibility. I think she was going to originally come back to ITU but some circumstances likely gave her an out, so she took it. Essentially she's had a "re-do" for the sport she's loved the most. And in reality she's likely had almost no pressure on her to perform other than she wanted to do well, etc. But she's very likely a good squad mate for BTC, probaly a great girlfriend to chit chat on those long runs, probaly paces when asked too, etc and so there's not a lot of bad having her do this....other than it's clear she's not making it. But I think it was more or less a shot at seeing what she can do, and so I think this was pretty much a no lose situation. It's then a matter of hoping the athlete is at peace with the decision to step away after recognizing where they are within said sport.

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

LetsRun is ... shall we say ... not a big fan of Gwen.

This comment made me chuckle.

"I want to know if Talbot is going to have kewl drone footage and a sleek Youtube video of her getting spit out the back?"

I noticed the front page article had no mention of her.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

What is there to mention?

Her consistent, earnest dismissal of triathlon (they asked ME to do it, I didn't really enjoy it, etc) added to her statement that she was "gonna go for gold in Tokyo, at the marathon" just really set the tone with her post triathlon world. Schadenfraude miiiiight be at play with many people's relationship with Gwen.

It's interesting in that GJ's "brand" while likely hugely successful for her almost seemingly has caused many people to dislike her. ETA: Perfect example was her "announcement" that she was coming to marathon running. That whole "winning gold" was 100% sponsor bullshit imo rhetoric, and it kinda was almost perfect GJ type of "brand" move; didn't seem authentic to me in how it was announced.

I'll give her credit for one thing is that she actually went all in on her tri career at a moment when she just as easily could have said "it's not worth it" post London '12. And I think her mindset was super critical for her to be so successful down the road in that she didn't see it as a "sacrifice" to move full time to Australia but as an "opportunity" (I think Jamie Turner was very instrumental in the mental side of the sport). It's a very slight difference in wording but hugely difference in the actual approach of an athlete.

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

I did just see her recap on a fb post (saw it as part of a shared post as I dont follow her anymore) like less than 15 mins ago.

Cliff notes version:
-triathlon at the end of her career was easy as she'd make mistakes and still win.
-Pat sees the happiness in GJ while running track.
-is going to continue and not close to quitting, remembers early years of tri she was lapped out or 54th finish.
-wants to be a role model for Stanley of "not quitting".
-leaving altitude to get back to sea level before a 10k race.

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

Still trashing Triathlon, a sport in which she could have been an all time great in...weird stuff.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

I dont think she was trashing tri. I think she was saying that essentially she didn't have much adversity the last 2-3 years of her tri career. Her "bad" races were still podiums whereas her best days aren't even in contention in running *so far*.

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

Well, clock is ticking.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

Yes and it's to the point that what will be the line in the sand moment? The weird thing to me about the whole running experiment that it seemed so opposite of the "calculated" decision making that GJ seemed to thrive with. Like you dont come into marathon running in a 2.5 year window and think you'll win gold. Now obviously that whole "win gold" was pr sponsor fluff announcement, but just a simple timeline dictated she was never going to be ready to run that fast for that long by Aug '20. So then she pivoted to the track shorter distances and it brought on injuries (probaly a build up of issues). So she says she doesn't want to "quit" just yet, but at the same time, I wonder what the result will be that decides it. But again winning that gold essentially allowed this to be gravy decision. Meh if it fails, she atleast gets to say she gave it her best.

It is interesting that almost as good as she was at itu, it was seemingly as quickly she was gone. Granted she raced in 2 Olympics, but it's interesting to debate if a few things were different if she'd had still come back. My guess is yes, but likely in a more limited role, but to her credit- she understood and respected the ITU demands of competition likely the most out of any female in itu during her reign, so maybe she would have never come back regardless as she knew just how important the squad life was for her development/motivation to S and B every single day.

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

Here’s a fun hypothetical...

Ryf, Lawrence, Haug, Charles, Duffy, Spirig and Gwen show up healthy to a hypothetical 70.3 worlds in September 2021.

Let’s pretend Gwen, dejected from her latest failure on the track, starts swimming and biking in earnest this week... giving her 7 months of prep...

Does she podium come September? I think she probably does.

She would get destroyed by those girls. Even as an ITU athlete, her biking was not at a world class level for a LC athlete. Remember her aero position at island house several years ago?

Regardless, this hypothetical is silly. She’s not coming back to triathlon.

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I think the swim fatigue and especially what the bike fatigue would do to her, would leave her run "good but not great". I think she would be mid pack in the swim, struggle to hold wheels / watts on the bike and then be too far back off the bike to run through the field. She would also have to get used to the aero TT position, which I think would be a huge turn off for her. And then add in the "motivation" of others to exact their revenge, etc.

(keep in mind she was pretty upfront about her disdain for non-draft LC tri, she never really wanted to go down that pathway regardless of how her itu career ended).

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

 
As much as I tried to really like her she seemed to go out of her way to make people dislike her. And now seeing her slide out of memory its just sad.

I stopped watching her videos. Talbot does a great job but I'd rather watch Gwens husband than her. Hes much more like-able.

Watching her run was painful. The constant injuries was like watching a train wreck. I called the end of it last year and got trashed on here. But the writing was on the wall.

I’m a longtime Gwen fan but this always bugs me a lot. It’s like this line that she trots out in every single interview or podcast since she left triathlon, along with how she hates swimming. I get that it is how she feels now but it damn sure can’t have been while she was doing triathlon and it’s really pretty tone deaf for someone who is largely living off their triathlon legacy and is big on promoting sponsors and herself on social media. I wish Talbot or someone would tell her that.

I think she was running close to her ceiling in triathlon already and that she is someone who runs best off more triathlon style training rather than the traditional high volume run training that BTC does. Her best performances were the ones she ran not long after giving birth when she still was biking and swimming a lot. She literally has not improved at all under BTC coaching in terms of race performances. Even her form doesn’t look as good as it did during her triathlon days. I think she would have done better with lower run volume and more swimming and could have faster 5k and 10k times (broken 15:00 for 5k etc.) although she still would not be at the level of Shelby Houlihan, etc. which is what it will take to make the Olympic team.

To be fair, she pivoted because she had surgery to remove the Haglund's deformity. The timeline to try and qualify on the track for the 10k was further out than Marathon trials were when she had barely started running again.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

Talbot hasn't done her videos for a while now. Look at the credits in her videos.

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