“A year ago, if you had told me any of this past weekend were to happen, I would have laughed in your face. First came the 15-minute personal best at CIM. It had taken me five years to break my 3:12 debut. Smiling mid-marathon? Mid-Olympic trials? After more than a decade of crippling anxiety attacks, that’s another girl. Not me. I had long accepted that I didn’t have the talent needed in this sport. I told myself many times that I wasn’t mentally tough enough. I said I didn’t have the guts to fight. I needed to go out fast in each race to bank time because I was always bound to give up the second half. But that’s the thing about this sport, if you place restrictions on yourself, that’s what you are bound to perform at. It becomes the splits you pace yourself for and the mentality you train with. I am lucky enough to have found a community that believed in me. It was enough that over time I started to believe them. I’m lucky to be part of a city that loves this sport in a way wher...