Athing Mu describes her attitude to running—which, coincidentally, also happens to be her approach to life—as “grace, gratitude, appreciation.” We’re discussing expectations and when to let them go, learning and development, and failures and the lessons they can teach. About finding delight in the process in this cruelly clear-cut kind of athletics, when seconds matter and can make the difference between winning and losing.
Through a video link from Los Angeles, where she lives and trains, she states with a maturity beyond her 22 years of age, “Things are going to happen.” Let me run for ten more years. Many things are going to happen in those years. Not everything will go as planned. We gain lessons from the problems we face.
Twelve months ago, Mu was impervious. One of the main events in the sport, the 800m, had become her personal fief. She had won gold at the Olympics in Tokyo, another in the 4×400-meter relay, and the world title the year after. It had been over three years since she had been battered. CNN praised her as “the future of athletics in America” since she was young and attractive. She was also not happy.
At the 2023 World Championships in Budapest, where she was the overwhelming favourite to retain her title and continue her perfect streak, things came to a head. What was her internal state? She now admits, “I wasn’t really happy to be there.” “I just wasn’t really there the season before, not in terms of training, but emotionally. I was simply not there. I was not grateful to be there. I wasn’t particularly enjoying my circumstances.
In actuality, anticipation paralysis was taking place. She felt as though she was being pulled out of her comfort zone and forced to go through the motions by the intense pressure that came with winning, which grew with each race.
One of her first instructors at the Trenton Track Club in New Jersey once told her, “You can either be the rabbit, or you can be the fox.” Paradoxically, Mu felt more hunted than ever in her entire authority.
She claims that by the time she arrived in Budapest, the world championships were “just another meet” to her. In the championship match, Kenyan Mary Moraa and British Kelly Hodgkinson ran her down in the house straight. Bronze. Mu grimaced and pulled up a few meters behind the queue, hands on her head. It was as though she had at last understood she was at her very best.
It is still Mu’s final championship match. Her heat at the US Olympic trials on Saturday morning will be her first race in nine months because she has been sidelined by a hamstring issue this year. Naturally, with the Olympics in Paris less than a month away, her absence has given rise to a plethora of rumours, doubts, and anxieties. She feels fantastic, though. Most importantly, she has mostly stopped caring about things outside of her control.
How does she strike a mix between freshness and racing sharpness? How does she determine how much racing is OK or inappropriate? She acknowledges, “I think we’re still working that out.” “This year, we decided to take a step back and give the bigger meetings more priority in order to make the Olympic team. Naturally, racing is fantastic. Now, though, we’re just getting ready for the Games. That’s when she starts to recognise herself. She continues, as though they were anything more than a formality, “Not the Games, the trials.”
Her perspective on the sport has undergone a significant shift. Mu made an effort to rekindle the inspiration that first drew her to the track over those protracted months away from it. “It was just something I did when I started running when I was six years old,” the woman says. Reaching “this level” or chasing “this person” weren’t the goals. It became the norm because it was ingrained in me.
“After going professional, I don’t think I was as focused on winning the first two years.” I was experiencing everything for the first time. Luckily, I had not experienced a particularly difficult moment. That is, of course, what happens as you get older. I simply had no idea how it would impact me. Simply put, maturing. going through experiences that I never thought I would.”
She completely stopped competing and embraced the other aspects of her life after the world championships the previous year. She spent her family’s company. She left social media behind. She read the Bible and took lengthy walks. She worked as a model and in advertising. Speaking on behalf of Team Coca-Cola, an Olympic sponsor, she does this here. She adds that she gained the ability to “see things in a different way, to take the moments and just appreciate, and walk in gratitude” during her journey.
It’s not as though she doesn’t wish to prevail. An athlete with such determination and destiny would always strive for victory. However, Mu isn’t willing to let victory define her any more. She explains, “I just want to kind of appreciate the environment.” “I wish to avoid feeling like I did last year. I have the honour of, hopefully, attending an Olympic Games where everything is perfectly normal. This is my second Olympics. In addition to spectators and an amazing group of 800-meter runners who are reshaping the sport as a whole, there is no Covid.
Not to be forgotten is Hodgkinson, a sportsman who rose from the junior ranks around the same time as Mu, and whose destiny appears to have been linked. Silver in Eugene 2022 and Tokyo 2021 behind Mu. Silver in Budapest, trailing Moraa. The fastest woman in the world this year and the recently won European champion. Naturally, Mu has also been observing.
She claims, “I’ve seen things on my social media and on track outlets.” “She’s fantastic. We are not truly rivals, in my opinion. We’re just two extremely talented young athletes in the 800, and since we have that fire between us, we’re going to compete. However, it seems to me that things kind of fall apart the moment you start thinking about competitors.
In the end, grace, thankfulness, and appreciation are what matter most. embracing reality as it exists. After her post-worlds rest towards the conclusion of the previous season, Mu participated in the Prefontaine Classic in Oregon. She sensed something strange about the energy even before the rifle fired. She remarks, “It wasn’t how I felt the entire season.” “A certain lightness, absence of anticipation. I had a liberated feeling. I was excited to compete and run. I was not contemplating the outcome at that point. I just want this race to feel amazing. And everything that occurs happens.
Of course, one may counter that pressure during an Olympic Games is very different. However, Mu is aware that she can run the biggest races with the greatest amount of freedom because it was this that initially propelled her to success. She also desires to return to that home. “Compete with me,” she says. “Let’s make sure nothing is overlooked. And simply pump your arms if your legs start to weary.
