Long after the battle for the spots in the Rio Olympics had concluded, long after Galen Rupp and Amy Cragg had been crowned race champions on a nearby podium, and long after the crowds’ cheers had faded, the fans had dispersed, and a cleanup crew had begun to dismantle the timing mats at the race finish, the final two competitors in the 2016 Olympic Marathon Trials crossed the finish line.

Joanna Zeiger clocked 3:23:28, finishing in 149th place for the women. It was a far cry from the her fourth-place finish in the triathlon at the Sydney Olympics in 2000 or her Ironman 70.3 world championship in 2008.

Chris Barnicle struggled to the line 105th among men, clocking 3:45:34, a mere shadow of the runner who’d posted a 1:02.43 half marathon in 2011. Both runners had one thing in common: They had overcome obstacles simply to toe the start line, and they had no intention of letting any new race obstacle prevent them from reaching the finish line.

“This is the end of a long journey,” said Zeiger, 45, from Boulder, Colorado, gingerly lowering herself into a chair provided by a race volunteer, having absorbed the race distance the way a boxer endures a 15-round beating. “I’ve had some major injuries, so just finishing was the end goal here.”

Zeiger is a seven-time Olympic trials qualifier, spread across three different sports: swimming, triathlon, and running. In other words, she’s no slouch when it comes to national class competition. And her injuries are anything but the exaggerated aches and pains that haunt most athletes on race day.

“In 2009, when I was defending my 70.3 world championship, at about mile 45, I was reaching for a water bottle,” Zeiger said. “The person handing out the bottle didn’t let go and pulled me off my bike. I broke my collarbone, and I broke multiple ribs—three or four on my right side and at least one on my left side.”

Zeiger had multiple surgeries to remove big chunks of her 11th and 12th ribs, her xiphoid process, and a bony growth from her abdomen, as well as to reinforce her eighth rib with titanium plates. She retired from triathlon and set her sights on the 2012 Olympic Marathon Trials. She qualified, but lingering pain from her injuries prevented her from finishing.

Not so this time. Although still suffering from rib pain, abdominal spasms, and nausea—with another surgery scheduled in a few weeks—Zeiger toed the 2016 trials start line with a single goal.

“No matter how long it took,” she says, “I was determined to get to that finish line.”

And a little over three hours later, she did just that.

Chris Barnicle, 28 and a resident of Los Angeles for the past two years, qualified for the Trials with a 1:04:29 half marathon in 2013. “But that was a long time ago,” he says, stretched out vertically on a cement bench adjacent the finish line, his lower leg muscles visibly cramping. Barnicle unwinds the narrative of his past few years in staccato, rapid-fire bursts, broken up by occasional long pauses to wince in response to intense spasms of pain.

Once a promising young runner, with times of 13:36.02 for 5,000 meters and 28:10.59 for 10,000 meters, and having trained in Kenya with renowned marathon coach Renato Canova, Barnicle’s athletic career was derailed by a chronic injury to his soleus muscle.

About the time he was exiting the running scene in 2014, he moved to Los Angeles and began working as a wholesale distributor for medical marijuana dispensaries. On the side, he sells his own boutique clothing line, Cannabis Cowboy. He thought his competitive running days were over.

“But you know what?” he said, his eyes sparkling with a merriment unusual in someone immediately post-marathon. “It was around Christmas time this year, and I thought: I got the trials qualifier, I live in L.A., so I just got to sign up and renew my USATF membership and do it—it’ll be so much fun.”

Of course, there was that little obstacle called “lack of fitness.”

“I was doing no miles some weeks,” Barnicle said, “because I’m still struggling with the soleus injury, but I did do a couple good workouts—some hills in Echo Park, some long fartleks.” Barnicle also began running with BlacklistLA. “It’s a street-art appreciating running group. I was running on my own and I was thinking, Like, dude, I wish I had some running friends in L.A. And then there was like a hundred guys.”

The final motivation that pushed Barnicle to run the trials was a story about his grandmother. “Everyone always told me growing up that she qualified for the Olympic trials in the long jump in 1930-something,” Barnicle said. But when he checked her scrap books and internet records of that era, he couldn’t find her name. “So I thought, I want someone from my family to say they’ve been in the Olympic trials. So here I am.”

Less than a dozen spectators remained to clap for Zeiger and Barnicle as they completed their 26.2 mile journeys. But they didn’t mind. They weren’t running for the crowds; they were running because they’d earned the right to compete. They were running because defeat, to them, wasn’t about lagging behind the other 252 runners in the race. It was about quitting before they reached the finish line.

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