Building for the Fall: D3 Alumni Marathon Series - Sean O'Connor
"You have to forget your last marathon before you try another. Your mind can't know what's coming." - Frank Shorter
Sean O’Connor (RPI 2019) knows this sentiment all too well. As he slinks outside in the early Utah dawn, sunlight finally crests the Wasatch Range and reaches the Great Salt Lake, setting it on fire. Sometimes Murphy the dog comes along for morning miles. Sometimes he’s with his wife Liz, also a fiercely competitive marathoner. And sometimes it’s just him, in the silence and desert serenity of northern Utah, ruminating on a relationship with running several times lost and rediscovered.
What happens when it’s just not worth it anymore? Merely a good D3 runner out of RPI and the Liberty League, Sean O’Connor scorched the earth trying out the roads with a 63:45 at the 2020 Houston Half. This qualified him to be the youngest male competitor at the 2020 Olympic Marathon Trials. (Even rarer: the Trials were his marathon debut.) He placed 155th. The fire burned brighter after he moved to Utah with Liz and showed out at Grandma’s 2023: 2:17:08, his ticket punched back to the Trials in 2024. Everything was pointing towards the next great breakthrough. “I put literally everything I had into my training for that race (the 2024 Trials). I was going to send it. I trained hard. I put life in general on the back burner. I adjusted my work schedule to work from home more. I spent lunch breaks doubling and sitting in the sauna. I optimized my life around a single goal.”
“2 weeks before the race I suffered an injury that ultimately stopped my training and forced me to drop out of the race in Orlando. I looked back at everything that went into that race. So many hours, so much sacrifice (at least what I considered sacrifices in life), and for what? A free trip to Orlando and pain when I walked? I hadn't done anything that I really enjoyed that year. I barely rode my mountain bike that fall. Liz and I stayed in Utah for the holidays, I hadn't skied once. It just didn't seem worth it. Running wasn't an outlet or a joyful activity for me after all of this. My hip injury wouldn't go away, every run sucked. I just found zero joy in getting out the door. Not even for a 4-mile easy run with Liz. So I made the decision to hang up the shoes. I took a lot of time completely off.”
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Photo by Aaron Tries
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I met Sean not long after his grand disillusionment, in late summer 2024 when I too lived in Salt Lake City, and decided to show up to a new run club. It was just a few others waiting quietly in the dark, and then Sean, Liz, and Murphy the dog barreled out of one car. Sean was the first to ask the inevitable question (“So who are you?”) and I chatted with him the most. The gang talked politics, running routes, and memecoins. At some point I asked nobody in particular what their next race was, and Sean responded,
“I’m retired, actually.”
“So why are you here at 6 in the morning then?”
He had a less succinct answer for that one. On runs together since, I’ve heard hardly anything about his innate talent and past successes. Fortunately not too long ago when I asked him to be a part of this series, it was roughly the same time as when he thought long and hard, made his decision, hopped online, and signed up for Boston 2026. He chose to go for it once again.
“Falling out of love with running is probably something that not everyone feels. For me, it was just a combination of factors that all just aligned at the same time. Even at my lows in training over the years, I still looked forward to getting out the door for a run or meeting friends for shared miles. Slowly, (over more than a year) I started running more. Runs started to feel better. The hip injury healed. I started to feel the joy that came with getting out for a run. Sharing miles with Liz again, getting out on the trails and enjoying the mountains. Slowly I started to remember why I loved running so much. But the love of running and the love of competing don't always go hand in hand. It took a lot more time to regain the desire to workout or do long runs, and even more time to sign up for a race. After some races that were fun but not my full potential, I started to question, what is my full potential? That thought has slowly reignited my desire to train and desire to compete again.”
Sean isn’t the only one in the house acquainted with the plights and torments of chasing numbers. Liz O’Connor (née Lagoy / University of Connecticut 2018 / D1) ran Grandma’s 2022 and had a remarkable breakthrough, running 2:37:06 - 7 seconds off the women’s OTQ. Equally unexpected is that those 7 seconds have evaded her in her two all-in attempts since. Few options were left afterward but a long break in tandem with Sean’s. “I was pretty crushed after missing the Trials standard last cycle and pouring so much into training. I learned that I needed more balance with life and running (something I’ve been trying to take from Sean) if I decide to take a crack at the OTQ time again. I’ve really enjoyed my time away from the structured training, [but] I’m starting to get back into it a bit more. [Sean’s] goals are mine and vice versa, so it’s really fun to push each other to go after scary goals and get each other out the door every day.”
There were embers among the ash. Running lackadaisically the entirety of last winter with Murphy, the two were encouraged by our mutual friend Jakob Tew (Utah State University 2021 / D1) to jump in the 2025 Ogden Marathon in April, which Jakob (though he wouldn’t admit it) was surely looking to win. The two caved and signed up the night before. And the two smacked the daylights out of everyone, winning each in 2:23 and 2:42, respectively. If nothing else, it was an indicator that it wasn’t all forgotten, that huge strides have still been made if zooming out.
“When I was in college, I viewed hitting an OTQ as being impossible for me. Sure I could consider myself a decent D3 runner but I was never going to make that jump. I looked up to all the D3 guys that had done it or were attempting to do it. My teammate Grant O'Connor talked about going for it. I was so impressed. It just was never even remotely on my radar. So I was in disbelief when I ran 63:45 in Houston to punch my ticket.
There are a ton of D3 guys who put literally everything into going after this standard and still come up short. And I had just done it less than a year after I graduated. It was a blessing and a curse. I had just achieved something that was once completely out of reach. But now I felt like I had to prove that I belonged on the stage and that it wasn't a fluke. I put a lot of pressure on myself to keep performing at that level. It led to a few good performances, and a few really bad ones. I think that the pressure I put on myself led to my large fluctuations in views on running and going from loving it to hating it, and back again. I knew I belonged there so I set out to do it again in 2024. I feel like once I set my mind on something, I'll do whatever I can to try and achieve the goal.
Now, with two OTQs [and] some strong PRs across road racing distances, I found myself asking ‘What’s next?’ For me, that came in the form of focusing on other aspects of life, having more balance, and shifting to trail running a little. I now don't feel like I have to give up everything else that I love doing to chase a time. I've run some local races for fun, I've run some trail races, I got married, bought a house, made some career moves. I don't have that pressure to sign up for 2-3 marathons a year to chase a time. And when I want to go after a time or goal in running again, I know I can shift priorities and focus on marathon training. I can go for big goals without the fear of not getting an OTQ.”
In times of jubilance, in times of indignity - in the rare moments of freedom, and more often in times of frustrating lethargy: the road becomes smoother when we lean on each other, go all in, and yield the assumption that any result is a given. It isn’t easy to rekindle something that has brought you joy ever so slightly more than it has burned you. It demands a tenacity and maturity like Sean possesses; a realist’s blueprint coupled with the optimist’s hope that the results will be all for the better.
“I don't think I am unique. I think I've realized I have a deep rooted desire to be the best that I can be, a desire to always give 100%. Whether it is long days in the office or hard days in training, I'm going to keep pushing. I also think subconsciously, I have found a mental way to continue to push and go after big goals even when training may not indicate they are possible. Having confidence in my abilities is probably the biggest thing that I use to push myself to achieve new bigger goals, whether life or running.”
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Sean O’Connor is still taking a break from the big stage, instead running the JFK 50 ultramarathon in Maryland on Saturday, November 22nd. “My goal all along was to sign up for JFK to motivate me to get back into shape. If I have something on the calendar, getting out the door day to day is a little bit easier for me. I also have this insane competitiveness. With a race on the calendar, I'm going to train to the best of my ability to beat as many people as possible and run as fast as I can.”
His return to competitive running looms with the Boston Marathon on Monday, April 20, 2026. “I’m hoping the Boston Marathon will mark my reentry into the world of competitive marathoning. I haven't trained to my full potential since my build for the 2024 trials. My main goal for Boston is to run a marathon PR (sub 2:17). It’s not the goal of hitting the OTQ for me, it's the goal of progressing my running even further. How fast can I run at Boston? Can I get under 2:15 on a CIM or Grandma’s type course? Did I already reach my ceiling at 2:17:05? No way to know without swinging for the fences a few more times.”