O’Connor uses Trials disappointment as motivation
Grant O’Connor missed qualifying for the Olympic Marathon Trials by 28 seconds last spring.
Though O’Connor, of West Hartford, didn’t get to compete in Orlando in February, he did get a pretty good consolation prize. His time of 2 hours, 18 minutes and 28 seconds at the Jersey City Marathon got him into the elite field at Monday’s Boston Marathon.
So O’Connor, 26, will line up at the start in Hopkinton, Mass., with the likes of two-time winner Evans Chebet of Kenya and 2014 winner Meb Keflezighi, who is retired from competitive marathoning but is running for charity.
“It’s an amazing opportunity,” said O’Connor, who works as a software engineer in Windsor. “I’m not taking anything for granted. I’m ready to go for a ride.”
O’Connor ran cross country and track at Hall High School for legendary coach Tom Butterfield, graduating in 2015, Butterfield’s last season. He was not the top runner at Hall; that was Ari Klau, who was the Class LL cross country champion their senior year. O’Connor finished third in the Class L outdoor 3,200 meters his senior year and was 14th at the State Open and was 10th in the Class LL cross country championships.
At that point, he was not thinking he would be in the elite field at the Boston Marathon one day.
But when O’Connor went to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where he ran track and cross country and had a dual major in electrical engineering and computer systems engineering, he began to realize his potential. His junior year, O’Connor was named the Division III National Men’s Track Athlete of the Year after winning a national title in the 5,000 meters and finishing as national runner-up in the 10,000 meters.
“During my time at RPI, I knew a marathon was in my future,” he said. “By the end of my RPI career, I thought I could be competitive in the marathon and reach this level I’m at right now. I graduated five years ago. I thought I’d be at that level six months after graduation.
“The marathon takes a lot of learning. I still feel like I’m learning a lot.”
He ran Boston for the first time in 2022, finishing in 2:38:25 as a member of Hartford’s Hartbeat Track Club, but he was in graduate school and didn’t take his training as seriously as he has this time.
Part of that comes from what happened last year at Jersey City.
O’Connor’s watch was not calculating the mileage properly during the race and he said there were issues with some of the timing clocks not working on the course. As a result, O’Connor wasn’t sure exactly what his time was. He didn’t realize until the end that he was going to come up short.
“On the course, I wasn’t aware of where I was, pace wise,” he said. “I didn’t realize til I crossed the finish line that I missed it by so little.”
His time was a six-minute personal best but that accomplishment was overshadowed by the fact that he was so close to achieving his goal but didn’t.
He ramped up his training over the summer, hoping to try to qualify again at a fall marathon but he overtrained and ended up fatigued and not running in any marathons.
“I was disappointed to not do it and it was definitely motivating for the summer and the fall,” he said. “I was so motivated; I went too far in training. I flew too close to the sun and didn’t even make it to the start line.”
So he threw his hat into the Boston ring. Why not?
“I signed up for the Boston Marathon with everyone else,” he said. “There’s a box you can check – ‘Do you want consideration for the pro start?’ I selected ‘Yes’ because I knew the standard was 2:19. I ran 2:18:28. I put my name on the list. They said yes in December.”
O’Connor started to train again. He felt good so he went hard again but this time, he had no issues. He’s averaged 140 miles a week since early December, with a high of 156. On March 17, he handily won the New Bedford (Mass.) Half-Marathon with a PR of 1:04:44, almost two minutes faster than his previous best.
“This is the level of training I personally needed to stand on the starting line confident, feeling like I earned my spot,” O’Connor said. “I’m not asking any questions. My body is giving me this amazing fitness and somehow, I’m handling it, when six months ago it couldn’t. That’s part of the learning I was talking about.”
He’s let go of the disappointment of not making it to the Trials but he does still think about the 28 seconds, a little more than a second a mile over 26.2 miles.
“I sort of look at it now as the 2:18 standard for the trials was an arbitrary standard I didn’t set,” he said. “I think my ceiling is faster than that. I didn’t run to my life potential on that day.
“It still motivates me. It’s not a good feeling to come up short by that little. But it doesn’t keep me up at night.”