What a difference a year makes.

On July 4, 2008, I woke up sore and dehydrated from competing the night before in the Final of the 3000m Steeplechase at the US Olympic Track & Field Trials in Eugene, Oregon.  I'd finished 10th, well out of the top-three finish I'd needed to make the team, and thus now began my self-imposed retirement from the sport. It had been a long four years since 2004, when I won the Steeplechase at the Olympic Trials in Sacramento, but made no trip to Athens on the US Team, as the Steeplechase was not an Olympic event for women until 2008.  For those four years, I'd trained with the purpose of making the team so that 2004 didn't matter anymore; so that there was no longer a "but the event wasn't in the Olympics for women yet" after the phrase "I won the Olympic Trials and set an American Record."

But it was not meant to be apparently.  And I'd told myself that no matter what happened in the summer of 2008, I would retire once the season had e

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