Virtual qualifiers sound simple on paper. Three weeks. Three events. One leaderboard.
Hit the standards, record your attempts, submit your best scores. But behind the
numbers and timestamps is a storm of effort, vulnerability, and rawness that only high-
performing women truly understand.
This year’s HybriCon Games qualifiers were entirely virtual. Athletes had 21 days to
complete three events:
A 5K run tracked via Strava.
An event called Thunder Thighs: 20 back squats at 155 lbs into a 1-mile run,
tracked with both video and Strava.
The Hybrid Bar Combine: a barbell gauntlet with 1-minute max push press (95
lbs), 1-minute rest, 1-minute max power cleans (135 lbs), another rest, and 1-
minute max front squats (155 lbs). The bar had to start on the floor.
You could redo any event as many times as you wanted. Sounds like a gift, right? It’s
not. It’s a trap—because if you're a driven woman used to performing at a high level,
you will never think you've done enough.
Most athletes didn’t submit anything until the final hours. Maybe it was strategy. Maybe
it was fear. For me, it was both. I nailed Thunder Thighs on my first attempt, but that
didn’t stop me from trying to beat it. My first redo? Strava didn’t start tracking until 400
meters in. I only noticed once it was too late. Second redo? I thought my Strava stopped
again with just 0.1 miles to go. I panicked, stopped running, and spiraled. I was on track
to blow my first time out of the water. Until I wasn’t. That moment broke me open.
It’s hard to describe how exposed these qualifiers make you feel. There’s no crowd. No
competitors. Sometimes, no one even watching. Just you, a phone, a camera, a barbell,
and the weight of your own expectations.
At this level, performance pressure doesn’t just chip away at you. It can gut you. It
whispers that your past wins were flukes, that your best isn’t good enough, that you
don’t belong.
But I do belong. We all do.
The truth is, even as an athlete and business owner juggling personal challenges, I
showed up. That means something. After qualifiers ended, I gave myself a full week off
to rest, meditate, get back into therapy, and just breathe. Grace matters as much as grit.
Compassion isn’t weakness; it’s recovery.
For women and girls in sports, this is the fight: not just to compete, but to heal from what
the competition asks of us. We can be tough, relentless, ambitious and still deserve
softness.
Written by Hardcore Candy Athlete: Megan Garlapow