Olivia Baker is a serious runner – her achievements at the high school, collegiate, and professional levels attest to that. She never loses sight of the fact that there’s much more to running than the results on paper though; there’s sportsmanship, camaraderie, inspiration, and most of all, fun.
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It was the fun element that attracted Olivia to running when she was just eight years old. “I played soccer, and then one of my best friends started running track and I decided that it would be more fun to do a sport with my friends. Even though I enjoyed soccer a ton, it mattered more to me to just be doing something where I was hanging out with my friends. So I moved over to track also and kind of never looked back. We trained three times a week, and ran in the hallways of our local public high school, and we just had fun with it. I’m grateful that I grew up in track in a way that prioritized that fun, where we did workouts, but we also played games after practice. And I think that that really set me up to become the runner that I am today.”
Even now, as a professional runner with the Atlanta Track Club, she continues to have fun at practice and meets. “I love getting to race overseas in Europe over the summer and meet other fellow runners who are also racing at the meet, and just explore different countries together. Or even on the day-to-day at practice, Coach Tommy [Tom Nohilly] keeps it fun with our speed development sessions. Last Monday, it started to snow during our session and we were doing some drills in the snow, catching snowflakes in our mouths and things like that. Again, just keeping it light and fun. It’s things like that, the little things. Keeping practice fun and having teammates who lean into that and enjoy that alongside me makes this journey all the more special.”
That isn’t to say that running is always joyful for her. Especially in high school, she had a terrible fear of losing. That didn’t happen often, but when it did, it haunted her. During her senior year, she started working with a sports psychologist. “Realizing that I was more than an athlete helped me work through that fear of losing, and turn my eyes towards more positive things regarding running. I’d also be remiss if I didn’t mention my faith as a huge part of that. Being not just an athlete, but a Christian athlete, and learning how to surrender that identity to Jesus Christ, and my whole identity, to be honest, and let him use it for His glory and not try to take that gift and use it for my own glory. Being able to just let that go, in a sense, has been something that has really helped me get over that fear and release the pressure of chasing after outcomes, and really let God handle that.”
A strategy that she learned from her sports psychologist was to focus on positive outcomes, rather than anticipate negative ones. “What if I win? What if I execute my best race? What if I do my best? And even if that best isn’t enough, I can still walk away with my head held high because you can only control your effort and the parts of the race that you can control ,and leave the rest to be what it may. For every bad what-if that sneaks into my head while I’m warming up for a race, nowadays I replace it with a good what-if, and stay focused on those things instead.
“Along the lines of mental refocusing of the what-ifs, I like to employ physical refocusing too. Like when I’m running at practice or running in a race and my legs start to burn or my calves start to burn, redirecting that focus to say, ‘Well, my calves are burning, but my arms are okay.’ Or if my arms start to burn, when it gets really bad, I’ll be like, ‘My nose is doing really well right now.’ You know, ‘How about my forehead? That feels really good right now.’ And it helps me push through some of those harder moments. Refocusing on the things that do feel good, and are feeling good even before a race and during a race, helps me a lot.”
Olivia largely attributes her success in running to consistency, not only consistent physical training, but being consistent mentally. She learned from her sports psychologist to not dwell on outcomes. “You take 24 hours, win or lose, to feel what you are going to feel after the race. If I win a race or I PR, I might go get a milkshake, or my most recent PR dessert was a cupcake from one of my favorite bakeries back home. Enjoy it, celebrate, and then after 24 hours, back to work. After a bad race, same thing. 24 hours, feel the feels, be down in the dumps, cry, lay on my bed and stare at the ceiling, if I have to, whatever I need to do. And then get back to it, get back after it, and work.”
Sometimes the bad feelings and the good feelings can occur simultaneously. Olivia was “devastated” when she failed to make the 2024 Olympic team, but still felt positive going forward. “It was really, really hard. I remember waking up the next morning and just feeling sad about it. But there’s this feeling in my heart, and maybe I would feel differently if there wasn’t that hope, but I still believe that there are faster times ahead of me, that I haven’t seen my final PRs, at least in my main events, not in the 400, 800 or 1500. And I think leaning into that feeling is what helped me get through that Olympic trials disappointment. It’s just this relentless hope inside of me that I’m going to do better next time, that there will be another opportunity and that maybe next time I will make that team.
“It’s so easy to get wrapped up in the outcome, and there is so much more to running. There is the sportsmanship and camaraderie. There is encouragement and inspiration for the next generation of runners. There’s fun, even though it doesn’t feel like it all the time, and especially in times like those. There’s a blessing in even having the ability and the opportunity to get out there and compete, and to just show that physical ability, the gifts that I’ve been given on that stage.
“At the end of the day, I would hope that running is not just beneficial from a health standpoint for everyone, but that everyone would have fun. There’s a space in the running community for any and everyone. And that’s something that I love about this community. There’s so much diversity. There’s so much from sprinting to ultra-marathoning and everything in between.”
Photo credit: Matt Demarko
Resources
Thank you to Runna, AG1, and Tracksmith for sponsoring this episode.

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