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It was January 2015, and Bailey Kowalczyk was racing the mile at the Clemson Orange & Purple Classic when she started to feel out of control. She felt tired, her muscles spasming. In training, she’d been progressing, getting faster. But on race day, the mile felt like a marathon.
In school, Kowalczyk had always been an overachiever and a people pleaser, aiming for top marks to impress her parents, teachers, and peers. She brought that same energy to the track as a middle-distance competitor on a Division I team. She wanted to be the best. So when her Clemson University coaches told her what the path to success looked like, she fell in line. They told her losing weight could turn her into an NCAA Champion.
“The general message was if I lose weight, then I will be more successful. And so that’s kind of the quest that I went on,” she says. It worked, until it…
