SAINT-DENIS, Paris -- If you really want to know how tough Sifan Hassan's quest in Paris is this week, you need only ask the other elite athletes she has run against.
British runner Eilish McColgan says: "Knowing she has a day to rest and do a marathon, it is insanity. ... The fact she has such minimal recovery in between, I don't know how she's doing it."
"It's really, really impressive," Team USA's Elise Cranny says. "I don't really have words for it."
Kenya's Beatrice Chebet, who won gold in the women's 5,000 meters, says: "She is just an amazing lady. I want to follow in her footsteps, too."
Hassan has been competing in a different kind of Olympics than the rest of the track athletes this week. Rather than seeking golds, she is hoping to discover her body's performance limits, to test how far she can push her boundaries before she breaks. In Paris, she is completing a remarkable test of endurance by racing in the women's 5,000 meters, 10,000 meters and marathon. The finals all take place within six days.
Publicly, she says her goal is to just complete each race. But the dream she will sometimes admit to is wanting to medal in all three. "You always have a crazy goal, and then you have the goal that you tell everyone else," her coach, Tim Rowberry, said to ESPN.
Entering Sunday's women's marathon, Hassan's dream could still come true. (Editor's note: Hassan completed her treble by winning gold in the marathon on the final day of the Olympics)
She won bronze in the 5,000 meters on Monday, followed by another bronze in the 10,000 meters on Friday. All of that equated to 50 laps of the track. To Hassan, though, that is the easy bit. She will have less than 48 hours to fully recover in time for what promises to be a brutal Olympic marathon, where she is among the prerace favorites.
"All my thoughts are about that," Hassan said after winning bronze in the 5,000 meters.
However, even just the idea of running the 26-mile course is enough to unsettle Hassan. "I'm freaking scared for the marathon," she adds. "I think most of the time I am a very curious person. The craziness makes me do these events. At home, I say to myself I want to do these events, but at the stadium, I ask myself 'Why are you doing this? Why do this?'"
The one other athlete to have achieved the feat was the great Czech runner Emil Zátopek, who swept all three golds in Helsinki in 1952. Back then, Zátopek ran the first two races and then decided at the last minute to compete in the marathon.
That is in contrast to Hassan, who decided at least two years ago that she wanted to compete in the marathon in Paris. But she refused to give up on the shorter long-distance events, even at one point considering doing four races: from the 1,500 meters up to the marathon. "A lot of people actually think it's impossible to mix speed and endurance like that," Rowberry says.
She has proved before that she can handle it, though. No more so than when she competed in her first marathon in London last year. Her goal there was the same as this week, to test herself, even if the thought of it moved her to tears before the race. It seemed as if maybe she had finally found her limit, though, as she languished 30 seconds behind the leaders after stopping twice to stretch an injured hip. On the broadcast, former British distance runner Paula Radcliffe insisted any effort to continue would be foolish and only risk further injury.
Hassan, to anyone watching, was seemingly done.
But Hassan's more stunning moments come when she races herself and her own limits. In London that day, she simply refused to quit. "I thought I was going to stop somewhere [and bow out] because whenever I tried to speed up, it hurt me," she said afterward. "But I thought I should get some experience of running a marathon for the next one. Finishing 100% didn't come into my mind."
Yet she did more than finish. Hassan produced one of the most remarkable comebacks in marathon history. She stepped on the gas and cut the gap between her and the leaders. With 4 kilometers remaining, she had caught up, and by the finish she used her track speed to steam ahead, crossing the line as a stunningly improbable winner.
Again, it was her debut marathon. "I was born for drama," she said.
Since then, Hassan has spent more focus training for the marathon, with the finish line in Paris as the end goal. It meant sacrificing time on the track, with Rowberry saying it meant she was largely "untested" entering this week.
Hassan's training has been exploratory, too. She has been testing her body's levels of cortisone -- the stress hormone -- and adjusting her daily training accordingly so that she trains most when her body is less stressed. It resulted in the marathon victory in London, and again in Chicago in October 2023. It also led to the two stellar runs on the track at the Stade de France this week, setting up a fascinating marathon.
Her week has been a mental battle as much as a physical one. The idea of running each race, of competing with the world's best over three distances, is enough to slow her down. "My thoughts are my weakness right now," Hassan said Monday.
And yet, Hassan has been here before, in a way. She completed an unlikely treble in Tokyo, winning gold in the 5,000 meters and 10,000 meters, plus a bronze in the 1,500 meters. "When we went through the last Olympics, that was already such a mental battle," Rowberry says.
The Paris Olympic marathon will test Hassan unlike any previous run of her life, though. It is one of the most difficult courses in major marathon history, with multiple hills and steep climbs. In that sense, it is far removed from the track, and even further away from Hassan's comfort zone.
But her goal in Paris is now within reach. She is just one race away from proving she has not yet found a limit. It makes you wonder what she might do next.
"I wish we would've seen the 1,500 and marathon combo," Rowberry says. "My dream in the far future is that some athlete will do the 800m and the marathon at the Olympics. I think that combo would be amazing."
Why not Hassan? Rowberry says it's not out of the question.
"In another reality, we already tried at this Olympics, we would've tried it this year in another alternate dimension. We would try that here."