Bob Liking, a former St. Charles East student-athlete, is no stranger to running in highly competitive races.

During his time at East, Liking competed in three cross country state championships, two track and field state championships and various national cross country races. Liking, who now attends the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is a three-time Big Ten cross country champion and has competed in the National Collegiate Athletics Association championships.

To challenge himself even further, Liking competed in one of the most competitive races of his running career. On June 21, 2024, he ran in the U.S. Olympic Trials for the Men’s 5000 Meters Run for a chance to compete in the Paris 2024 Olympics.

To run in the trials, Liking first had to meet the time standard for his event of 13:25. Trying to meet this time would involve vast amounts of hard work and dedication.

“Training was very hard for the track season,” Liking explained. “I was fortunate enough to have teammates who are simply better than me at running and could really push me in workouts.”

It would turn out that training and meeting the standard would be the easiest part of progressing in the trials. The real challenge was competing in the preliminary round to make it into the finals.

In the preliminary round, Liking placed 10th with a time of 13:38.5. Despite his great accomplishment, Liking could not move on to the final.

“If I could run the race again, I would have gone to the front and ran as hard as I could,” Liking noted. “I think I would have given myself the best chance if I had just sent it, but I decided to sit and kick with everyone else.”

Even though Liking did not perform as well as he wanted to, he still enjoyed the experience and plans to try to qualify for the next Olympic Games.

“My advice to the youngbloods of St. Charles East is to do a sport,” Liking said. “Even though I’ve been able to run in some really cool meets, my favorite running memories are the ones where me and the boys were being dumb and having fun.”