Having trained with elite athletes and coaches before, and knowing religious people, the author got some of it so right. Fear is ego and ego speaks language, so you need to find or hear a voice that separates you from the nagging, halting filter of your own ego to perform at an elite level in pretty much anything. And yet then, and the end of the article, the author judges it with some pitiful story about not getting your body back, from having "given" it in college, as though the incredible and peak human experience of performing at that level is somehow lesser - or worse, their own experience as a critic and anthropologist is somehow equal or worthy of having an opinion of what elite performance entails. The ending read as an unbearable conceit, as though criticism can digest the experience of training at that level, perhaps to seduce magazine readers of Harpers and provide some knowing comfort and justification to people who have stopped at mediocrity. Yes, I'm angry about the article, so (point author) great provocative writing, but what a disappointing analysis. I don't compete, or even place among the people who do the things I do passably as an amateur, and nobody needs my defense, but as a writer, it seemed low.
Maybe there are elite athletes who regret their commitment, or maybe the author is really a former olympic team contender knocking the ladder away behind them, but having trained with olympians and been trained by their trainers, and being involved in mentoring and coaching relationships, the end note about "a former track star sat in my office weeping," seemed out of line. Again, superb insight into the relationship between voice and performance, and how it's closely related to spiritual experiences, but her critical lens really taints it.