How big brands win the competition

Written by Hardcore Candy Athlete: Megan Garlapow

Virtual qualifiers sound simple on paper. Three weeks. Three events. One leaderboard. Hit the standards, record your attempts, submit your best scores. But behind the numbers and timestamps is a storm of effort, vulnerability, and rawness that only high-performing women truly understand.

This year’s HybriCon Games qualifiers were entirely virtual. Athletes had 21 days to complete three events: a 5K run tracked via Strava; Thunder Thighs, 20 back squats at 155 lbs into a 1-mile run, tracked with both video and Strava; and the Hybrid Bar Combine, a barbell gauntlet with 1-minute max push press at 95 lbs, 1-minute rest, 1-minute max power cleans at 135 lbs, another rest, and 1-minute max front squats at 155 lbs, with the bar starting on the floor.

You could redo any event as many times as you wanted. Sounds like a gift, right? It’s not. It’s a trap—because if you’re a driven woman used to performing at a high level, you will never think you’ve done enough.

Most athletes didn’t submit anything until the final hours. For me, it was both strategy and fear. I nailed Thunder Thighs on my first attempt, but that didn’t stop me from trying to beat it. My first redo, Strava didn’t start tracking until 400 meters in. My second redo, I thought Strava stopped again with 0.1 miles to go. I panicked, stopped running, and spiraled. That moment broke me open.

It’s hard to describe how exposed these qualifiers make you feel. There’s no crowd, no competitors, sometimes no one even watching. Just you, a phone, a camera, a barbell, and the weight of your own expectations.

At this level, performance pressure doesn’t just chip away at you—it can gut you. It whispers that your past wins were flukes, that your best isn’t good enough, that you don’t belong. But I do belong. We all do.

The truth is, even as an athlete and business owner juggling personal challenges, I showed up. That means something. After qualifiers ended, I gave myself a full week off to rest, meditate, get back into therapy, and just breathe. Grace matters as much as grit. Compassion isn’t weakness; it’s recovery.

For women and girls in sports, this is the fight: not just to compete, but to heal from what the competition asks of us. We can be tough, relentless, ambitious and still deserve softness.