“I got out reasonably well,” Taylor said. “I was a little bit sluggish. I don’t know—I crossed the finish line in [56.28] yesterday and I felt I could run at least a second faster.”

Taylor was last in the heat going around the final turn, but she managed to finish with a flourish again, passing former U.S. Olympic Trial competitor Yvonne Harrison—now running for Puerto Rico—and Great Britain’s Sinead Dudgeon, who had beaten Taylor in the preliminaries.

“I suspect [Taylor] is tired from a long year,” Haggerty said. “She had to peak too many times—Indoor Heps, Outdoor Heps, ECACs, NCAAs... Our first competition was Dec. 2, definitely earlier than anyone else in the field. Most people there probably started in May and didn’t run any indoor meets.”

Haggerty also suspects that Taylor was limited in this year’s championships because it was her first time qualifying for the meet. Taylor herself said that she was nervous at her first NCAA meet during her sophomore year, and because of her hamstring injuries a year later, she was not a surefire collegiate title contender until this past season.

“This seems to happen a lot—when you set a goal to qualify for a meet and then make that goal, the meet itself becomes a bit anticlimactic,” Haggerty said.

Although Taylor finished out her competitive schedule on Monday, she still had six days of world-class track competition to enjoy in Edmonton.

“Now I get to cheer on my teammates, so this is one of the best times of my life,” Taylor said.