In an interview earlier this week with the CBC, Brianne Theisen-Eaton detailed exactly how track and field's preeminent power couple decided to retire. She describes a bizarre coincidence; in November, she went for a run and "it just hit me like a truck, like a gut feeling that I didn't want to do this anymore." Then that very night, "we were sitting at dinner and Ashton told me that he didn't want to do track and field anymore."

Theisen-Eaton called her sports psychologist the next morning, according to Nick Zaccardi of NBC Sports. The psychologist told her that athletes are the only people who die twice. That's a little melodramatic--lots of careers have short shelf lives--but Theisen-Eaton eventually reconciled herself to the fact that "you have to become this totally different person. You have to create a new identity. You have to find a new community to belong to. You have to go into this world that you know nothing about."

Hopefully her husband, whose Twitter bio currently reads "Being the 1st person on Mars would be cool," doesn't take going to a new world so literally.

Anyone who's read @AshtonJEaton's new bio...No we are not going to Mars & no we are not having the world's first Martian. #puttingmyfootdown

— BrianneTheisen-Eaton (@btheiseneaton) January 5, 2017

Ashton Eaton and Brianne Theisen-Eaton are retiring from track and field:

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