Run to Win

Topics this week last year were dominated by the Beach to Beacon.

• I started the week off by offering 4 ways to determine the length of a pool in response to a reader question on the matter.
• Maine Running Company hosted a talk by John L Parker, Jr. where he discussed his history as a runner and as a speaker. He read the first chapter of his as yet unpublished sequel to Once a Runner.
• The rest of the week was all about the B2B. First, it was announced that everybody would have a chance to run with the elites at the Back Cove race following the Beach to Beacon. There was also an interview between Joan Samuelson and Dave McGillivray published on the B2B site that offered some insights into the founding of the race. I offered up a few tips about running the race and provided a breakdown of the results after it was over.
• This week two years ago, I discussed why it is important to hydrate yourself after a race as well as before and during the race and I went into quite a bit of detail after being asked, “What is a taper?” I wrote a review of the movie Running on the Sun, about the Badwater ultramarathon.

The 10^th annual TD Banknorth Beach to Beacon 10k was this morning in Cape Elizabeth, Maine. As always, it was a closely contested race that is great for spectating. While the temperature was not very high during the race, it was quite humid. Unlike last year, the fog never burned off so that combined with a low tide caused the race to not quite lead up to it’s reputation as one of the more scenic New England races.

Leading the way was Ed Muge of Kenya, who had to battle it out with Maregu Zewdie of Ethiopia to earn his 0.6 second win in 27:52.4. Duncan Kibet fell back to 4^th place in 28:21 this year.

The women’s race was also pretty exciting, despite there being a slightly larger lead. The race was won by masters runner Edith Masai of Kenya in 31:55.6, followed by Liudmila Biktasheva of Russia (although she now resides in New York, I believe.)

The Maine race was won by 22 year old Ben True in 31:01.8, over 40 seconds ahead of a pack of Mainers that all came in right under 32 minutes. Women’s winner Kristin Barry set the Maine record, dropping it by over 6 seconds to 34:37.1. She was working hard for that win, and you can see how much pain she was in at the finish line in the news video, but she regained her composure by the time I turned to see her come through the finishing chute.

There were a total of 5248 finishers, the first time that the race has cracked 5000 finishers in it’s 11 year history. That the race sold out in about a day this year is just a small testament to the popularity of what Joan Samuelson has brought to her hometown.

My race went pretty well; I just barely run negative splits (17:05/17:03) to finish in 34:08.1, getting outsprinted by PR Racing’s TJ Hesler to the finishing line. I felt really good, though, and I know that I need to have a lead on TJ at the end of a race if I am going to beat him. He is especially hard to edge out when he has a downhill finish.

WCSH6 has full video coverage of the race, including 5 minute videos that show everybody coming across the line. I picked out my wife’s finish and you can clearly see her disgust with her time after she crosses the line and checked her watch.

Congratulations to everybody that ran this morning and thank you to everybody that came out to support or cheer at the race. Almost everybody that I spoke with ran well today and enjoyed themselves and the crowd support was as good as it normally was. The race also requires a large number of volunteers who are all kept extremely busy from hours before the race to hours after, and we appreciate the hard work that goes into putting this event on.

(Official Results - Full Results w/better formatting - Race Photos - Photos Source: Home Page)

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It was a good night for a race. It was relatively warm, but nowhere near as humid as it has been. This led to the gravel path around the Back Cove being nice and dusty, leaving a fine layer of grit on everybody’s legs.

Matt Lane won the race in an easy 17:12, almost 80 seconds behind his performance in week 4.

The real excitement came in the women’s race, though, as the course record has now been broken twice in the same season. This time, Joan Benoit Samuelson took the lead after deciding to drive down from Freeport 40 minutes before the race was supposed to start. She was jogging over to the starting line from the parking lot as everybody was lining up. Joanie cut 30 seconds off of Heather Pagano’s previous record, finishing in 18:11.
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Jeanne Hackett interviewed Sheri Piers and Kristin Barry this evening at Peak Performance Multisport as part of her “A Running Conversation” lecture series.

The talk went for about 50 minutes, with a little better than half of that time devoted to Kristin and Sheri answering Jeanne’s questions and the rest of the time devoted to answering audience questions. The topics centered mostly around the Olympic Marathon Trials this past April in Boston, including the training and discipline that it took to get there.

This year’s Olympic Marathon Trials was the 7^th running for the women, and was the second time that 4 women from Maine competed. (For the trivia buffs, the other time was in 1996.) The evening began with a quick background on all 4 ladies and the stories that they brought with them to the Trials.

The Stories

Emily LeVan was the top Maine qualifier, having run extremely well in Boston in 2005 and 2006. She had the 12^th fastest qualifying time for any of the competitors who ran. She was also dealt a large emotional blow last November when she discovered that her 4 year old daughter had Leukemia. Emily and her daughter Maddie started the Two Trials website in order to raise money for the Maine Children’s Cancer Program, and they far exceeded their goals to raise a total of over $77,000 to date. (Click here to listen to an interview with Emily.)

Joan Benoit Samuelson won the first women’s Olympic Marathon in 1984, and has qualified for every Trials since then. She has competed in all but 2 of them. She was the oldest runner in the field at 1 week shy of 51 years old, and set an age group record for the marathon on her way to beating her goal of running a sub-2:50. She has a long and storied history with the Boston Marathon, and she wanted to finish her competitive marathon career in the city where it all began.

Kristin and Sheri’s stories are intertwined, because the two of them train and race together constantly. After months of training, they both went to run in the Philadelphia Marathon and crossed the line together with Trials qualifying times. Both women are in their mid-30s, both women work, and both of them managed to fit in their training around caring for their children.
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Today was the women’s Olympic Marathon Trials.

Congratulations to all of the women that finished!

Magdalena Lewy Boulet led most of the race, building a 40 second lead within 4 miles and extending that to almost 2 minutes throughout the race. In the last lap and a half, though, Deena Kastor dropped a few hammers and sped by her to win the race in 2:29:35. Blake Russell was 3^rd and will also represent the US in Beijing.

The Maine women had great races. Sheri Piers turned on the afterburners and ran a speedy 2:38:46, finishing 16^th overall. Emily LeVan was 67^th in 2:45:45, followed by Kristin Barry in 2:46:58 and a 74^th place finish. Joan Benoit Samuelson made her 2:50 goal, finishing with a time of 2:49:08 barely a week before her 51^st birthday. Great job ladies!

I’ll have more details later as well as a link to where you can view all of the over 200 photos that I took in a few days. In the meantime, you can look at the full list of results here: Boston Trials 2008 Results Page

I just got back from watching Spirit of the Marathon, a documentary by Jon Dunham that follows a number of athletes as they prepare for the 2005 Chicago Marathon. There must have been a fair number of people who bought tickets in advance, because they have already scheduled an encore presentation on February 21^st, 2008. So if you missed seeing the movie tonight, tickets will become available starting tomorrow.

The theater was about 3/4 full, and everybody was having a good time. Many of the runners who came to watch the film gathered ahead of time at a restaurant outside the theater, and then chatted in the lobby of the theater as they filtered in. Despite being about 30 minutes early, my wife and I weren’t bored while we since we could listen to various conversations and talk to a few of the people that we knew as they arrived.

There were some hand made posters lining the wall outside the theater, and a van was parked outside that had Spirit of the Marathon quotes and messages scrawled all over it. Apparently, some folks from Bar Harbor decided to run to the race relay-style with each person running about a 20 mile leg today on the way down. It is about 130 miles from Bar Harbor to Brunswick, Maine.

I enjoyed the movie a lot, and I plan on purchasing it if and when it becomes available. Seeing it in the theater with a bunch of other runners is definitely worth the effort, though, because the crowd provided almost as much entertainment as the movie did. It is one of the few times that I haven’t been annoyed by people talking during a movie. When Joanie came on screen for the first time, everybody in the theater clapped and cheered.

The cameo appearances and interviews were well spaced amongst the scenes with the athletes that were followed during their training and throughout the race. The athletes that starred in the movie were well chosen and represented a good variety of different types of marathoners, from the elite level down to repeat marathoner in his 60s to a few first timers.

I was definitely able to relate to quite a few of the scenes during the training, and just about every little detail from marathon weekend through the end of the race brought back a flood of memories of my own marathons that I have done over the years. Given the hushed comments from people seating around me, I wasn’t the only one to experience this. After one scene that took place in a hotel the night before the race, where luggage and paraphernalia are strewn everywhere, my wife leaned over and whispered to me, “She needs a copy of your book.” I should see if I can get some contact info for her and send her a copy.

The final scenes of the race for Deena Kastor and Daniel Njenga were a little anti-climactic for me, since I already knew what was going to happen, but my wife and almost everybody else in the theater seemed at the edge of their seats and gasped and clapped in the appropriate places.

The one thing that bothered me about the movie was the score. Jeff Beal is a very talented composer, and for most of the movie he did a very good job. There were a few times, though, when he just hit you over the head to try to force an emotion on you and I actually rolled my eyes. The scene of the start of the race where the camera keeps panning back farther and farther and revealing the field of runners is rather awe-inspiring, but I’m a bigger fan of a more subtle touch than was displayed.

There were some extras at the end of the movie after the credits, including interviews and deleted scenes. I’m disappointed that the scene of Deena Kastor cooking enchiladas didn’t make it into the movie. Watching her cook certainly made me hungry.

Would I recommend that the average person go see the movie? I’m not so sure. As a runner and a marathoner, I (obviously) really enjoyed the movie. I can certainly picture myself enjoying the movie even if I weren’t a runner if I had a family member or close friend who was a runner and had put me at the periphery of the sport. Certainly not all of the people that were in the theater were runners. I am not so sure that I could relate to the movie as a complete non-runner with no connections to running, though. I’ll have to withhold judgement there until I hear from others that have seen the movie.

If you have ever run a marathon, or if you run regularly, then I definitely recommend that you go see it when it rescreens in February.

I would like to thank everybody that was able to make the conference call this afternoon, it was a lot of fun and it lasted for about 65 minutes. There were about a dozen people on the call in total. At one point there were 6 or 7 people dialed in through the telephones, and another half dozen or so listening through the website.

In total, I answered 9 specific questions that had been submitted as well as a couple of general questions that had been asked and whose answers fit into some of the other topics I was speaking about. I also got to speak with a few of the listeners and go a little more in depth into the questions that they had. I had fun and I am looking forward to doing this again.

As promised, here are the links to various websites referenced on the call:
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The Spirit of the Marathon is a feature-length movie following 6 runners as they train for and run the Chicago Marathon in 2005. Deena Kastor takes center stage along with 1 other professional, 4 amateur athletes and a “Who’s Who of Marathoning” that make cameo appearances throughout the film (including Joan Benoit Samuelson.)

The movie debuted last October and was well received at two film festivals, and will be screening on January 24^th, 2008 for 1 night only in 500 theaters nationwide. I have already bought tickets for my wife and I to see it in Brunswick, Maine.

“I simply went about my normal routine and training,” said Kastor, “and they followed and filmed as we went. I did not find it distracting. In fact, it was motivating.”

“I was struck by the similarities for us as we prepared for the Chicago Marathon,” she said. “Everyone had hurdles and setbacks, and everyone struggled through long runs—it was so similar despite the different levels of training and pace.”

“I went into that race very confident—I don’t know where that came from—but I was supremely confident,” Kastor recalled. “I ended up winning by only five seconds, and I hit the wall for the first time.”

Here is the trailer for the movie:
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