A Spring In Our Step

No matter how bleak the economy seems, no matter how fraught with anxiety and uncertainty the world’s atmosphere might be, life just feels a little more palatable when the sun comes out. Spring, after a dark, long winter, has arrived.

Runners Rejoice!

Central Park was teeming on this first Sunday in April. The cherry blossoms were beginning to bloom and the runners were hitting the paths: hope revitalized.

The glorious sunshine today put a spotlight on the running boom, and within this movement, a trend that has been emerging since the first of the year.

People are flocking to races from 5K to ultra-marathons, despite the economy and, in part, because of the economy. Races have been receiving record numbers of applicants, from the Orlando Disney Marathon, to Phoenix, to Houston to the Miami Marathon, to the Boston Marathon, which reached capacity earlier than ever and closed registration back in January.

Some marathons, like Orlando and New York, have had to raise their prices, their officials said, to deal with rising insurance and labor costs. But that has not seemed to deter runners.

In a sport that can be relatively inexpensive (depending on how many gels, water bottles, shoes, and outfits one buys) many participants seem to be considering races as non-negotiable expenses.

“There is still a huge demand for people to do these events,” Ryan Lamppa, the media director for USA Running told me recently. “That’s a positive sign. Despite the past six months, with the economy, and gloom and doom, running is — I won’t use the word recession-proof — but it is somewhat resistant to the recession.”

Orlando race director Jon Hughes repeated a popular theory last month: “Running is therapy.”

Mary Wittenberg, the chief executive of New York Road Runners, sees running as the ultimate symbol of hope. It provides structure at a time where some people have lost their jobs and an outlet for people who are unsure of their career direction.

“Running provides a goal, a home for people, a focus,” she said to me recently. “It’s something they can control.”

The numbers are encouraging for industry leaders, but there is a debate about how much these increases are due to economic escapism or part of the trend that has been developing over the last two years.

Pause for Reflection

As I chronicled in my book, everybody has a reason why they run. They run to outrun their demons and diagnoses. They run to win. They run to eat cake. And now that April is here, they run faster because the sun shines again.  Giving new meaning to “a Spring in their step.”

In honor of the buds on the trees, A Race Like No Other Blog has re-emerged from its deep freeze as well.

Forsythia Shines Like a Beacon

Over the winter, I was overjoyed to see bloggers from around the country kindly mentioning my book, finding inspiration from its messages of courage and perseverance, and adding it to their reading lists. At the Miami Marathon, where I sold at the expo there, I met more than 100 people who had already read the book or chose to buy it, and I was thrilled to engage in lively discussions with them — what moved them, not only about the stories I told, but about the stories they created.

I will be at the Boston Marathon expo in two weeks, selling out of the Marathon & Beyond booth and listening to runners and readers share their experiences. I will also be in the press room for the New York Times at the April 20 race, where Ryan Hall and Kara Goucher are vying to become the first Americans to win in Boston since the 1980s. A victory for either could help send the popularity of running in this country soaring to new levels.

The People You Meet

As I make my way across the country and the New York area talking to readers of A Race Like No Other, the journey has indeed become the destination. Every book talk immerses me back into the Marathon, and inspires me anew.

Not only do I get to share the stories that I spent a year developing, stories of runners close to my heart, I get to hear new tales and meet new people. And that’s been the truly fun part of this whole promotional process.

Runners love to talk. I think it’s because of the lonely, pent-up hours spent training listening to their footsteps or the complaints of their body parts.  

Because this is such an introspective sport, it seems that the second marathoners are asked why they run or how they finished in their most recent race, the stories just spin out from their soles.

 Two talks and two runner-readers – in Houston and in Philadelphia – helped construct a gratifying story. In the religiously strict and quiet section of Williamsburg, Brooklyn this year (where residents have always been less than enthusiastic, and barely participate), they said a rabbi handed out kosher electrolyte replacement fluid to runners. The drink is also known as Powerade.

In talks in Houston, Boulder and Denver in the last month, runners have attended readings wearing their 2008 medal. In New York, one came to a talk I gave during the Expo wearing a rather well-worn 1983 marathon t-shirt.

 I learned from another talk that one woman actually ducked into a porta-potty to use a breast-pump while running the race less than six months after giving birth. Not even Paula Radcliffe, the British world-record holder, did that in the 10 months since she gave birth in 2007 (good thing she didn’t, since she won).

One woman in Denver (in her 50s) said she had run close to 100 marathons. Ouch.

One man had run the 1976 race and returned in 2008, with his wife. In Boulder, she was the one wearing the medal.

In Bay Ridge, Brooklyn I heard about Matthew Long from the neighbor of his family, who came to relay his inspirational story and talk of her own burgeoning running. Long, a New York firefighter, who was a rescuer at the World Trade Center on 9-11, nearly died when he was run over on bicycle during the New York transit strike.

My New York Times colleague Corey Kilgannon detailed his painful recovery (40 surgeries later) in an excellent story a few days later, just as this new reader runner was planning to hold a marathon party in Long’s honor.

I have been to more than a dozen venues in the last six weeks since the book was published, from independent stores like the Corner Bookstore in Manhattan, Bookmark and the Tattered Cover in Denver; at Jewish Community Centers like in Houston, at chains like Borders in Cleveland and, most recently, Barnes & Noble in Philadelphia in front of old friends.

 No matter how many people (I don’t already know) show, I enjoy the discussion, the reading, the questions I am asked, and most of all, the answers I get from other runners.

 I love to hear how important the marathon was – and is — to their lives, and how, even in the retelling of their story, their eyes practically run around the room.

Jessica was the first to arrive for my signing at Jack Rabbit Sports in Manhattan and we spent more than a half-hour talking about her first marathon — 9 days before the actual race. Turned out she had a triumphant run and emailed me that week to tell me how, after finishing both the race and the book, she truly understood the power of her achievement. And the last line of the book.  

An hour before I was to give my talk in Philadelphia, I received a similar email from one of the runners I featured, Dave Obelkevich, who, along with Tucker Andersen, has run every New York City Marathon since 1976.

Obelkevich was a joyful participant in my Corner Bookstore reading in Manhattan last month, sharing his passion and obsession for the sport that has taken him from Staten Island to Durban, South Africa where he runs the (90K) Comrades Marathon. In both races, he makes sure to meet people and swap stories on the run. With every step, he turns a page.

The New York City Marathon thankfully ends at 26.2 miles, but the inspiration never stops.

 

(Coffee) Tables Turned

I usually love interviews like this. Being well-prepared, you can connect in a conversation, no matter how long it lasts.

That’s the way I felt in this interview – when Tamala Edwards, a news anchor of my hometown Philadelphia ABC station, WPVI-TV, was the one asking me the questions.

An award-winning journalist who worked for TIME Magazine before coming to Philadelphia, and a graduate of Stanford University, Edwards is a delightfully engaging person who also happens to run — shorter distances, like me. We talked about how we both love to run on the bridle path in Central Park.

And then, having read the book A Race Like No Other, she quickly keyed in on the issues and the inspirational people I features for an entertaining 10 minutes on WPVI’s internet program, The Coffee Shop.

See the interview here.

 

http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/video?id=6516772

Cycle of Life in New York

Two days after A Race Like No Other 2008, I took a run in Central Park. The trees were at peak foliage, rich in hues of gold and crimson, and the Marathon Blue line was still fresh on the road. A few Italians, wearing their marathon tour jackets, walked down Cat Hill as I passed the Boathouse and prepared to tackle the incline.

At the precise moment where I passed the Ryan Shay memorial, a wreath of red and white roses marking the spot where the United States Olympic hopeful had died at the marathon trials in 2007, my randomly set I-Pod starting playing Billy Joel’s “Only the Good Die Young.”

I had goose bumps. I ran harder.

The 39th New York City Marathon was a glorious event this past Sunday, with Great Britain’s Paula Radcliffe defending as champion in a fiercely dominant performance for her third victory here and Marilson Gomes dos Santos storming to his second after his breakout 2006 title.

Their triumph Sunday was twinned with tragedy for the race, when Monday, the New York Road Runners announced that two of the 37,899 finishers had died. One finisher was a 58-year-old man, Carlos Jose Gomes, from Sao Paulo, Brazil, Gomes dos Santos’ home town.

That’s the kind of inextricable connection the marathon has had since 490 B.C.E. It was then that the messenger Pheidippides ran from the town of Marathon to Athens to announce the Athenians’ undermanned victory over the Persians.

The minute after he delivered his message — “We have won!” — he dropped dead. The first modern Olympic Games in 1896 recreated his legendary run; it was a death that gave life to a sport.

In turn, this sport has given life to so many.

Pam Rickard, one of the featured runners in my book, ran the New York City marathon for the second straight year, more than two years and seven months sober. She ran more than 10 minutes faster (3:38:03) this time revisiting the scenes along the course as if she were running with an old friend.

http://www.roanoke.com/sports/etc/wb/182939

Harrie Bakst had a far more difficult time this year than he did last year when he was five months removed from finishing his radiation treatments for cancer. This time his right foot injuries flared up painfully after Mile 16. He slowed down and then got so chilled he had to seek medical attention.

Determined to finish, and having already sent his brother Rich ahead of him, Bakst ended up walking – and limping – his way to the finish line in 6:25:27. He was accompanied in those final eight miles by a spectator who jumped into the course to help him. His mother, Ellen.

Like last year, this year’s marathon produced stories of timeless significance, of raucous crowds and gutsy performances. Here are some of the numbers, as provided by the New York road Runners:

Of the 38,356 starters, 37,899 finished – 16,257 of them running their first marathon. Kara Goucher was one of them. She finished third in 2:25:23, making her the third fastest American woman, behind Deena Kastor and Joan Benoit Samuelson.

Only one year ago, Goucher was watching from the press truck as Radcliffe outdueled Gete Wami. As amazed as Goucher was with Radcliffe then, she made up her mind that day to run the race for herself the following year.

“I think,” Goucher said with a smile Monday, “I found my event.”

Grete’s Grace: New York 30 Years Later

Thirty years ago this week, a shy geography teacher from Norway came to New York for the first time with her husband. She came on a whim, for a chance to explore a new city, an opportunity to run a different – and far longer – kind of race.

Fred Lebow thought Grete Waitz might be a good pacesetter, since she was a world record holder in the 3,000 meters on the track. Waitz had never run more than 16 miles in a training run. Her husband and coach Jack knew she could run more.

Waitz didn’t come to set a pace. As it turned out, she set a world record.

The only problem was when Waitz crossed the finish line in 1978, nobody knew who this blond woman wearing bib No. 1173 was.

The city, and the world, soon found out.

Waitz would win a total of nine New York City marathons, a record that no woman or man has ever beatean.

Great Britain’s Paula Radcliffe would be the closest woman to that record if she wins her third New York City title Sunday. (She won a 10-mile race Sunday, the Great South, in 51 minutes, 11 seconds, a British record. http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/athletics/7689608.stm.)

Whenever Radcliffe has run in New York with gritted teeth, bobbing head and fierce determination, she usually has run in the lead. Engaging and insightful away from the course, she puts her body through torture on the roads because she is that competitive.

Waitz was that way, too, when she competed. She turned 55 this month, and will make her appearance again during race week in New York. She will ride in the pace car for the women’s race, watching Radcliffe for the second straight year.

Waitz is still imbued with grit and determination, only now she is using her spirit to fight cancer, in a three-year battle.

She has always been private, the adoration of Norwegians and New Yorkers that she has engendered over the years sometimes overwhelming to her. In that manner, she is firm about not disclosing her type of cancer.

It is one way of maintaining the grace for which she became famous, and also to take the spotlight off of her.

This year in Norway, Waitz was approached by a woman who wanted run the New York City Marathon, could not get an entry and learned about Fred’s Team. She decided to establish one in Norway and worked with Waitz to establish the foundation, Aktiv Mot Kreft (www.aktivmotkreft.no) or Active Against Cancer.

The Foundation does not fund general cancer research, but supports cancer activity centers at hospitals in Norway — much like the one in Oslo, where Waitz receives treatments. The foundation also helps fund PET scans for cancer detection.

“What was important for us, we needed to have something concrete of where to spend the money,” Waitz said recently in a telephone interview. “Not just for cancer research, but where you can see the results.”

The foundation also has a corporate program which promotes healthy living for employees. If an employee completes fitness milestones – which are represented on the map of the New York City Marathon — the company donates money to the foundation.

“The bottom line is we want to raise money by being active,” said Waitz, who still works out daily.

Aktiv Mot Kreft will bring 15 runners from Norway to New York, including the most decorated winter Olympics athlete in history, cross country skier Bjorn Daehlie. He won eight gold medals in three Olympics.

He did not win nine titles. That number Grete Waitz has made her own.

The Season for Hope

Everywhere around the world this month people are flocking to festivals of the feet.

From Chicago to Denver, from Detroit to Dresden to Columbus to Atlantic City to Beijing to Venice, from Washington D.C. to New York, cities are celebrating the extraordinary achievements of people who are anything but ordinary.

As the fall leaves flutter in the increasingly crisp autumn breeze, I am off and flying on my own marathon tour.

I sold books to enthusiastic marathoners at the Chicago Marathon Expo Oct. 11 and had my first reading, discussion and signing appearance in the Cleveland suburbs Sunday afternoon. It was an appropriate place for my first presentation, since I covered my first marathon for the Cleveland Plain Dealer nearly 14 years ago.

Even then I was captured by the thunderous power of the sport and by the graceful stories of its champions. I knew that the marathon was not just about running, but about life; only later in my career would I discover the words to express that.

Surrounded by old friends and family and even some new faces, I shared my passion for this project with a warm audience who asked thoughtful questions and appreciated the effort that brought me back for a weekend.

More than a few readers of A Race Like No Other –- this weekend and this past month — have noticed an uplifting message contained in these pages, stories of hope coming at just the right time.

To be sure, I did not intend this to be a “happy book,” or a motivational treatise. I am a journalist trained to observe critically, with detached emotion.

I do write about the pain men and women endure just to achieve a goal. But I also let the runners and volunteers and their compelling stories inspire for themselves: a cancer survivor, a recovering alcoholic, a grandmother, a new mother and world-record holder, a lawyer turned professional runner, a career volunteer. They are funny, quirky and impressive all at once.

As the nation is spiraling in financial and political uncertainty, and our life’s mile markers keep disappearing, we could all use an infusion of hope that a marathon represents. Crossing the finish line is a tangible achievement, a goal that can be fulfilled in one afternoon, albeit as a result of four-plus months of hard work.

For those who are not running marathons, it is a chance to celebrate those who can, and do. Join the party on the sidelines. Salute the effort.

`Tis the season. As is it written in Ecclesiastes (Chapter 9:11, see Chapter 8 in the book): “The race is not won by the swift or the strong, but to he who endures in the end.”

Words of hope for all of us.

Great at Thirty-Eight

Constantina Tomescu-Dita has heard so many congratulations since she won the gold medal at the Beijing Olympics less than eight weeks ago.

She has also heard the same refrain of surprise.

“Many people say, ‘you are old,’” she recounted Friday in Chicago, where she is set to run Sunday’s Chicago marathon.

Tomescu-Dita is 38, and in August became the oldest Olympic marathon champion when she ran away from the field in the early miles and never looked back.

“I say, ‘no, I am not old.’ I want to prove that I am not old,” she said.

Do not let her garbled grandmother voice throw you. The proof is in her medal.

She is 38 and for those of us in her age proximity, it is a bit comforting to know that you can still get your legs, knees, hips and feet to work in concert at this advanced stage of life.

“After 30 years old you have more experience,” she said, of her race savvy. She is a mother of a middle school aged-son, Raphael, splitting time between Romania and Boulder, Colorado.

Until last year, she had no serious injuries in her career, which included a 2004 Chicago victory and two second place finishes here in 2003 and 2005. Then she was sidelined with a lower leg injury for four months.

The rest paid off, as she was primed for the Beijing marathon.

This is Tomescu-Dita’s first race back and she claims she is in good shape.

And then she reveals the only clue that shows her age, the difference between running at 38 and running at 18, when she first began her career.

“I have gotten more massage because when you are old, you need a lot more rest and massage,” she said with a knowing laugh.

In Chicago, at least, she can’t be over the hill. There are none on this course.

P-Day!

The book is officially out on shelves, on tables, in hands, in stores. Today.

 ”I made it on the streets of New York,” the Marathon medal used to say before the inscription changed in 2007 to reflect Frank Sinatra’s New York, New York slogan about making it here and making it anywhere.

New York has a way of transforming a personal goal into a communal celebration. And that’s the way I feel about my first book being published today.

Where I once found myself training on a solitary path, with but a few generous friends who offered water, wisdom and wine along the way, I now feel as if I am lining up on the bridge, surrounded by a world of runners and readers. I am nervous and excited for this long-anticipated privilege.  

The New York City Marathon is less than four weeks away, so perhaps this book can be an motivational guide for some, a handbook for those who do not or cannot run, or a template for tales yet to come. 

It is important, especially in this season, to feel the hope at the start line rather than the uncertainty, to celebrate strength and possibility, along with the quirkiness and the diversity that makes this city so dynamic, this race so unique. This is not simply a marathon. It is life. Breathe deeply. And enjoy.

Running in Truth

Pam Rickard is addicted to running. Which is far better than the alternative, she knows.

Last November Rickard ran her eighth marathon, which was her first since sobriety. She is representative of other marathoners around the world who run to recover, run to affirm their freedom from other more self-destructive addictions.

Two years ago, Rickard, a mother of three daughters from Rocky Mount, Va., was incarcerated in the Roanoke City Jail following her third arrest for Driving Under the Influence. The three months she spent in jail, away from her husband and children, made her even more motivated to change her life.

Last year, Rickard was just thrilled to be preparing for her first New York City Marathon, relishing her newfound appreciation for running and for “living in truth,” as she describes her healing.

“I thought last year was the pinnacle,” she said last week from her home. “But to be able to go back now might even be better…I know it’s because of the book and to be able to share my story through last year.”

            A Race Like No Other begins with Rickard’s powerful perspective on race day, before the sun even rises. As the book tracks her development on the streets of New York, it takes a look at her own personal development, from the heart-wrenching pain she put her family through during the depths of her alcoholism to the tentative and then tender rapprochement with her three daughters.

            Rickard admits she is competitive, that she has an ego and a cockiness that both contributed to her success as a runner and her downfall as an alcoholic.

            As she prepares for her second race in New York, she cannot hide her excitement.

            “I have to admit, I am a little bit more confident in my running because I know my body again,” she said.

There is only one downside to feeling faster and fitter. If she sets a personal best and breaks, say, 3 and a half hours, at age 46, she will be a little disappointed. “I want to be out there as long as possible,” she said. “It’s almost like Christmas day, you don’t want it to end.”

 

Read more about Pam in the Roanoke Times. http://www.roanoke.com/news/roanoke/wb/179424

And, of course, the Book.

Another Radcliffe Redemption?

           

            If it isn’t an Olympic collapse, it’s an injury after childbirth. Paula Radcliffe, the women’s world record holder in the marathon, may not need a momentous life event to make a marathon comeback. But it doesn’t seem to hurt her motivation.

            And she doesn’t necessarily need a city to make her comeback complete. But it only seems to help that the city is New York.  

            Radcliffe, the 34-year-old two-time New York City Marathon champion from Great Britain, made her announcement Wednesday that she was returning to New York to defend her title.

            “I think that it has played a good part in it being sort of a comeback place for me,” Radcliffe said on a conference call. “This year I kind of desperately wanted it not to be that, and to be coming back to New York to defend my title in its own right, having achieved what I wanted to achieve in Beijing.  But, unfortunately, that’s not been the case.”

            Radcliffe finished 23^rd in Beijing. It was the first time in her career she did not win a marathon that she finished.

            Radcliffe was seized by cramps in her left calf and ran tortured in the final 12K on the streets of Beijing. She had had less than two weeks of training on pavement to prepare for the Olympics, following her recovery from a stress fracture in her leg she sustained in April.

            “I didn’t have the muscle fitness to absorb the shock of racing 26.2 miles on concrete,” she admitted.

            Now, she is confident she will have sufficient preparation for New York.

            Her first victory came in 2004, following her devastating breakdown on the side of the road at the Athens Olympics marathon.

            Then last November, Radcliffe returned nine and a half months after giving birth to her daughter, Isla. Her drive to start training 12 days after childbirth had helped cause a stress fracture to her sacrum which kept her off her feet for 8 weeks. And then she developed foot soreness when she returned from that injury.

            She was on the starting line last November. And 2:23:09 later, Radcliffe had won a stunning 26-mile duel over longtime Ethiopian Gete Wami. Wami is returning again, too.

            “I don’t associate New York with being a place where I have to go to get over something bad,” Radcliffe said with a laugh.

           Even when she focuses on the good, she cannot bury the bad. Instead, it seems to follow her, and she does all she can to outrun it.