It has been three hours since Joan Benoit Samuelson crossed the finish line of the Chicago Marathon, and she walks gingerly to a sofa in her small suite at the Sheraton Hotel. It was her first appearance in the 26.2-mile race since 1985, when she won in a record-setting 2:21:21. It’s an American record that still stands.
That was nine years, two children, thousands of miles, a few gray hairs and a different lifestyle ago.
“I’m certainly not the same athlete I was when I came here in ’85 and didn’t have children and ran 2:21,” she says after easing herself slowly into the sofa. “I went through 24 miles in about that time (in this marathon), but my role in life has been changed and my life has many different focuses now.
“I still enjoy it (running),” she says.
Then 4 1/2-year-old son Anders bursts into the room with his sister, Abby, 7, right behind him.
“Then I look at these two,” Samuelson says, her voice trailing off and her face showing no pain.
It is different these days for the 37-year-old runner, who won a gold medal in the first women’s Olympic marathon at the 1984 Los Angeles games. She may or may not try for another Olympic medal in 1996 when Atlanta is the host city. She has that option after finishing sixth in the Chicago Marathon Oct. 30 in 2:37:09, well under the qualifying time of 2:42.
More important, Samuelson has longer to heal some nagging injuries and to decide if she really wants to devote herself to the rigorous training regimen necessary to be an Olympic athlete. Samuelson may be a gold medal winner, she may be a pioneer among women marathon runners, but she also is a mother of two.
“If I go to the trials,” she says, “I have to realize that I’m going to have to focus and be more selfish with my time and take naps and train more miles and all that sort of stuff, and right now it’s just not a priority in my life with my children at the age that they are.”
Any mother knows how hard it is to find time for herself. Most will say they get their exercise chasing after the children. Samuelson runs for a living. The training is consuming, but she has changed her priorities because of her daughter and son.
“I basically run in the mornings-Abby’s in school all day and he’s (Anders) in school three mornings a week, so three mornings I run when he’s in school and two mornings I try to run before my husband (Scott) goes to work. I run longer on weekends or race on weekends.
“Back in ’85, I was running twice a day and close to 100 miles a week, and now I’m running 70 miles a week. And that’s good because it tells me I’m not training at that level. Now, whether I can maintain that level because I’m at an older age, I don’t know.
“I’ll look at my life a year from now and decide, `Do you really want to go after this? Is it worth it? Is it worth the risk to really focus on this for five, six months and make the team, or have you had enough of it?’ “
Samuelson still thinks she can run a sub-2:30 marathon. She wouldn’t have considered qualifying for the Olympics if those competitive juices weren’t still flowing. But it’s not just her children who will affect her decision. She has to consider her body-her left Achilles heel is a nuisance. She has asthma. And the increased training pace for the Chicago Marathon created some intestinal problems.
“I go on these long training runs, and some days I feel great and I think I can run what I used to run,” she says, “and other days, it’s a drag. But I still like to see what I can do and how hard I can push myself.”
Samuelson set the pace for women marathon runners in the 1980s, taking over from Norway’s Grete Waitz, who won the New York City Marathon five consecutive years and held the world record from 1978-83. Waitz set a world mark of 2:25:29 in the London Marathon on April 17, 1983. Samuelson broke that the next day in the Boston Marathon, running a blistering 2:22:43. Her record stood until 1985, when Ingrid Kristiansen, of Norway, clocked 2:21:06 in the London race.
“I guess I go back to the older group, the Gretes and the Rosas (Rosa Mota, of Portugal) and the Ingrids,” Samuelson says. “The people in marathoning look at us as pioneers, but there were people before us-`Bobby’ (Roberta) Gibbs and Katherine Switzer and Nina Kucsik and Jacqueline Hansen and those people.
“In a way, I guess I’m a pioneer in that I forged the way for fast marathon times for women. I’ve done everything not for a reason but for the pure love of the sport. I wasn’t trying to make some sort of statement.”
It wasn’t for the money. Marathon runners can’t enter too many races a year because the toll is too much on their bodies. The Chicago Marathon’s prize money was $30,000 each to the winners of the men and women’s divisions; Samuelson picked up $3,500 for finishing sixth.
“It’s love,” Samuelson says, trying to explain why she toils for endless miles. “It’s nice to win prize money and stuff like that, but if money motivated me, I’d race a lot more than I race now.”
Most important is having her family at the finish line.
“I think the hardest thing for a woman today to do is balance her life. I think women need to know that it’s OK to make mistakes and it’s OK to try to work on a balance until it’s achieved.
“I felt like I was shortchanging my time with my children, my quality time with my children for a while when I was still trying to compete, so I’ve adapted this `catch as catch can’ philosophy (to training). When I’m on, I’m on, and when I’m not, I’m not, but not at the expense of sacrificing their lives.
“I came in sixth place (in the Chicago race) and had a ribbon around my neck. To Anders, it was `Mommy won the race,’ and to Abby, she wondered where I was because four or five women had come in before me. It means different things to them.”
It’s important to Samuelson to let her children grow at their own pace.
“Abby very much enjoys ballet right now,” Samuelson says. “She’s not real graceful or real coordinated, but she loves it and I support her.
“Obviously, I’d love to see her out there kicking a soccer ball or doing something like that because I was a tomboy and grew up with three brothers. But it’s what she wants, and I find it very important to support her.
“I think kids are pushed now in certain directions, and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. I think anything that’s positive-whether it’s athletics or music or art-that those opportunities need to be out there for girls.”
Her biggest crusade is supporting the family. She was described as “reclusive” and difficult to reach before the Chicago race; the truth is, she prefers to spend her time at home with the family and their large garden or reading to her children. They always have dinner together.
“I think that (dinner time) really made me as close to my family as I am and Scott as close as he is to his,” she says. “Dinner time is a time when you sit down with your family, and it wasn’t like so many families today-they grab it when they can.
The children drastically changed her running career, but she says she has no regrets. Many people have asked about her decision to have children. It was something she and her husband wanted to do.
“If I had left the kids at home, my focus would have been with them and not on the (Chicago) race,” she said. “It’s important to me to have them here.”
It’s also important to her to run. She’s not ready to hang up her running shoes.
“Just the challenge of the sport, just wanting to see as I go through different periods and different ages and different patterns of my life, to see how well I can run-I guess that motivates me and the fact that the ’96 Olympics are back on home soil,” she says. “I’ll be fighting an uphill battle to make the team, but that motivates me. The big question that remains is will my body hold up to that sort of training.”
She leans over and tries to ease her left foot into a shoe. Her Achilles is tender from the 26.2 miles on Chicago streets. She can’t quite lace the shoe.
“I’ve never considered retirement,” she says. “People say I’ve come out of retirement and they say, `Welcome back,’ but I never retired and never plan to. Someday, I just won’t show up.”
Ten years ago, if you wanted to find Samuelson, all you had to do was look on the New England roads near her home. These days her family knows she’s always nearby.
“It would be hard for me to totally stop running,” she says. “I’d have to find something else to take the stress off, to expend some energy, but I think I could do it with swimming or biking. Some days I only run five or six miles. That was unheard of, based on what I was 10 years ago. Then I had to run at least 10 miles a day.
“I keep thinking I’m 20-something,” she says. “Don’t I wish.”
