The competitor in Joan Benoit Samuelson still seems frustrated by seeing all the training she had done for the 1996 Olympic marathon trials produce such a relatively mediocre result.
The mother and wife and civic worker in Samuelson quickly moved on.
“I have numerous community involvements and two children I am trying to keep up with,” Samuelson said. “There was no time to dwell on it.”
That is how she is approaching her third Chicago Marathon, after setting a U.S. record in the first (1985) and getting an Olympic trials qualifying time in the second (1994). She has chosen to make her masters (40 and over) debut in the Oct. 19 LaSalle Banks Chicagoarathon because of the race’s relatively low-key nature.
“Chicago is very runner-friendly,” she said by telephone from her home outside Freeport, Maine. “There are not a lot of tall buildings or bad air quality. And I like being in a hotel where I can jog over to the start and jog back (instead of having to drive, as in New York and Boston).
“I’m not coming to win the masters race, just to do the best I can. I’ll be lucky to run 2:35 (2 hours, 35 minutes).”
That would be nearly 14 minutes slower than her record of 2 hours, 21 minutes, 21 seconds but faster than her 2:37:09 of three years ago. Samuelson said her eventual goals as a masters runner involve breaking 2:30, which would shatter the U.S. masters record of 2:35:08 set by Laurie Binder, then 44, in the 1991 Twin Cities Marathon.
The world women’s masters record is one of the more remarkable performances in sport: 2:26:51 by Priscilla Welch of Great Britain, then 42, in the 1987 London Marathon. It is 2 minutes, 52 seconds faster than the next masters woman. Only three have bettered 2 hours, 30 minutes.
Samuelson, who won the first Olympic women’s marathon in 1984, said her recent training has concentrated more on one long run (15- or 20-milers) rather than high overall mileage each week.
“It’s low-pressure marathoning, which is a different approach for me,” she said. “As I’ve gotten older, I can’t carry the mileage the way I used to. Plus I’m tired of leaving my marathons on the (training) roads.”
Samuelson believes that is what happened before the February 1996 Olympic marathon trials, when she made few concessions to being nearly 39 years old and wound up finishing 13th in 2:36.54.
“When I look back at it, I trained the best I ever had,” she said. “I had impressive workouts on the track, and my road workouts were going well.
“But one day in late December (1995), I came in from a long training run and told Scott (her husband), `I’m in trouble.’ I had peaked with five or six weeks to go.
“Instead of cutting back right there, I kept testing myself. I tested myself into the ground.”
Samuelson realizes the same thing might have happened before the 1984 Olympic trials if knee surgery had not forced her to cut back.
“Even now, my workout times are close to what I was running at my peak, but I would be content if I never competed again,” she said.
At her competitive peak in the mid-1980s, Samuelson and rivals Grete Waitz and Ingrid Kristiansen of Norway and Rosa Mota of Portugal ran times few have approached in the last decade.
Excepting the 1994 Boston Marathon, significantly aided by a tailwind, and the 1993 Tianjin, China, marathon, on a course many think was short, only four of the top 30 women’s performances have been run since 1987.
World-record holder Kristiansen (six), Mota (four), Benoit Samuelson (three), Waitz (one), and Lisa Martin Ondieki (one) accounted for 15 of the world’s top 28 performances from 1983 through 1989. Six of the first seven came from 1983 through 1987, three in the 1985 Chicago Marathon.
“We pushed one another,” Samuelson said, trying to explain the relatively few fast performances since then. “We all knew each other, respected each other and trained hard to race each other.
“The new talent coming onto the scene has such high demands to run, particularly those from economically depressed countries. They get a taste of winning, see what money does and race themselves out. The university system in the United States also leaves athletes spent before they graduate.
“There are no shortcuts to marathoning. It takes years and years of buildup.”
Even then, there are no guarantees. At the 1991 New York Marathon, Samuelson staggered to finish sixth despite asthma and dehydration she now calls “a near-death experience.”
“That was when my career changed gears,” she said. “I realized my family was so much more important than running that it wasn’t as important to push myself to the limit. When I feel I’m in trouble now, I back off.”
The Samuelsons have two children: Abby, 9, a 4th grader, and Anders, 7, a 2nd grader. Abby is interested in horseback riding (“Ironically, the one thing I was afraid of,” Joan said), Anders in soccer. Both are also skiers.
“Anders does a little running, but Abby will have nothing to do with it,” Samuelson said. “I still love the sport. I love a workout that leaves me feeling good but tired.”
Keeping up with their children would be enough of a workout for many parents.
Child-raising also makes a marathon seem like a sprint, but Joan Benoit Samuelson knows that in the long run, it is the race with the biggest and most important reward.
