Running Times, Online

by Zika Palmer

In the past year, over 350,000 Americans completed a marathon with an average finishing time of 4:45:47—or about 11 minutes per mile. While this is a remarkable and admirable feat for both the individual runners and the fitness of the country, there is something happening in those races two, even two and a half hours prior that seems to be lost in the shuffle of the masses: Americans are getting faster. But few seem to notice. Ask the average marathoner and chances are, they won’t be able to tell you about the revolution that is occurring at the finish line before they even reach mile 13.

While the number of participants (and the average finishing time) continues to increase, there are a select few American’s who have made it their life purpose to bring their own numbers down — resulting in the largest improvement in American marathon performances since the late 1970’s-early 1980’s.

In the 2004 Olympics, Meb Keflezighi and Deena Kastor took home the silver and bronze medals in their respective races, and in turn ended the United States’ twenty-year absence from the marathon podium since Joan Benoit in 1984. Deena Kastor kept up the pace with wins and American records in both the 2005 Chicago Marathon and the 2006 London Marathon (2:21 and 2:19:36 respectively). That same Chicago race saw four American women in the top ten. The men paralleled these performances in the other World Marathon Majors, as seen in the 2006 Boston Marathon, where Americans placed seven in the top ten, including top five and sub 2:12 runs by Meb Keflezighi, Brian Sell and Alan Culpepper.

This marathon season we’ve already had Amsterdam, Twin Cities (the US National Championships) and Chicago just this past weekend, with New York, Philadelphia and California International still to come. In all of these races Americans are running well — better than ever — but we rarely hear about them. Just last week, a New York Times Article on the coming race regarded Deena Kastor as “the biggest face of the NY Marathon, besides Lance Armstrong.” And while Lance Armstrong’s accomplishments as an athlete are undisputable, the fact remains that the public sees the potential winner of the women’s race as somehow less central to the race than a man who is admittedly, “doing it for fun.”

My hope is that all of you will look at the marathon results this fall and give notice to the runners at the top and those that are striving to get there. 350,000 Americans complete marathons a year and by the next Olympics only about 100+ men and 100+ women of those 350,000 will have run fast enough to qualify for the Olympic Trials (sub 2:22 for men and sub 2:47 for women). These men and women have made and continue to make sacrifices to pursue their competitive dreams and deserve to be recognized for their accomplishments.

It is time to place emphasis on the finish line rather than finishing. In the end, 26.2 miles is 26.2 miles (and the last 6.2 are an agonizing eternity of pain and suffering no matter what the pace), but the minutes and thousands of people separating a participant from the competitive marathoner represent more than the statistics of that given day. They embody the countless hours, days, and even years of preparation it has taken to be the best they can for those 26.2 miles — their lives have been dedicated to the footrace, and the results couldn’t be more encouraging. As more people join the sport of running and the numbers on the starting line continue to grow lets be sure to honor the current heroes of the sport. It is, after all, a race and our top runners are making it exciting.

Sole Sisters - Stories of Women and Running
by Jennifer Lin and Susan Warner

Reviewed by Katie Wolpert

Why DO we run? We’ve all thought about this from time to time - answers varying depending on your mood, the day, the season, the weather and what kind of shape you are in at that moment. For most of us, running is an intensely individual sport. Even those who have a team, club or group to call our own still have a particular way of practicing the sport that is uniquely our own.

Sole Sisters offers a multitude of examples - personal and historical - of female runners who have made an impact on our sport and what running means to each one of them. In some of the stories, the ripples would barely register outside of the woman’s household or neighborhood while in others, the impact is on the scale of a tsunami, changing the course of women’s running worldwide.

Lin and Warner have thrown their impressive collection of stories into the pot for our enjoyment. The organization of the book defies any concrete chronology and so as one chapter blends into the next, the reader finds herself directly comparing otherwise unrelated stories. First the reader is pulled into the story of Cheryl Treworgy crashing through the gender barrier in the 1960’s and the next moment she is learning about the organization behind an women’s 5K in Eastern Pennsylvania and before she knows what’s happened, she is meeting a teenage girl running a 400 mile relay across the Great Plains, shirtless in January.

By the end, the Running As Therapy For Women line wears a bit thin, but the multitude of unique and fascinating tales has provided ample evidence of the huge variety of meaning the simple act of putting one foot in front of the other has for women worldwide.

Easily mistaken for nothing more than an inspirational read, Sole Sisters does its part to shed light on some less known groundbreakers, to remind us of unheralded details about the well-known stars and to help the reader look inward and appreciate the many ways that the sport has improved his or her own life.