9 Questions with an Olympic Gold Medalist (Read 734 times)

I went to the Maine Running Company last night to listen to Joan Benoit Samuelson speak. If you have never met her, she is a very sweet lady (even if she did punch me during a race once) and her talk was great. It took a most of the day, but I wrote up my 20 pages of notes into some semblence of order finally: 9 Questions for Joan Benoit Samuelson at Maine Running Company She won the first women's olympic marathon in 1984, has won Boston and Chicago, and has never dropped out of a race or run a marathon in over 3 hours. She is training right now to run at the Olympic trials in April, when she will be almost 51 years old, so that she can finish her marathoning career where she began it. She wants to run it in 2:50:00 or less (technically, 2:46 or less now that Lance ran that)

Thanks Blaine

Good article. I remember being in Freeport in the summer of '84 after my car brokedown heading home. It was right after Joan won the first woman's marathon in the Olympics. The town was buzzing with pride over her accomplishment. I also remember reading something about her training technique in a Runner's World around the same time. When she did her roadwork & came to a corner,rather than cut the corner she'd run along the outside. That way in a race she'd be that much more trained than her competitors. I'm surprised nobody's asked. Why did Joan punch you?