LITTLE ROCK — Runners form clubs and plan so many group events that it’s a little easy - amid their chattering running buddies, their highly portable cell phones, their confiding relationships with training websites and demanding interactive wristwatches - to forget the potentially solitary nature of the sport.
And that time spent alone in your head can be good for you.
Joan Benoit Samuelson, a professional runner who made her mark by setting a world marathon record in 1983 and then winning gold in the first women’s Olympic Marathon in 1984, estimates she has run nearly 140,000 miles in her 53 years, most of them alone.
“You know they talk about, and many of you have probably read, The Loneliness of the [Long] Distance Runner. Well, that’s how I’ve trained most of my life,” she said July 2, to an audience of 50 runners in an otherwise empty storefront of Little Rock’s Pleasant Ridge Town Center.
“I’ve run by myself, and I don’t find it lonely. I find it very inspirational at times, because I’m in tune with nature and what’s happening around me.”
Lately she’s logging 50 or more miles a week, sans electronic training gizmos; but when she begins working toward the 2010 Chicago Marathon, her mileage will rise to 70 or 75 miles a week - “80 max,” she said, adding that she has a busy life with grown children, gardening and many civic duties at home in Freeport, Maine.
But her running remains a cherished physical and spiritual activity.
“It’s both,” she said. “There’s nothing like getting out there and just tuning in to nature, tuning in to thoughts. It’s a way for me to set priorities and to achieve balance in my life.
“I refer to my career in two phases, BC and AD, Before Children and After Diapers. It used to be that I scheduled my day around my running, and now I schedule my running around my day. And that’s not all bad. That comes back to balance in one’s life, and that’s the key to anything, balance.”
Speaking during her visit to Little Rock as celebrity runner for Easy Runner’s Firecracker Fast 5K, she described her enduring ambition to “run her own race.” She told how that played out in famous contests, including the 1983 Boston Marathon in which she set her women’s world record. In that race, she declined an offer to team up with the woman the press expected would win, Allison Rowe, and work with her to ensure one of them might break the world record.
Benoit Samuelson said she refused because she needed to run her own race.
With color commentators telling the world she was making a grave mistake by passing up a drink of water early on and by holding a shockingly quick starting pace, Benoit Samuelson clung to her own sense of how she felt. She left Rowe and the other women and most of the men behind, running until her knees, which had recently undergone surgery, wobbled with exhaustion. But she kept on and finished first in 2:22.43 - 2 minutes and 46 seconds under Grete Waitz’ world best.
(Two years later, Ingrid Kristiansen of Norway topped Benoit Samuelson’s time, as women’s marathons continued to quicken. Currently, Paula Radcliffe holds the women’s record, with a 2:15.25 finish at the London Marathon in 2003.)
The next year at the Summer Games in Los Angeles, Benoit Samuelson again ran her own race, ending up victorious - and alone. Alone by virtue of speed and also by inclination. As she entered the tunnel leading to the coliseum, she said, she heard the crowd rising to its feet to greet her.
“I look forward to telling my grandchildren, if I’m blessed enough to have grandchildren someday - I have two wonderful children - not that I won the first women’s Olympic Marathon but that I ran down the L.A. freeway all by myself,” she said.
“I felt the most at home during the time I was on the L.A. freeway because nobody was out there.”
She explained “running your own race” as a metaphor, not merely a sports strategy.
“And I think this applies to anything in any of our lives, whether it be in the workplace, whether it be at home or with family, whether it be with friends, whether it be with competitors in the workplace or on an opposing team - whomever. You can’t run anybody else’s race but your own.”
So does she believe that the vast numbers of runners and walkers who tune out the world by plugging in ear buds and listening to music are missing out on the spiritual benefit of running?
“No,” she said. “If that gets them out the door and moving, I’m all for it.
“You look at road races, if I go into any major city, if I’m in Boston running along the river, if I’m in New York in Central Park, if I’m on the [Little Rock] riverfront trail like I was last night, people are tuned in. And if that gets them moving, great. Keep it up.
“I don’t have any anti-, you know, -iPod thoughts.”
But she doesn’t wear one?
“No, I don’t. I might some day, but not right now.”
The importance of engaging everyone in being active outdoors outweighs other considerations. And that’s why she likes promoting a short race like a 5K.
“The 5K is something that’s accessible to a lot of people. I think that’s what the real panacea is for our healthcare crisis, access to physical activity. ... If people in this country would check their pedometers the way they check their watches every day, we wouldn’t have a health-care crisis in this country.”
Continuing to run hard gets a little more difficult every year.
“But there is no finish line in sight, because with every finish line there’s a new goal that evolves in my head, the next starting line,” she said. Among her current goals are a plan to escort her daughter and her 90-year-old mother to Athens, Greece in October for the 2,500th anniversary of that famous marathon.
And she’d like to run Chicago’s marathon faster than 2:50, she said, adding that “deep down” she’d also like to go even faster and qualify for the 2012 Olympic Trials.
She does have “some joint issues.” When she can’t run she cycles or swims, and in the winter she skis.
“I still don’t see a finish line in sight. But I can tell you that when I’m hobbled to the point that I really can’t run in a manner that’s productive or healthy, then I’ll quit.”
And she’ll know that time when it comes because running has helped her to know herself.
ActiveStyle, Pages 27 on 07/12/2010