B0STON MARATHON: Motherhood hasn’t softened Goucher’s will to win

— The last time Kara Goucher ran the Boston Marathon, she was so fresh and frustrated at the finish that she begged her coach to let her run another 26.2 miles a week later in London.

Goucher insists she has since calmed down, helped in part by the perspective she gained after giving birth, in the two years since she finished third in 2009 and missed the olive wreath by nine seconds. But when she lines up in Hopkinton for the 115th Boston Marathon today, her goal remains the same.

“I have run that race again about 1,000 times in my head,” she said this week after arriving in Boston. “I just want to win this thing.”

Goucher, who gave birth in September to a son, Colt, said she thinks she has figured out how to balance motherhood with her attempt to make the2012 Olympics in London. In her first race back after childbirth, she finished second in the Arizona Half Marathon in January but her time of 1 hour, 14 minutes, 2 seconds showed her that she wasn’t really ready for the race.

“I need to make a choice: Am I going to keep using Colt as an excuse?” she said. “I decided, ‘No more excuses.’ I want to be the best. I don’t want to be the best who has a baby. I want to be the best.”

Goucher, 32, said having a baby around the house has helped her training, even though Colt is teething and beginning to crawl. Now, she said, she knows she doesn’t have time to dawdle with half-measures, and when she trains she is more focused and effective.

Goucher ran a 2:25:53 to finish third in New York in 2008 and came to Boston as the best American hope to end more than two decades of foreign dominance.No American has won the race since 1985.

She was among the leaders with a mile to go in 2009 but was out-sprinted to finish third in the closest three-way finish in the race’s history, which was the closest an American has come to winning since 1985.

The pace was so slow that a day later Goucher, bouncing around for reporters to show she was still spry, pleaded with coach Alberto Salazar, the 1982 Bostonwinner, to let her run London. Such a back-to-back effort would have been unprecedented, and Goucher was eventually talked out of it.

“I just want to win,” she said. “Sure, I would love to get a (personal record), but I would rather be the 2011 Boston Marathon champion than have some PR. Hopefully, I would break the PR someday. But no one else can ever be the 2011 Boston Marathon champion.”

Sports, Pages 18 on 04/18/2011

Upcoming Events