Women’s Track & Field World.
The only publication in the world devoted exclusively to Women’s Track & Field.
June 1983. On The Road Again.
No big head here. When you last tuned in, I had just made the most audacious prognostication regarding the winners of the 1983 BAA Marathon (Boston, April 18). As you remember, I predicted Greg Meyer and Eleanor Simonsick. Ah, such accuracy.
Meyer, of course, won rather easily, establishing a course record of 2:09 flat. Simonsick probably would have won, if she had entered and Joan Benoit had not. Miss Benoit – actually, I guess not all that close a friend of mine – virtually promised me, personally, she would not participate in this year’s race. Apparently, she changed her mind and only told her closest confidantes.
Benoit, the 25-year-old coach at Boston University, appeared in Hopkinton intent on breaking the world record (2;25:29) jointly held by Allison Roe and Grete Waitz. Waitz had tied the mark at the London Marathon the previous day. Just to make things more interesting, Roe was in Boston rather hopeful of re-establishing her pre-eminence. She need not have bothered.
2:22:43 is the new world record for the marathon by a woman. Oh, what a woman. Benoit blitzed the first 10K in 31:50 and never looked back. She passed ten miles in 51:38, and went past the halfway point in 1:08:23. Obviously, all of Benoit’s long splits bettered existing standards. It was quite a performance.
You may hear some discussion of the salubrious conditions which accompanied Benoit’s accomplishment – cloudy skies with temperatures in the forties, a fifteen mile per hour tailwind most of the way. Okay, optimal weather, but Benoit still had to move her legs 26 miles 385 yards. And she prepared for her Boston effort by standing in the same chill Saturday afternoon coaching her BU squad through a track meet. The kids still came first.
Coming along ever so far back in second place was Jacqueline Gareau, breaking the 2 1/2 hour mark for the first time with 2:29:27. Almost seven minutes back of the winner. Almost inconceivable.
“I said, ‘If she’s going to win it this time, she was going to have to run for it’,” explained Kitty Consolo after the 10th Chopperthon, Schenectady-to-Albany, New York, March 20. ‘She’ was Jane Welzel, the defending champion who had beaten Consolo last year by nearly five minutes. Welzel did have to run for it, as Consolo caught her at six, twelve and sixteen miles, before Jane finally pulled away. Her 30K time of 1:50:59 put her just twenty seconds ahead of Consolo. There’s something positive to be said for the revenge motive.
And that is one reason I have ceased my spurious attacks on my sainted editor, Vince Reel. I am convinced – despite his valiant, sometimes successful, struggle against senility – that even so marvelous a human being as is he, can only endure so much abuse without lashing back. Since I am without fault, he would be forced to conjure a fabricated inability and would look much the less for such an effort.
I shall say no more. (Thank God. – SFVR)
P.S. Joan Benoit, you are incredible.
SIDEBAR. From Joe Henderson’s ‘Running Commentary
For what it’s worth, Joan Benoit’s 2:22:43 may have been the greatest Boston performance ever, by man or woman. Consider this:
She improved the course record by 2.7 percent. If some did that to Alberto Salazar’s Boston mark, he would run 2:06
Benoit’s time would have beaten everyone in nine of every ten races last year, including TAC’s Nationals.
She would have qualified for the men’s Olympic Trials in 1976.
She brought the women’s mark within fifteen minutes of the men’s. Fifteen years ago, the difference was almost an hour.
She would have won the Boston Marathon (men) as recently as 1962, led every Olympics before 1960 and held the world record in the 1940s.
Benoit averaged 5:27 miles – or put another way, four back-to-back 10Ks of 33:46. She ran the first ten miles (51:38) at slightly better than 5:10 pace, the second 10 (she reached 20M in 1:46:44) at 5:30 pace and the last 10K at 5:47 pace. Joan’s first half passed in 1:08:23 and she came home in 1:14:20.
To put these incredible times into perspective, think how few women have even run one 10K, one ten-miler or half-marathon this fast.
