Thursday, May 14, 2009

Me and Joan :)


It's been awhile since I have checked in. Had to take a break from running because of back pain. Still getting that worked on by a chiro, but back to running. Managed to get a 29:05 in a 5K a couple of weekends ago, which I was happy about.

Olympic gold medalist Joan Benoit Samuelson gave a talk at New College the other night. I went and it was pretty cool. She is so tiny! She brought a bunch of her personal photos and went through and talked about them all. She had one of her and Lance Armstrong. Nike wanted her to pace him for the NYC marathon. She had an event the sat night and told them she couldn't do it unless they flew her down from Maine. So of course, they did. She couldn't believe Nike chartered a Jet to pick her up at 11 pm sat night and fly her down to NY.



I went out for her "fun run" the next morning. I got up early and ran 5 miles at 6 am, came home and changed into dry clothes, took Aidan to school, then headed over to New College. There were about 15 people, so a small group. I got my photo taken with her. :) They said we would do about 4 miles, which was a bit long for me right now. My long run has been 8, so added to the 5 already would have been 9. We started out slow, which was good. Well slow for most of them and Joan. It was about a 10 min pace, which for me is a bit faster then I have been running.

The college girl who had arranged for her to speak was running with us. After about 1.5 miles, she fell back to a walk. Joan slowed down the ran slowly with her the rest of the way. I took a pic of them and then when they caught up (about 1.5 miles out) I said I needed to go back. Thanked her for coming down and that it was nice meeting her. She shook my hand and said it was nice meeting me too. :) So I ended up getting in 2.75 on that second morning run.