I had the privilege this morning of watching the 2008 US Women's Olympic Marathon trials.From this race, the top 3 women are picked to go to the Beijing Olympics.
The race as supposed to be dominated by Deena Kastor so when I headed out about to watch about 1.5 hours into the race I was surprised to not recognize the front runner. But I was not the onl
y one. No one in the crowd knew who this lady was. And she was running strong and fast and was about 1:40 ahead of Deena. And many people were cheering "GOOOO Deena!!" :-) Probably just made her, Magdalena Lewy-Boulet, run faster. This was at mile 17. I then watched and cheered for the rest of the amazing runners as they streamed past. I saw the 3 Oregonians that I knew: Penny McDermott, Wendy Terris and Meghan Arbogast...in that order.
With the looping course, the women were back at mile 23. Magdalena was still in the lead but not by much...about 20 seconds. It was a real race for first and second. Then there was another gap and a strong group of women fighting it out for the third and final place for the Olympics.I am hoping to use their inspiration to drive me on tomorrow. The weather was sunny and not cold (about 50F) but there was a fairly strong wind. With the loop course the women went from headwind to tailwind several times.
Penny finished in 2:49:32, Wendy in 2:55:28, and Meghan in 2:59:51.
The top three results:
| 1 | Deena Kastor | 35 | 2:29:35 | |||
| 2 | Magdalena Lewy Boulet | 34 | 2:30:19 | |||
| 3 | Blake Russell | 32 | 2:32:40 |
Full results are here.
Off to the Expo and late late lunch.
2 comments:
Darin,
I was at the 16 mile marker (and all of the other miles associated with that). Dang, looks like I barely missed you. But at least all of the OR women got more rah-rahs that way.
Have a blast tomorrow, my friend. Run fast!
I was looking for you out there but you are right it was good they had multiple cheering sections.
Tomorrow you had better be showered and shaved by the time I cross the line...have fun! :-)
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