Women's 2007 Story
Men's 2007 Story
Women's 2007 Story
By Barbara Huebner
Open Women's Race
On local Boston TV, they were calling it "Monsoon Monday," and in the early hours of Patriots' Day that was as good a name as any. Torrential rains soaked southern New England, while ski country in Vermont got more than a foot of snow. Wind gusts up to 50 miles an hour buffeted volunteers at the finish line in Boston as they toiled just after dawn. Could the race really go on?
"During my training in Russia, the weather conditions were very similar," said Lidiya Grigoryeva. "I am not surprised."
Instead, it was Grigoryeva who did the surprising. In a race featuring the three top-ranked female marathoners in the world, it was the unfazed and unheralded 33-year-old Grigoryeva who pulled away in the final miles, winning the 111th Boston Marathon in 2:29:18 and taking home the $100,000 first prize. Runner-up for the second consecutive year was Jelena Prokopcuka of Latvia (2:29:58), with Madai Perez of Mexico third (2:30:16) and defending champion Rita Jeptoo of Kenya fourth (2:33:08).
For Deena Kastor, #1 in the world and vying to become the first American woman to win here since Lisa Larsen-Weidenbach in 1985, the surprise came in the form of stomach cramps that plagued her from the start, kept her from matching a small surge just past halfway and eventually forced a pit stop that cost her more than a minute of precious time. She would finish fifth, in 2:35:09.
"I just had a really bad day out there," said the American record holder.
After a night of listening to rain and wind battering their windows as they tried to sleep, the athletes were actually relieved when they arrived in Hopkinton to less wind, lighter rain and warmer temperatures - 58 degrees at the start - than had been expected. Still, the women faced crosswinds and sideways bursts of rain in the early miles after the new 9:35 a.m. start, and clocked cautious splits of 5:37, 5:31, 5:37, 5:35, 5:44, 5:35 and 5:46 before slowing even further to 6:11, 6:03, 6:24, 6:23 and even a shocking 7:02 in the first 12 miles.
"In the beginning of the race there was a lot of toying around with a fast and slow pace," said Kastor, who prefers an even tempo.
A pack of eight women separated itself right from the start, reluctantly led for most of those early miles by Prokopcuka. She was joined by Kastor, Jeptoo, Grigoryeva, Perez, Robe Tola Guta of Ethiopia, Alice Chelangat of Kenya, and Italy's Giovanna Volpato. "I was a bit disappointed because it's a difficult job to run against the wind, No one wanted to help me, so I had to run alone and try to make the pace, because I don't like jogging. When I was running behind, it was simply jogging." At 12 miles, they were on pace to finish in 2:34:23, which would have been the slowest race since 21-year-old Joan Benoit won back in 1979.
After hitting the half at 1:17:10, things finally got serious. Prokopcuka shed her arm warmers; Jeptoo ditched her long-sleeved shirt. They picked up the pace. Kastor, too, tossed aside her arm warmers, but she stayed behind. With her stomach cramping, she could not push. By mile 15, she was 30 seconds back and fading.
The pack was now down to four, with Prokopcuka and Grigoryeva running side-by-side, Jeptoo and Perez right behind. By 25K, the women had whittled the finishing pace down to 2:32:44, but whenever the wind gusted everyone lined up single file behind the taller Prokopcuka. The Latvian, who lost precious training time to a bout of the flu a month ago, turned around several times, clearly annoyed at the role she was given.
Climbing the Route 128 overpass, the wind picked up and the temperature, which had been slowly dropping from the start, fell to 50 degrees. Jeptoo, already visibly struggling with the elements, dropped back for good. They were now three.
Through the Newton Hills, Prokopcuka took the brunt of the battle. Going up Heartbreak Hill (Prokopcuka, citing the spot at which her hopes for victory ebbed, would later call it Break Heart Hill), the trio ran shoulder-to-shoulder, down the other side, the same.
At Cleveland Circle, Grigoryeva looked to make a break, then quickly abandoned. But with a little more than two miles to go, she surged for real, and her former companions had no answer. "I understood between 35K and 40K I can push the pace," she said later. A two-time Olympian at 10,000 meters, she felt confident of her late-race leg speed, and off she went on a 5:10 mile between 24 and 25, her ponytail bouncing in synch with her muscular arms.
As she made the final turn onto Boylston Street, Grigoryeva took a glance over her shoulder to check her lead. She liked what she saw. She looked again, just to make sure. She was clear, running the last mile in 5 minutes flat and grabbing a Russian flag from the crowd just before breaking the tape.
The skies, by then, were clearing.
Even Kastor managed to find a bright side. "Absolutely," she said, when asked if she would return. "It was a spectacular, spectacular experience out there. Despite the weather, the support out there was just awesome. The experience was everything I'd hoped it would be."
USA Women's Marathon Championship
In the race-within-a-race that was the USA Women's Marathon Championship, Deena Kastor's 2:35:09 took the 2007 title and $25,000 first prize. The American record holder, Kastor came in as the overwhelming favorite, with a personal-best time of 2:19:26 that was more than 10 minutes faster than the #2 woman in the field.
What transpired behind her, however, was quite a story. Slowly breaking away from a large pack at the halfway point, Ann Alyanak finished second in 2:38:55, with Kristin Price third in 2:38:57. The women finished ninth and 10th, respectively, in the overall women's field, after running side-by-side virtually every inch of the way.
In doing so, Alyanak chopped more than nine minutes off her previous personal best of 2:48:04, and Price slashed more than five minutes off her PR of 2:44:09. Both qualified to run the 2008 Olympic Team Trials-Women's Marathon. Neither seemed especially surprised.
"I knew I was much fitter than my previous PR," said the 28-year-old Alyanak, the cross country coach at the University of Dayton who is coached by her husband, Ed. "I would have been very disappointed not to come away with a PR today." A Big Ten 10,000-meter champion out of Purdue University, Alyanak debuted at the Columbus Marathon in 2002, finishing fifth in 2:52:04. It would be three years before she ran her second, placing 18th in the USA Championships in the Twin Cities Marathon in 2005, running her previous PR. This was her third.
Price, 25, was also running in only her third marathon, and most recently finished eighth at the USA Half Marathon Championships in January in a clocking of 1:13:52. She was a 12-time All-American at North Carolina State, winning the NCAA 10,000-meter title as a junior in 2002. Her two prior marathon times of 2:44:09 and 2:44:39 were run off of triathlon training, so this was her first focused marathon effort.
They took home $15,000 and $10,000, respectively, for their breakthrough performances.
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Men's 2007 Story
By Jim O'Brien
The 2007 Boston Marathon was a contest with the elements as much as it was a competition between some of the world's foremost contenders. Although the snowstorms forecast earlier in the week did not materialize, sheets of rain lashed the course in the 24 hours leading up to the start, and blustery winds reaching 50 mph hampered runners as the event got underway at the new starting time of 10 a.m.
The weather notwithstanding, much of the pre-race speculation focused on the well-being of defending champion, Robert K. Cheruiyot. Cheruiyot had first won this race in 2003, then endured a couple of indifferent years before storming back in 2006 and winning in both Boston and Chicago - the only man to have accomplished that feat in the same year. Significantly, that also placed Cheruiyot firmly at the head of the nascent World Marathon Majors table and in line for a $500,000 bonus were he able to maintain his form into 2007 and the second stage of the WMM.
All that was thrown into jeopardy at the conclusion of The LaSalle Bank Chicago Marathon in October, when Cheruiyot slipped as he crossed the finish line, cracking his head on the asphalt and incurring some internal bleeding in his skull. Even prior to Boston, Cheruiyot stated that he was unsure if he would be in top form. Those doubts were placed firmly to rest when he injected a late race surge that devastated his sole remaining contender, James Kwambai, and brought the 28-year-old a victory that was as gratifying as it was courageous.
In addition to highlighting his competitive resolve, though, the outcome of this event illustrated that Cheruiyot is also a man of remarkable tactical awareness. The early miles passed at a pace that was literally dawdling. The unheralded Josephat Ongeri and Jared Nyambok charged to the forefront, passing the first mile in 4:49 and four miles in 19:31. Though the conditions indicated that so brisk a pace was folly - rain had slowed to a drizzle, but a blustery headwind persisted - a large pack comprised of all the main contenders opted for a pace that was hardly more than a jog. At that four mile point, the chasing group was 1:39 in arrears, a margin that had stretched to over two minutes by the time they reached 11 miles.
Ordinarily, one might safely assume that so large a gap in a race of this caliber would impact the outcome significantly. On this occasion, though, the universal - and accurate - consensus was that Ongeri and Nyambok were running on borrowed time, and the real running would only begin once the Newton Hills presented themselves.
Indeed, as the leaders began to pay the price for their impetuous running, the pack - including Cheruiyot, Kwambai, last year's second placer Ben Maiyo, Stephen Kiogora, as well as Americans Peter Gilmore and Jason Lehmkuhle - began to re-focus and set about the real business of the day.
It was between 17 and 18 miles that Ongeri and Nyambok were swallowed whole, essentially the signal that the race was about to begin. Stephen Biwott took a turn at the front as the group passed 19 (1:39:00, an uphill split of 5:15), then allowed Philip Manyim to inch ahead. But the group remained a cohesive unit. It was only with the hills fully behind them that things began to change.
At 20 miles, the clock read 1:44:11 (5:11) and at 21 the figures were 1:49:13 (5:02), by which time Cheruiyot and Kwambai had drifted to the forefront, the first indication that the face of the race was about to change. At 35K (1:52:36), the group had slimmed to Cheruiyot, Kwambai, James Koskei, Ben Maiyo, Kiogora and Teferi Wodajo.
A 4:45 split to mile 23 (1:58:40) pruned that pack still further, with Wodajo and Maiyo falling adrift and Kiogora appearing to weaken. The bell was tolling and, quickly, a pedestrian competition evolved into a mano-a-mano nail-biter.
The defending champion and the novice pretender raced shoulder to shoulder from 23 to almost 25 (24 mile split of 2:03:19 - 4:37), at which point Cheruiyot upped the ante to a level that Kwambai could not reach. It was a question of commitment and reserves and strength and courage; and Cheruiyot held all of those attributes in abundance.
Once the move was made - and it was dramatic - there was never any question as to whom the winner would be. The defending champ opened daylight with every stride and never had cause to look back. At the line - which one might have assumed he approached with trepidation, given his fall in Chicago - his time of 2:14:13 gave him a 20 second advantage over Kwambai. Kiogora held on for third in 2:14:47. Respective prize money was $100,000, $40,000 and $22,500.
"Boston is not so easy," Cheruiyot stated. "It is very tough. It was very cold." Asked about the headaches from which he had been suffering, he explained, "There was a little pain, but it was just something small."
As he received the celebrated Boston laurel wreath with the Kenyan National Anthem playing, Cheruiyot was clearly moved. "Our National Anthem reminds me of a lot of things," he stated. "It reminds me of missing my home and that there are a lot of people - my family - looking at me. And it makes you feel like crying."
Peter Gilmore's 8th place finish was one lower than that of 2006, and his time of 2:16:41 was almost four minutes slower; but, there was still much cause for gratification. "This is the 10th marathon that I've finished," he explained. "I've never had a race in which I felt so in control with regard to breathing and heart-rate, but my legs just wouldn't respond. I think it was just the cold. The cold got to my legs. But it was good. I wasn't going to drop out, and I wasn't going to stop running hard."
The post-event analyses of this race will show it to have been one of affirmation that a thrilling race can evolve from one in which the times become a virtual irrelevance. Additionally, it affirmed that Robert K. Cheruiyot is a man who can overcome adverse conditions, troublesome tactics and personal ailments and prove, without question, that he is, at present, the finest marathoner in the world.
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