As Good as Gold

I am not speaking from experience, but I can imagine that it is difficult to be a wife, a friend, a sister and a mother of two incredibly gifted children, yet still find time to speak and present throughout the country, run every day, set an age group record in the New York Marathon, and act as the host of one of the country’s most prestigious 10k road races.

There is only one woman I know who can accomplish all of these things, and I had the incredible opportunity to go for a run with her last Friday morning.

Celebrity athletes amaze me, and even though she is a good family friend and the mother of one of my best friends, Abby Samuelson ’10, Joan Benoit-Samuelson still fits that description. She is like a combination of wonder-woman and Michael Jordan, except she is utterly and uniquely her own superstar.

There is a life-size poster of her in the Freeport Nike factory store, a statue in front of the Cape Elizabeth, ME, town library and an entire building dedicated to her on the Nike campus in Beaverton, OR. Samuelson is the greatest athlete to hail from the state of Maine and if you want to include athletes that have attended a Maine college or university, she still wins with Paul Kariya, a former NHL superstar, a distant second.

Some of you might have had the pleasure to meet her at some point in your lives and some of you might know who she is because of her sparkling career as one of the best marathon runners in the history of the sport. However, running is a sport that gets little attention in our society, and I am confident that many of you do not know Joan Benoit-Samuelson and why she is important.

For starters, she won the gold medal in the first women’s Olympic marathon in Los Angeles in 1984, set the marathon world record in Chicago the following years (it was broken 18 years later in 2003) and is the founder and host of one of the country’s biggest 10k road races – the Beach to Beacon, held in her hometown of Cape Elizabeth.

Take out the gold medals and world records and I might still write this column about her for all she has done for the sport of running and the state of Maine. She has been a tremendous ambassador for both sport and state throughout her exceptional career, and I wanted to share the story of a woman that has impacted all of us whether we know it or not.

While the gold medals and world records are our standard measurements for greatness, they only tell a part of the story with Samuelson and, as a close family friend and friend of her daughter, I wanted to learn more.

I took it into my own hands to get the true story behind Samuelson’s career as a marathon runner, Nike ambassador, and one of the most inspiring athletes of the 1980s.

While I know Samuelson quite well, I can honestly admit that I felt like a child leading up to my morning run. She is a hero of American running, an idol for male and female runners all across the globe, and I, Harry Poole, was the lucky soul that got to go for a one-on-one morning run with her? It did not add up, and I viewed the day as if I was going to play h-o-r-s-e with Michael Jordan, hit some balls at the driving range with Tiger Woods or play home run derby with Albert Pujols.

It had been almost two weeks since her record-breaking New York City Marathon when we met up on Friday morning. Samuelson set a new course record for women over the age of 50 when she ran a blistering 2:49:09 over 26.2 miles.

Do the math. That is 6:27 per mile. That is fast. Faster than a majority of the Bates student body can run one mile. And she is 52.

Even more impressive is that Samuelson has slowed down only 28 minutes since her then world-record time of 2:21:21 set in Chicago in 1985. She has lost just about one minute per mile over the last 24 years – a statistic that defies much of what we learn about human physiology.

So, how does she do it?

The answer is simple, and it has everything to do with her passion for running, her family, and her desire to spread her important messages about life longevity, environmental awareness, and the strength of women in society (prior to her gold medal run in 1984, women were considered too weak to run the marathon distance).

Despite feeling slow and tight on Friday morning, Samuelson mustered the strength to take me on an eight and a half mile loop. We conversed the entire time, and within 20 minutes I learned two important things about her.

First, she does not take shortcuts when she runs. Whether it is literally cutting distance off of a run by taking the shorter of two roads home, or just simply cutting a corner while turning onto a new street, Samuelson does not take shortcuts. If you cannot pick up on the significance of this, then I will tell you that it is also a metaphor for how she has run (pun intended) her life.

Whether it is raising her children to be the best possible kids, being the best possible wife or simply running a loop, shortcuts are not part of her program.

I found this out the hard way.

At every turn, Samuelson would run to the outside of the apex before running across and making her way onto the new street. Like a true champion, I either cut the corner or ran past the turn because I could not tell if she was turning or not.

Second, I learned that she is the most modest athlete that I have ever met. While my list of connections with great athletes is short, Samuelson continually impresses me with her humbleness and interest in matters unrelated to her.

My proof of this statement is that her gold medal is not hung in her bedroom or displayed in a trophy case.

“It is in a junk drawer,” said her daughter Abby, a senior, JA, and two-sport captain at Bates. “If you had asked her to show you, she might not have found it because that drawer is so full of stuff.”

Samuelson dodged many of my questions about her only to ask questions about what was happening in my life. She wanted to know about my thesis, the ski team and my plans for next year (Abby, you lied when you told her that you were the only senior who had no plans).
I eventually got her to talk me through her career, and after listening without interrupting once, I told her that it was an honor for me to run with her.

Samuelson ran the Boston Marathon in the spring of her senior year at Bowdoin College in 1979. She came in as a highly successful collegiate cross-country and track athlete but had no marathon experience.

No one expected her to win the race and take eight minutes off of the women’s course record, but she did. It was here that Samuelson realized her dream as a professional runner.

Similarly, after getting arthroscopic knee surgery 17 days before the Olympic Trials in 1984, no one expected Samuelson to return healthy enough to win the race, but she did.

Nor was she picked as the favorite in the inaugural women’s Olympic marathon in Los Angeles later that year, but she beat all of her rivals by over a minute.

I am running the Boston Marathon this spring, which precisely puts me on the same path as the start of Samuelson’s unforgettable marathon career.

The only difference? Well, I will let you figure that out.