Interview: Joan Benoit Samuelson
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1984
Olympic Marathon Gold Medalist Joan Benoit Samuelson runs in the
2000 U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials. |
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Joan Benoit Samuelson links:
Bio from Maine Women's Hall of Fame |
By Gordon Bakoulis
Joan Benoit Samuelson won the inaugural women's Olympic marathon in Los Angeles in 1984 in 2:24:52. She is the American record holder in the marathon (her 2:21:21 dates from 1985 in Chicago) and half-marathon (1:08:34). The 9th-place finisher at in the 2000 U.S. Women's Olympic Marathon Trials, Samuelson, who will turn 44 on May 16, has been the top masters finisher at the Bix 7-Mile Road Race, the Carlsbad 5000, and the Falmouth Road Race. A Maine native, Samuelson lives in Freeport, Maine, where she is active in many community and civic organizations. She recently traveled to New York City for the Niketown Run for the Parks 4-Mile (in which she placed 32nd in 25:39), accompanied by her husband, Scott Samuelson, and their children Abby, 13, and Anders, 11. We reached her back in Maine a couple weeks after her New York visit.
How
did your trip to New York come about?
I came down to support the Niketown Run for the Parks. It's an even
to support using the parks for running, it included children's runs,
and Nike puts it on, so it was a natural for me to come in and run the
race and help out.
You've
been with Nike a long time-your whole career, pretty much. What has
the relationship been like?
They've been my sponsor since 1980, so more than 20 years. It's been
great. My career has had its ups and downs, and they've always stood
by me. It's a good, solid symbiotic relationship.
What
else do you do for them? Is it mostly events like this?
I do events like this, where I go in and run the race, sometimes competitively,
sometimes in the middle of the pack, and do some announcing and help
with the awards ceremony. I did the launching of a new women's line
earlier this year, out in Oregon, and I'm going to a Mother's Day race
in Washington, D.C., this weekend, the Fleet Feet Metro Run.
Do
you do these races competitively, or in a more low-key way?
It depends. The whole family came to New York and we kind of raced around
for a couple days-it was the middle of the kids' spring vacation. We
saw a show, and went to the Natural History Museum, and a baseball game.
It was fun, and I'd been in Boston the previous weekend with the [Boston]
Marathon, and then we'd skied a couple days. I came down and gave it
what I had that day, but it's not something like what I'll try to do
at, say, Freihofer's [Run for Women 5K, the national championship],
when I'll train a little more specifically for the event and try and
rest up going into it.
Where
are you with your running these days?
Who knows? [laughs] I'm really not sure. I ran a little race memorial
race for Todd Miller in Summit, New Jersey, a couple weeks ago. But
as you know we had a lot of snow this past winter and it was a long
ski season, and that seems to be the sport of choice for our family
now. So we went skiing, both downhill and cross-country, just about
every weekend. We usually downhill in the morning and cross-country
in the afternoon. The skate-skiing is what I enjoy (click
here to see a photo), and that uses totally different muscles from
running. When I tried to turn it over down at the Run for the Parks
it was obvious that my mechanics needed some work. That was sort of
a rude awakening for me, so I've been trying to do a little more speed.
Do
you ski exclusively during the winter-no running at all?
No, I run during the week. Scott says, Why is it that one run a day
will suffice when you're at home, but you get up to the mountains you've
got to run, downhill ski and cross-country ski before you consider it
a complete day.
So
you run every day in the winter, even with all that skiing?
Well, it depends. Sometimes if I've done a long, hard cross-country
ski then I won't run. But if I'm just fooling around with friends or
the kids then I will.
Do
you ski right from your home or do you have a place where you go?
We have a small place, a condo up in the mountains, so we head up every
Friday night and come back Sunday night. We love it. The whole family
skis, both downhill and cross-country. And our son "shreds,"
which means he snowboards. He's gone to the dark side.
How
do you feel about that?
If it gets him out there and he loves it and he's breathing fresh air,
you know, I can't criticize that. And none of us had that terrible flu
this winter, and I think it's partly because we're not in a hot, stuffy
gymnasium.
Have
you ever tried snowboarding?
I tried it once at Olympic fundraiser, and that was enough. I'd like
to do it sometime but I never want to take the time to learn because
I always want to ski instead. That's what I love.
So
you don't sound very enthusiastic about getting back into speedwork.
Oh,
it's hard, and how I'm into my gardening, so that's opposing muscle
groups again. So I'm back to feeling sore when I get into bed at night,
because it's a lot of bending and leaning over. Gardening started for
me as a form of therapy to sort of air it out after the running successes
earlier in my career-after the Olympics it was one place where I could
get away from the phone. Now it's become my obsession and my running
is my hobby [laughs].
So
would you say that the way you garden is a real workout?
Well, I don't have Lawn-Boys, let's put it that way. I do it all myself.
What
are your specialties in the garden?
I have a big vegetable garden, I've got an herb garden, I've got perennial
gardens, and I've got a cutting garden. Scott loves it because it's
less lawn to mow.
Do
the kids garden with you?
They're better at going out to the garden to find me something. Except
that today I told Scott to go and cover up a batch of hyacinths that
I'd surrounded with some cosmos, because we had a frost last night and
I didn't want them to get frostbitten, and he said, you'd better tell
me what a hyacinth is again! But you know, I can tell them to go out
and get me parsley or chives or oregano and they know right where it
is. I mean, those things are pretty obvious, but they know right where
to go. And they love to graze in the garden, too.
Have
you ever thought about getting back into coaching?
It's crossed my mind, but it would have to be the right place and the
right time. Now it would be tough because my own children are involved
in athletics and I'd want to be there to watch their competitions. But
when they're older I might consider going back.
When
and where did you coach?
I coached at the college level, at Boston University, in the 1980s.
Tell
me about your children's sports involvement.
They both ski and play soccer, and Abby did a great job as a skimeister
this year, which is a combination of downhill and cross-country, where
whoever accumulates the lowest score wins. She did very well on her
school's team. She actually won the overall prize for her school. Now
she's playing lacrosse, and she'll be playing soccer too. She talked
a little bit about maybe running cross-country and playing for school
and club soccer in the fall, but I don't know. I'm just giving her her
own room.
What's
your reaction when she talks about running?
Oh, I'd love to see her run, but I don't want her to do it because her
mom wants her to do it, I want her to do it because she wants to do
it. That's why I certainly encourage her but I don't say, oh Abby, you've
got to do this.
Is
it difficult not to push her into it, or do you find it easy to let
her do what she wants?
It's not difficult, because I don't think that kids who are pushed will
have success. They have to have the desire from within. And I see a
lot of parents out there who are pushing it but it's not my philosophy
and it wasn't my parents' style either.
Let's
shift to talking a bit about the state of elite women's running in the
United States. What do you think about these training camps that are
cropping up and the opportunities they're offering to young runners
-- women in particular?
I think it's a good thing, that this is what we need. I did most of
my training on my own and I stayed away from populations of serious
runners just because thought I'd not be wanting to do exactly what they
were doing. I think you have to run your own races and you have to do
your own training. But I think certainly being in a climate like that,
with people pursuing similar goals and dreams, is a healthy thing --
as long as you don't get suckered into somebody else's workout when
it's not appropriate. I think this is the support that our post-collegiate
runners have needed for a long time, and I'm glad to see it coming.
Were
there any of these kind of opportunities available when you were at
your peak?
I went to one training camp in my entire life. I helped out at different
ones, but as far as doing it for my running, just one. It was a week
at Squaw Valley.
Was
it helpful at all?
I was totally wiped out because we were running in the mountains. I
felt I needed to be doing what everyone else was doing, and what I needed
to be doing was acclimate to being up there. But it was fun to be with
other runners who shared the same dreams, and I think had it not been
at altitude and not been in the mountains it would have been a totally
different thing.
An
issue that continues to come up is that, even with all this support
of American runners, no one is anywhere near your American marathon
record of 2:21. Any thoughts on that -- as to why no one's even in the
same universe?
I remember the thing that got me through the knee problems [the surgery
that sidelined Benoit Samuelson prior to the 1984 Olympic marathon trials,
almost keeping her out of the race] was that I seriously believed there
was nobody out there training any harder than I was, and if there was
a way I could get back out there I was going to do it because I didn't
want all that training to go down the tubes. I can't say there was any
secret to it except a lot of hard work. Guys who would run with me would
comment, "Do you ever take an easy day?" I was just able to
stand up to it. It wasn't some of the mega-mileage that some of the
women who followed me were doing. I don't think I had more than a dozen
weeks over 100 miles in my entire career. And those were right around
100, not much over.
So
was it more the intensity at which you trained that made the difference?
Yeah, and I didn't do an overabundance of track workouts, and I think
distance runners who do too many hard track workouts sometimes suffer
injuries. And I think it was just an innate desire to push myself as
hard as I could, and that discipline.
Do
you think the top young runners today aren't working hard enough?
I think some of them are working too hard. I think also there are so
many different coaching philosophies out there, and young runners hear
so many different things. It's hard for a coach to know exactly what
to do, and I think the athlete needs to really know his or her body
extremely well in order to give it the proper workouts and reach optimal
conditioning and performance. And a lot of runners look to their coaches,
and I think it's very important that the coach know the runner inside
and out, and follow that runner for years and know what they can stand
up to and what they can't. It's not a one-year relationship that's going
to turn someone around. It's nurturing and knowing the person and making
sure the personalities and philosophies mesh.
Yet
you were largely self-coached for long periods during some of your best
years.
I worked a fair amount with both Bob Sevene and John Babington. They
were both very important at critical points in my career. It wasn't
that I worked with them every day, more like a couple of times a week.
Though I did a lot of running with Bob at one point. Usually I'd come
down for one Liberty [Track Club] workout a week, come to from Maine
to Boston. And when I was coaching at BU there was a period of about
a year, an academic year, when I ran just about every morning with Sev,
and that was a real motivator. He'd start talking about somebody else's
workout and that was enough to inspire anybody.
What
sort of training are you doing these days? Are you pushing the pace
on most runs, or doing a lot of easy miles?
Most days I'm just going out and running the way I feel. I got on the
track for the first time since the [2000] Olympic marathon trials last
Wednesday when it was 93 degrees in Portland, and did eight quarters
and was dead afterward because it was so hot. And then this morning
I did three-minute pickups on the road with a friend, about a half dozen
of those over 10 miles, and then 10 minutes sustained after that. I
mean, I'm starting to think that if I'm going to do some racing, I'd
better do some workouts [laughs]. But I don't have many races lined
up, so I'll just have to see how it goes.
Do
you have any plans to do another marathon?
I'd like to run another one, but I can't commit right now. I'm going
to see how my training goes, and where I'm at in the fall. It wouldn't
be anything before the fall.
Come
run New York!
Well, I'm doing the commentary for Chicago, so that leaves New York
and a couple others, I guess.
Any
thoughts on the marathon Trials last year, as a system for choosing
our Olympic marathoners, and the fact that we ended up sending only
one woman marathoner Sydney?
I don't really want to go there, except to say that it was just a really
hot day. I was disappointed not so much with my placing as with my time.
I thought I was going to run a sub-2:30 without any trouble at all.
I was really in the best shape I'd been since having kids. So that was
disappointing in that way, and I think the runners' best interests have
to be kept in mind. You know, there was no TV there, so why they didn't
move it up a couple hours when they knew the weather was going to be
so hot, I don't know.
I
know you're involved in a lot of community and service activities. How
do you find the time and energy for all of that, on top of everything
else?
I wouldn't want it any other way, I guess. I keep busy with a lot of
different things. I'm a trustee at Bowdoin [College, her alma mater],
and that takes a fair amount of time. I'm also on the board of Friends
of Casco Bay, which I'm extremely active with. Environmental causes
are very important to me. It's sort of like the Hudson River Bay Keeping
Program. And there's the race, the Peoples
Beach to Beacon 10K [of which she's the founding director]. But
there's something in every court, meaning that I try and keep up a variety
of interests, and I really believe that's been the key to my success
all along. I never lost a balanced life -- I'd always go out and do
things, even at the height of my career, and people would say, You do
that? -- whether it was physical labor in the yard, or the garden, or
whatever. My parents really instilled that in me, the need to have a
variety of interests, and something to always fall back on.
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