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Monique Maddy's ING New York City Marathon Journal
Monique
Maddy, 41, will be running the ING New York City Marathon on November
2 and attempting to attain the sub-2:48 U.S. Olympic Trials "B"
qualifying standard. Originally from Liberia, West Africa, Monique holds
a bachelor of science degree in international politics and economics from
Georgetown University, a master's degree in economics and development
studies from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International
Studies, and a master's degree in business administration from Harvard
Business School. She is an entrepreneur and in 1993 founded Adesemi Communications
International, which financed, built, and operated low-cost wireless telecommunications
services in developing and emerging market countries. She recently completed
her autobiography: "Learning to Love Africa: My Journey from Africa
to Harvard Business School and Back", to be released by Harper Collins
Publishers in February 2004, and is currently pursuing two new business
ventures. With a marathon personal best of 2:48:38, Monique's preparations
for the ING New York City Marathon include a training stint at the High
Altitude Training Center owned and operated by Lornah Kiplagat in Iten,
Kenya. In the first installment of her training journal, Monique outlined her unorthdox development as an "accidental" runner. Installment #2 recounts her discovery of the High Altitude Training Center, and in #3 she will chronicle her stay there. The fourth installment will cover her experience in New York on November 2 and a post-race analysis. Stay tuned for this fascinating and suspenseful story of an athlete's journey on a path of self-discovery. Entry #2, October 22, 2003: El Dorado via El Doret — The Road to Marathon Gold It was late spring and despite the persistently frigid temperatures characteristic of Boston's notoriously inconsistent weather patterns, the summer was rapidly approaching. I had six months to develop and implement a viable strategy for my ING New York City Marathon outing in November. I began researching various running camps located in the Kenyan Highlands. After about two months I narrowed my focus to the High Altitude Training Center (HATC) started by the world-class marathon runner Lornah Kiplagat with some support from Saucony. Lornah had founded the camp in 2000 to assist young Kenyan women who had the talent and aspirations, but lacked the financial means to achieve their athletic goals. The HATC is located in the village of Iten, not far from the city of Eldoret. The area is home to the Kalenjin people, the tribe which has produced about three-quarters of Kenya's top long distance runners. "Hmm……" I mused, "Eldoret to El Dorado. Could this be my ticket to marathon gold?" My chances seemed at least as good as, if not significantly better than, those of the original forty-niners, the Argonauts. After all, unlike El Dorado, Eldoret has produced no shortage of the bright yellow metal for some of its most famous denizens. The rich tradition of world-class long distance runners in Kenya goes back several decades, beginning with the great Kipchoge Keino and continuing with Ibrahim Hussein, Douglas Wakiihuri, Lameck Aguta, Ben Chipcho, and Daniel Komen to recent torchbearers Cosmas Ndeti, Moses Tanui, Paul Tergat, and, among the women, Tegla Loroupe, Catherine Ndereba, Joyce Chepchumba, Margaret Okayo, and Kiplagat. Hopefully my quest for gold would not be as elusive as it had turned out to be for the California gold prospectors. Nevertheless, like them, I was prepared to gamble. I contacted the HATC manager, Pieter Langerhorst, who also happens to be Lornah's husband. I told him that I was interested in staying at the HATC to train for the ING New York City Marathon, and had exactly three months in which to achieve my goal, which I described as simply to "hang" with the elite field for the 26.2 miles. I further explained that I didn't want to suffer the mental torture of being left all alone in a screeching corridor of enthusiastic New York City onlookers, with no one else to cheer for until the rest of the 30,000-strong field caught up with me. In the days and weeks that followed, I had numerous e-mail exchanges and telephone conversations with Pieter and Lornah, both of whom were in Europe at the time, where she was preparing for the World Track & Field Championships. The more we spoke, the more convinced I became that Lornah's camp was right for me. I wanted to "be like Lornah"-well, perhaps Lornah on a very slow day! Pieter volunteered to develop a training schedule to help me meet my goal. He may well have regretted his offer a few days later when I sent him an outline of my prior marathon-training regimen. Although far too kind and diplomatic to say so, Pieter must have been both horrified and bewildered at how I could have come so far on so little. In sending me the training schedule he wrote the following:
He advised
me to leave Boston by the third week of August at the very latest. It
was already week two. A few days later, on August 19, I bid farewell to
my sturdy and steadfast training companion of many years, my treadmill.
I was on my way to Iten or, as the sign at the entrance to Lornah's camp
unabashedly proclaims, "The University of Champions" to at last
pursue a degree in the discipline and art of long distance running — to
finally pay my dues.
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