Joanie is a genius

She is awesome and certainly a running hero of mine. Her race strategy comment, however, only works when you are (or are damned close to) the most talented in the race.

Frankly, I'm surprised you were able to get her to talk that much!

She wears shoes with two inch heel lifts, resulting in hard landings on her heels when she runs.

Standing next to Cachi would make anyone seem smart.

Love Joanie. She's the real article.

Wendell Gee wrote:

She is awesome and certainly a running hero of mine. Her race strategy comment, however, only works when you are (or are damned close to) the most talented in the race.

Ridiculously 100% false. That race strategy is best for people who AREN'T anywhere near the best in the race. If you run your own race rather than overextending yourself, you're more likely to finish higher up, passing those who tried to race over their heads.

When you're the most talented in the race, you have more options.

Huge Joanie Fan wrote:

On altitude: "I never trained at altitude because I never had a major race to run at altitude."

Joanie is great, one of my heroines in fact, but there is nothing brilliant about this statement. It sounds like a "gotcha!" to people who don't like thinking very hard, but ignores the reasons people train at altitude, among them the woman who demolished he marathon AR.

Jon Krackhore wrote:

them the woman who demolished he marathon AR.

Less than 2 minutes faster, 20 years later isn't exactly demolishing

"I did the best I could with the body God gave me" Good quote for anyone to try for

I am just saying wrote:

Less than 2 minutes faster, 20 years later isn't exactly demolishing

20 years later? What's that have to do with anything? Did you expect someone to break Joanie's record before she set it?

Two minutes is a lot, sorry.

Finally, the point of my post obviously eluded you. Does Joanie's declaration about altitude negate the benefits others have obviously reaped from it? Should everyone pay attention to guys like Bolt who eat KFC by the bushel or the elites who boast about never stretching?

Mrr82 wrote:

Ridiculously 100% false. That race strategy is best for people who AREN'T anywhere near the best in the race. If you run your own race rather than overextending yourself, you're more likely to finish higher up, passing those who tried to race over their heads.

When you're the most talented in the race, you have more options.

I don't think you and I are arguing the same issue. When you're the most talented, you have lots of options, I agree. Which means others need to be aware of what you're doing if they hope to win.

I never said anything about people going out too hard as a good strategy for the average Joe. However, I don't think Joan ran many races at her prime with the goal of finishing, simply, "higher up." She ran to win. LA was a perfect example. It obviously worked but it was definitely a calculated risk with that field and the LA conditions. She ran to win it, but if it had backfired, it could have been ugly. She was not one to play it safe. Nor is she today. She still goes out hard in her marathons.

One thing that hasn't been mentioned is Joanie's toughness.

I had the opportunity to accompany her on many long runs back in the early 90's and one run in particular stands out. I think it was 1990 and she was getting ready for Boston...

We set out from her house at about 9:00 am on a January morning when the temperature was hovering around -5 degrees Fahrenheit, with the plan to run twelve miles. There was a driving wind and I was wearing just about every item of running gear I owned. About 8 miles into the run (around fifty minutes) she said: "If we take a left here we can add on four and get in a solid 90 minutes."

Her marathon pr was a full ten minutes quicker than mine and I was clearly the junior partner, so I went along for the ride.

About a mile before I thought we were done, she said: "Look, we're out here now, that was the hard part, let's hack off down to the Muddy Rudder, and we'll get in a full twenty. It'll be good to get a real two hour run in so early in the year."

Again, not my place to argue. We hacked off...and the pace started to pick up.

Just as we getting back into familiar territory we turned into the wind, I was getting close to exhausted and I started to lose feeling in my hands - my face was totally numb. She was working pretty hard too, but kept chatting trying to keep me going. I was ready for it to be over, and, what was worse, the cold had completely frozen the family jewels. It started to get excruciatingly painful. A mile or two further and conversation stopped, as she kept pushing the pace. At one point she tried to encourage me by saying that last mile had been a 5:45. I was too beaten up to do more than grunt. All I could think about was the hot tub on her deck.

Finally, at about 19 miles, she said through gritted teeth: "Let's take the shore road home, that will give us 23."

I was too trashed to argue.

On the shore road, at about 21 miles and just over two hours, I broke. I said: "I know the way from here, you go on. I have to walk for a bit." She took one look at me and saw that I was serious. "Okay, but I'll come back for you," was her response.

She ran home, turned around, and came back for me. I had walked for a few hundred yards, and then got going again just before she showed up - I was in more discomfort than I had ever known on a run. By the time we got back to her place, my time for the 23 miles was 2:23, she must have run 24..

When we got in the house she made blueberry pancakes from scratch. I sat hollow-eyed and watched. I'm certain she was almost as trashed as I was, but she pushed herself through it. It was some of the most welcome food I can remember eating.

If this was a one off occurrence, that would be one thing, but it was a pattern that I learned to recognise on certain runs that she designated as milestones in her race preparation.

She simply worked hard as hard as she could, for as long as she could. And it is a bit disingenuous for anyone to say she didn't think about the opposition, on this run she had been talking about Lisa Martin, who was running really well. As we ate breakfast, Joanie looked at me and said: "Do you think Lisa worked as hard on her run today as we did?"

I said, in total honesty, "I sincerely doubt it."

A few years later, I had a good run at Boston (for a 40 year old) and the first person to find me after the race and congratulate me was Joanie.

She's a class act. And she implicitly understood that it was usually not enough to be as physically fit as your opponents in a race; you had to want it more, and sometimes you had to be prepared to go to a dark place in your soul to beat them. She had the ability to go to that dark place, and come back from it generous - both in defeat and victory - comfortable in knowledge that she had given EVERYTHING she had. It's only one of the many character qualities she has that I will always admire.

Altitude? Her point, I think, is that even if you could train on top of Everest, in the final analysis, it's going to come down to the race -and who wants it the most. And that was an area that she could control.

All the best,

Giles.

Awesome story, Giles. This is what makes reading letsrun worth it.

Here's an inspirational piece about LA'84:

"The First Gold"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dFgH_vDh6E&feature=related

Clips from actual broadcast:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-HQozm_wpE&feature=related

Joanie = legend.

Jon Krackhore wrote:

I am just saying wrote:

Less than 2 minutes faster, 20 years later isn't exactly demolishing

20 years later? What's that have to do with anything? Did you expect someone to break Joanie's record before she set it?

Two minutes is a lot, sorry.

One measure (but certainly not the only) of how great a record is how long it stands.

20 years also puts you really in a different era. Training techniques improve (such as altitude), competition gets tougher. A 2:19 in 2006 wasn't necessarily a better performance than a 2:21 in 1985, relative to where the competition was at the time.

And Kastor actually didn't break the record by 2 minutes when she initially broke it. It was by 5 seconds. The 2:19 came later.

We're almost 26 years later and there hasn't been another American woman besides Kastor to come close to 2:21. Davilla's Boston performance was more than a minute back and it goes back to Goucher at #4. There aren't that many events where the #2 American performance is from more than 25 years ago.

Thank you, what a telling story.

You're a gifted writer.

Look, I can't say this any more clearly. Yes, Joanie was great. Yes, her record stood for a long time. But her comment about altitude training smacks of anything but "genius." Lots of people have used altitude training to their advantage in sea-level racing. Among them is someone from her own country who ran a marathon two minutes faster than she did and MANY runners from other countries who have also run faster.

People don't train at altitude so they can race at altitude. It's one thing to say "Why train in extreme heat and humidity when I only race in cool, dry conditions?" This doesn't transfer to high altitude. That is all. Come to think of it though, I have seen the same "genius" advice about other things in the OP from midpack runners, but I guess it only looks wicked smaht when it comes from an Olympian.

Bill Rodgers said in a podcast last fall that he thinks the reason why the Africans are minutes better than his era of runners is because of being born and trained at high altitude.

http://onpoint.wbur.org/2010/11/09/us-runners-marathon

jaguar1 wrote:

Bill Rodgers said in a podcast last fall that he thinks the reason why the Africans are minutes better than his era of runners is because of being born and trained at high altitude.

http://onpoint.wbur.org/2010/11/09/us-runners-marathon

How much altitude work do you do?

Jon Krackhore wrote:

Look, I can't say this any more clearly. Yes, Joanie was great. Yes, her record stood for a long time. But her comment about altitude training smacks of anything but "genius." Lots of people have used altitude training to their advantage in sea-level racing. Among them is someone from her own country who ran a marathon two minutes faster than she did and MANY runners from other countries who have also run faster.

Friend, you're fixating on a comment that 'sounds' off-the-cuff, toss-away to me. I'd say Joan likes living in Maine & that's about it.