In the summer between my freshman and sophomore years of high school I ran a 10K road race as a tune-up for the coming cross-country season. As I ran down the homestretch I saw a female runner ahead of me. I correctly assumed she was the lead woman. I kicked past her less than 50 yards from the finish line, but did so sheepishly, because I feared that I looked as if I was determined not to be beaten by a woman when in fact I was pretty sure I would have sprinted anyway.This has been the story of my life as an endurance athlete. Time and again in races I have found myself battling to the finish with top female competitors, because that just happens to be the level I’m at. In the 2000 Long Beach Marathon I ran for miles alone with the woman who eventually finished second. Much taller than her, I allowed her to run in my slipstream against headwinds, and when she observed that I wasn’t drinking enough, she offered to share her personal bottle grabbed from an elite aid station. I said, “No, thank you,” and soon thereafter suffered a horrible hypoglycemic bonk.
In the 2002 Palm Springs Half Marathon I found myself chasing my friend and fellow Haverford College alum Tamara Lave, who was positioned fourth or fifth overall, for most of the race. I caught her with a mile to go and put 12 seconds on her before finishing. In the last half-mile I passed Tamara’s boyfriend, who later teased me for looking back fearfully. What could I say? Tamara’s a formidable runner and I wanted to beat her, not because she doesn’t share my gender but rather because she’s my friend. I always want to beat my friends. It’s strangers I’m indifferent about.
Later that same year I raced my first Ironman, in Madison, Wisconsin. I caught something of a second wind in the last third of the marathon and was running confidently toward the finish when I saw flashing police lights ahead of me. They were the lights of a pair of police motorcycles escorting the second-place woman, a Japanese pro who’s name I have forgotten. In a near replay of that summer 10K of 16 years before I kicked - simply because I had a kick left to unleash - and passed her within sight of the finish line.
I swear I don’t have male ego issues about being beaten by women. I am plenty used to it and have even gladly trained with women who could kick my ass. I’ve sometimes wondered how elite female athletes feel competitively toward men. Do they feel extra satisfaction in defeating men, or do they concern themselves only with their gender, feeling in some sense that the faster males are “supposed to” beat them?
Last weekend, Kara Goucher was the outright winner of the Chicago Rock ‘n’ Roll Half Marathon, which had nearly 15,000 participants, half of them male. Ten miles into the race it appeared that exactly one of these men was strong enough to defeat Goucher, but it turned out he was a bandit and he was dragged off the course at 12 miles. Interestingly, after finishing, Goucher complained to race officials about this move on the grounds that she could have run faster, perhaps dipping below the 1:08 barrier (she ran 1:08:05), if she had been able to chase the bandit all the way to the line. Apparently, being the outright winner of a big city race with 7,500 men in it meant nothing to her. She only cared about being the first woman and running a fast time.
Goucher’s complaint was utterly irrational, of course, as the race officials could not let a bandit win their race any more than Major League Baseball officials could allow a fan who climbed onto the outfield from the stands to remain there and catch pop flies. The integrity of the event would be destroyed. And, of course, while Goucher received an appearance fee to race in Chicago, everyone else had to pay to register, and it would not have been fair to them to allow the bandit to finish - let alone win. But I give Goucher a pass on her little heat-of-the-moment tantrum, and even respect it as a sign of fierce competitiveness. As fast as she ran, she wanted to run even faster. In this regard the fleetest men and women are very much the same.
THX!
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