Calderwood in China: Track and Field, Day 3

by Stuart Calderwood

Tom Burns, a friend of mine who ran 20:20 for four miles at age 47, once said that the races he was proudest of weren’t his fastest ones, when everything had gone right, he’d beaten who he’d wanted to beat, and splits that he usually struggled to reach suddenly felt effortless. He said he was proudest of a few races in which everything had gone wrong—when the people he wanted to beat receded into the distance ahead of him, the splits were pathetic, and he felt like his legs were lead weights—but he still didn’t back off.

Paula Radcliffe seems to have polarized the distance-running world with her decision to start the Olympic marathon today after only three weeks of outdoor running and with a probably not completely healed stress fracture of her femur. She’s either the bravest, toughest competitor on earth, or she’s an obsessive, self-deceptive, self-destructive, even selfish prima donna. She could have given up her Olympic spot to the next British woman marathoner, the detractors say. She could cause permanent damage to her leg.  She can’t live with her failure to finish the Athens Olympic marathon in 2004.

They can say anything they want to, and they could even be right, or partly right, in those claims. I wondered about those things before the race, hating the thought of her hurting herself worse than she was already hurt. But while I watched her run this morning, and as I sit here trying to figure out a way to do it justice in writing, I’ve been made completely sure that she did what she should have done—even though her performance will still no doubt be widely questioned and criticized. I really didn’t have to think about it; my unasked-for emotions made the choice for me.

She stayed with the big lead pack—at the front, of course, as usual—for more than half the race, through humid but not overwhelmingly bad conditions. (Both the Barcelona and Athens women’s marathons were much worse.) When Constantina Tomescu-Dita made what would turn out to be the decisive move, Radcliffe was already having trouble, of course. Her stride, which is usually near-flawlessly smooth despite her erratic arm and head movement, was clearly compromised; she had a not-quite-limp, probably in compensation for the injury. Whatever the reasons, after a first half-marathon in 1:15, she couldn’t run a second one in 1:11, which Tomescu-Dita did to win the gold medal. Although Radcliffe has averaged 1:07:42 for two half-marathons back to back, she could “only” run a 1:17 to finish this race. She “only” ran 2:32—about nine minutes slower than she’s ever run before. For the first time in her life, she finished behind other women in a marathon—in 23rd place—after eight wins and her DNF in Athens. She almost certainly felt as horrible as any of us who’ve gone out too hard in a marathon have felt—and probably much worse, with her leg not quite working; with all the people she wanted to beat—and always beats—disappearing into the distance; with the medals gone, her future in jeopardy, and the certain stamp of “Olympic failure” waiting for her yet again.  No one can quantify how much pain she was in, but anyone who saw her fight back again and again in the ING New York City Marathon last year, or in 2004, to win both times by outsprinting great competitors in the final few hundred meters, knows something about what she’s willing to tolerate. I really don’t like to think about how badly she’d have to be suffering before she’d fall off the pace in the Olympic marathon.

She came onto the track, in front of the filled stadium, about a mile and a quarter behind the winner. There was no one close ahead of her. The time was going to be something that she could normally do on a weekend long run. She got no welcoming response from the Chinese crowd—she probably isn’t much known here and was just another runner in the procession of bedraggled mid-pack finishers. But she was the world record-holder, and she was in a race. She accelerated. 

She didn’t have much to add to what she was already putting into her effort, because she had never backed off. What she did have left, she held all the way to the line.

I hope Tom Burns saw that.

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