May/June 2008
Table of Contents
Departments
Editorial
When More Is Actually More
Richard Benyo
On the Road with Don Kardong
Return to the Marathon
Edge 2 Edge Marathon Marathon
If you’re getting tired of too-tame marathons, Vancouver Island offers a walk on the wild side.
Joe's Journal
Slow Going
Features
Early Miles
If you have to start somewhere, where better than the mile run?
by Joe Henderson
Chasing Pheidippides
Training to combat marathon fatigue.
by Jason R. Karp, Ph.D.
Mixed Metaphors and Tenses
Trials and tribulations at Western States 100 ’06.
by Chris O’Connor
Deena Kastor
The Olympic Bronze Medalist Talks About Athens, Boston, and Beijing.
by Hal Higdon
© 2008 42K(+) Press, Inc.
Six weeks before she would run in the 2008 U.S. Olympic Team Trials-Women’s Marathon in Boston, Deena Kastor tuned up by winning the Gate River Run in Jacksonville, Florida. The USATF 15-Kilometer Championships attracted 12,008 finishers. Having won the “Gate” five previous times, Kastor also was inducted into the River Run’s Hall of Fame. Prior to her victory, the woman who is known comfortably by all runners simply as “Deena” lunched with author Hal Higdon at The Lodge & Club, where she stayed before the race in Ponte Vedra Beach.
The Lodge’s dining room overlooked the Atlantic Ocean, but the pair could barely see it because of persistent rain and fog, unusual for early March. The next day’s weather was not much better, with gusts up to 40 mph that pummeled the slender Kastor as she crossed the 180-foot-high Hart Bridge over the St. Johns River in the final mile of the race. Deena’s time was 49:36, fast for the conditions but short of her 47:15 American record for that event.
Nevertheless, Deena felt buoyed by her fitness and anticipated success in the Trials and even more success in the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, China, this summer, where her goal is (drum roll, maestro) the gold medal.
“And a very reasonable goal it is,” claims Higdon, a winter resident of Ponte Vedra Beach, who conducted this interview for Marathon & Beyond. He and Kastor began by discussing the documentary film The Spirit of the Marathon, in which she is featured.