For Benoit, That Old Feeling Is Missing and She’s Confused

“But it all depends on how I feel. Right now, I just don’t know what’s going to happen.”

‘The down days . . . they’re very frustrating. I’ve been fighting to try and keep my mileage where I want it. But my body says no.’

--JOAN BENOIT

Joan Benoit has gone from being a super runner to a super-confused runner.

A year ago, she was being hailed as the world’s best women’s long-distance runner after winning the U.S. Olympic Trials only 17 days after undergoing arthroscopic knee surgery, then winning the inaugural Olympic women’s marathon in Los Angeles.

Now, Benoit is experiencing one of the lowest periods in her distinguished running career. And she is puzzled by it.

“My training has not been going well,” the 27-year-old Benoit said during a brief stopover in New York to help promote a 10-kilometer (6.2-mile) race in Central Park June 1. “There have been a lot of ups and downs. There’s no real reason behind them. I can’t explain them.

“The down days . . . they’re very frustrating,” added Benoit, a model of consistency in the past. “I’ve been fighting to try and keep my mileage where I want it. But my body says no.

“Sometimes, I have good training weeks . . . weeks where I feel great. And then . . . then, there are times when I get sluggish.”

One of her better weeks recently came when she was in Park City, Utah, home of the U.S. Ski Team. Ironically, Benoit suffered a broken leg skiing during her high school days, and in order to strengthen her leg, she took up running.

Her intentions in the high altitude of Salt Lake City were to ski in celebrity competition and have fun. But she decided to try to train--and everything went fine.

“I figured at 7,000 feet altitude, I would have been sluggish and tired,” she said. “But I went out running early in the morning and I felt great.”

Inexplicably, Benoit said the sluggishness and tiredness returned this week, when she ran Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.

“Perhaps it’s a physical problem,” she said. “I don’t know.”

Benoit said she had been examined by a doctor recently, and he was unable to find anything physically wrong.

“Everyone said that marriage would be a big adjustment,” said Benoit, who was married last September to Scott Samuelson, “but that doesn’t seem to be wearing me down.

“Maybe last year took more out of me than I thought. Perhaps the emotion of the Trials (a race she called the most unpredictable of her career, because of its closeness to the arthroscopic surgery) and the Games was too much.”

Since her Olympic victory, Benoit, who has lived most of her life in the quietude of Maine--she was born in Cape Elizabeth and now lives in Freeport--has been in constant demand for appearances. It is not a routine to which she has been accustomed.

“I like staying home and training hard,” she said. “I wanted to train hard for a month, but that hasn’t been possible.

“I didn’t take any time off after the Olympics, except three days for my honeymoon. Maybe I should have,” said Benoit, who broke her world-best for a half-marathon (13.1 miles) shortly after the Games.

Since that race, Benoit has run very little, because she has not felt in top condition. One race in which she did compete was the Jacksonville (Fla.) 15-kilometer (9.3-mile) River Run. She finished a disapppointing sixth.

“It was disappointing, because I had just come off three good weeks of training,” she recalled. “But then the bottom fell out. Running against a very competitive field didn’t bother me. It was not being able to put my finger on what went wrong.

“I had gone from temperatures in the teens to temperatures in the 70s. That plays havoc with your body. But I have no excuses. I just didn’t have it.

“I’ve been running hard for the past 10 years,” added the 27-year-old Benoit, the world’s fastest women’s marathoner in history “Maybe I need to take a break. But the desire is there to run. I want to set PRs (personal records).

“Sometimes, though, when I feel like running, my body says don’t run . . . the heck with it.”

Benoit said that her long-terms goals--breaking her personal records at virtually all distances, starting with the mile and going up--”will keep me going.”

“It may be frustrating for the next couple of months, or even a year, but then maybe things will be all right,” said the soft-spoken Benoit. “I plan to run for a long time.”

Benoit pointed out that she has experienced “flat” running periods in the past, but they’ve usually come in the winter months of November and December, and the summer months of June and July.

“And they haven’t lasted this long,” she said. “I’m baffled that they’ve persisted like this.

“I want to compete, but I want to compete only if I enjoy running, not if I don’t feel up to racing.”

Benoit’s racing calendar calls for her to compete in a 25-kilometer (15.5-mile) race in Grand Rapids, Mich., May 11, the Bay to Breakers 7.6-mile race in San Francisco May 19 and the Mini Marathon in New York against a field that includes Grete Waitz, Ingrid Kristiansen, Maricica Puica and Julie Brown.

“Those three races, especially against the highly competitive field in New York, should give me a good indication of where I stand,” she said. “After those races, I will decide my summer schedule and decide whether I will run a marathon in the fall, which I would like to do.