Running / Julie Cart : It Was a Marathon of a Weekend

It’s being called the greatest weekend in the history of running. First, on April 20, Carlos Lopes of Portugal broke Steve Jones’ world record of 2 hours 8 minutes 5 seconds in the marathon with a 2:07:11 at Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

Then, on April 21 in the London Marathon, Norway’s Ingrid Kristiansen ran a 2:21:06, breaking Joan Benoit’s women’s mark of 2:22:43.

The 38-year-old Lopes has the world record to go with his Olympic gold medal. In so doing, he may have settled a score with the Rotterdam course that last year forced him to drop out because of leg cramps. In fact, Lopes finished only one of the three marathons he entered before winning the Olympic race.

Lopes was in the Chicago race in which Jones set the world record. Lopes finished second, after stopping to retrieve and put on one of his shoes that had been clipped off. Interestingly, both former record-holders set the marks in the America’s Marathon in Chicago--Benoit in 1983 and Jones in 1984.

Jones, at least, had a chance to get the record back. The Welshman won the closely contested men’s race at London in 2:08:16. Even though he suffered from stomach cramps four miles from the finish, Jones came back to beat Olympic bronze medalist Charles Spedding by 100 meters.

Jones said later he knew, of course, that Lopes had set the mark the day before, but had no intention of trying to regain the record.

“Times were irrelevant,” Jones said. “The important thing was to finish and not to worry about record times. I wasn’t worried that Carlos Lopes broke my record. That was no handicap. In fact, it took the pressure off me.”

Kristiansen’s mark may rekindle Benoit’s fire for competition. Benoit has not run in a marathon since her Olympic victory and has run few road races.

The 29-year-old Kristiansen said before the race she wanted to break 2:20, but she paid for her blistering early pace by tiring in the later stages. Ever since Kristiansen finished fourth in the Olympic marathon--in a race that she said was sub-par for her--it has been said that she is burning to race Benoit. Last fall she seemed to race everywhere and developed a stress-related leg injury. She spent the long winter in Oslo, training on a treadmill in her kitchen.

Kristiansen said she was helped in the race by male runners who encouraged her.

“I tried to run as fast as I could right from the beginning,” she said. “Last year, when I ran with the women (only), I had to go it alone. This time I was running alongside the men and got lots of encouragement. Even when I was overtaking them, they were saying, ‘Come on Ingrid, break the world record.’ It was a great help.”

Speaking of help, there is this postscript to Jones’ problem with cramps in the same London race: As Jones was wracked with cramps and Spedding passed him near the finish, Jones looked over and asked Spedding what was best to do for cramps. “Stop running,” was Spedding’s smiling reply.

To say that April 13 and 14 were the biggest days in the sports history of Djibouti may not sound like much, but to the tiny northeast African nation, it was.

It was on that weekend that runners from the former French colony sent reporters running for an atlas when they placed first, third and seventh in the World Cup Marathon in Hiroshima, Japan. A common question was, “Bootie what?”

The runners from Djibouti weren’t the only ones who ran well. Helped along by excellent conditions, several runners ran at world-record pace. And the three runners from Djibouti ran what are certainly world-class times. Salah Ahmed won in 2:08:09, just four seconds off the world record then held by Steve Jones. Ahmed’s countryman Djama Robleh was third in 2:08:26. The third runner from Djibouti was Charmarke Abdillahi, who was seventh in the excellent time of 2:10:33.

To get a perspective on the times, consider that Geoff Smith won this year’s Boston Marathon in 2:14:05. (Or as a perspective on the decline of world-class runners at Boston, consider that the 20th-place finisher in Hiroshima also beat Smith’s time.)

This is not the first we have heard about runners from Djibouti, but in the past it has been necessary to work hard to find them. A team from Djibouti was in Los Angeles, one of 20 nations that competed for the first time in the Olympics. In the Olympic marathon Robleh finished eighth in 2:11:39 and Ahmed was 20th.

The nation of less than a half million people is well-situated to produce world-class marathoners. Djibouti is located on the northern border of Ethiopia, a perennial distance power, and has vast sections of its land at an altitude of more than 4,000 feet. With runners training at that altitude, and with the increased exposure from the showing at World Cup, Djibouti may just be the next African nation to emerge in running.