Marathoner Awaits a Verdict

It was election day ’94 and Linda Somers had been on a merry-go-round long enough.

It was time for the routine to end.

Monday: Rise at 7 and join the cellular phone brigade for the commute from Oakland to Concord, Calif. Work as a lawyer until 6 or later, then run, two hours in the dark, before lifting weights, eating dinner and collapsing into bed.

Tuesday-Friday: Repeat Monday.

Saturday: Long run or rest for a Sunday race.

Then do it again.

Was this any way to prepare for an Olympic marathon?

“A couple of times . . . I felt like I was just going to dump myself right there in the traffic and just leave it,” she says. “I know why people do that, like in that ‘Falling Down’ movie.”

Michael Douglas went on a killing spree in the film.

Linda Somers quit her job.

Her tolerance meter had hit red. The next day she became a full-time runner, a 34-year-old competitive woman who wanted to see how good she could become on a world stage, but afraid she was not good enough.

“I didn’t want to be dependent on running as a source of income because I didn’t know where it was going to take me,” she says.

It has taken her to Boston, where she was 11th overall as the first American to finish in 1995. And to track and field’s World Championships last summer in Sweden, where she was seventh and again the first American woman.

Today, it will take her to the U.S. Olympic trials in Columbia, S.C., where she expects to be among the first three finishers, who will earn berths on the U.S. team for the Summer Games in Atlanta.

In 15 months of unemployment, she has gone through an unlikely knee operation, an even more unlikely recovery and a personal best in the marathon. She caused such a stir in Sweden that she stops and reminds those who tell her how much better she’s gotten that she should, after all, because she’s a runner now and not a running lawyer.

“There’s an incredible difference,” she says. “You can work out twice a day. You can sleep 10 hours instead of six. People didn’t realize that’s what I was doing, and all of a sudden they were surprised that I had this breakthrough. Even this past fall, I ran well in a few [shorter] races and people say, ‘That’s great. What’s the difference?’ They didn’t know what I was doing, and to me it’s obvious.”

After running cross-country at UC Davis, she ran her first marathon in 1983, finishing in 2 hours 42 minutes in San Francisco and pounding her knee in the process.

The time for a first marathon indicated there was a future in the sport. The knee indicated it could be a limited future, brightened somewhat by a 1986 operation.

She became a running lawyer, good enough to beat a weak field in the Chicago Marathon in 1992 and to win in Long Beach in 1993, but not good enough to stir any world-class aspirations.

Until last year.

Like all distance runners, she had pointed toward Boston, the marathon’s Mecca. But the knee had flared up again, and no amount of cortisone injections or acupuncture could prepare it for the trek from Hopkinton, Mass., to downtown Boston.

Boston became a 26-mile 385-yard conversation between Somers and her left leg. It lasted 2:34:30, and the leg had the last word.

“I don’t want to say it was a stabbing pain or anything like that,” she says. “. . . My legs just said, ‘Something’s wrong here and we tried. We trained with you a few months and tried to get through this race, but you know what? This is as far as it goes.’ ”

Three days later, April 20, she had a six-inch scar from surgery and an uncertain future--again.

“I was nervous,” Dr. Bill Winternitz says. “It’s an unusual operation, and it’s very unusual to have it a second time in your life. I can remember every second of a 45-minute operation, and that’s unusual for me. This is an elite athlete who uses her legs. That’s pressure.”

Three weeks after the operation, she was running a mile, walking a mile.

“It was an amazing recovery,” Winternitz says.

It was accomplished by a woman on a mission. The World Championships in August beckoned, and there was one more thing to consider.

“I had been working alone,” Somers says. “I needed help.”

That meant Williams, who was called and, with Somers, mapped out a program.

“She was putting in plenty of miles and speed work,” Williams says. “Tempo runs were the most significant additions to her training.”

They are five- to 12-mile pieces of a marathon, run at a designated time with the idea of building pace into a runner’s regimen. “She needed something to bind the speed and high miles together,” Williams says.

They bound together in Sweden at the World Championships, where her personal best, 2:32:12 was success to everybody except Williams and Somers.

“I didn’t see it as any breakthrough,” Williams says. “She’s much better now than she was then, and her talent level hasn’t topped out yet.”

She has concentrated on the Olympic trials, running 100-120 miles a week.

Experience is her edge today, she says. That and the training of the past several months. “I’ve never been fitter in my life,” she says. “On a good day, I can win. Even on a weak day, I’m in the top five, for sure.”

But only the top three go to Atlanta.

“I’ve been concentrating on Atlanta the last six months,” she says. “It’s funny. I keep stopping myself to say, ‘You have to make the team.’ I’ve just been thinking of Atlanta and heat training and where I’m going to be doing the heat training. Then I have to say, ‘Wait a minute. There’s a small problem. A lot of people want this.’ ”

But in her mind’s eye, Somers sees them over her shoulder and an election day ’94 decision verified. It was the right thing to do.