Monday, April 14, 2008

Ladies Night in Beantown

Big times and fast times are on the agenda this weekend on the bay in Boston. This Sunday (the 20th) is the Women's Olympic Marathon Trials.

They'll be following a fast flat course along the Charles River to the west of downtown Boston. If the weather is good, the race could be fast. If it's windy, the course is a bit unprotected and the wind could really affect the outcome. Much like the men's trials, it will be a multiple loop criterium course that will be great for the fans.

Deena Kastor is the odds on favorite to make the team. But, after her the next two spots are wide open and anything can happen in the course of a marathon.

A couple of places for coverage. Per USATF, there will be live web coverage on nbcolympics.com at this link: http://www.nbcolympics.com/marathon/ Coverage is scheduled to start at 6:00 a.m. Mountain Time. Set the alarm, put on the coffee and tune in. The nbc site it really not too bad and has quite a bit of marathon (and track and field) coverage. May be a worthwhile site to check out during the build up to Bejing.

A one hour highlight show on MSNBC at 10:00 a.m. Mountain.

runnersworld.com will also have good coverage the day of the race and in the lead up to the run during the week.

Finally, check out USATF.org for more news and details.

We'll also have a Montanan in the race. Below is a note that I got from Dave Coppock:

I don't know if many of you are aware of this, but we have one our our Montana girls running in the Olympic Marathon Trilasnext week at Boston. Heidi (Rieder) Schuette grew up on a ranch near Townsend, MT, attended high school in Boulder and ran for Sam Sampson. She ran cross country for me at MSU Billings in from 1993-1996 and currently teaches middle school in Prescott, AZ. Heidi qualified with a 2:46 at St. George and does some rim to rim training runs through the Grand Canyon--thus accounting for her marathon times! She typically ran around 20:00 for 5k in cross country while at MSUB and now she's running a faster pace for her marathons. She loved the longer runs and the women's team, one of the years they were here, decided to run a half marathon during the middle of the cross country season, which bothered me a little--not much, and now seems like it was a pretty good idea!

Heidi's sister Brooke, is also running the regular Boston this year as well as Sarah Graves from Billings, who ran on our xc team here at MSUB with Heidi. Sarah narrowly missed the qualifying time with a 2:47 and change, at St. George.
You may know Heidi's uncle as the announcer for Bobcat track events.

Thanks Dave. Go Heidi.

See you on the roads, tracks and trails.

TB

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Sarah Graves, who ran a 2:47 narrowly missing the qualifying mark, will be in the Boston elite field nonetheless. Her Number will be F18--quite high seed!

One note on Sarah--she ran high school track in Roundup, MT and competed in the hurdles, pole vault and 400 with an occasional 800. When she came to MSU Billings we worked on her mileage and eventually got down in the mid-18:00 range for the 5K xc distance. I used to tell the team how our Grizzly XC team all went out and ran the Seattle Marathon after the season was over in November and pretty soon a few of them were on their way! The next season Sarah had improved her 5K dramatically and placed 14th in the NCAA DII Western Regional earning her an all-Region designation.
Sarah was an accounting major at MSUB and just did Renee and my taxes last week! So what goes around, comes around!