BY PAUL CLERICI

When you think of your best and worst marathons, do you base the answer solely on your finish time? Your place? How you felt afterward? Do you cast it against all your marathons put together? Or is it the first one that comes to mind? And once you’ve decided, what did you learn from them? Obviously, there are no wrong answers to these questions. It’s an individual choice based on the results of a myriad of variables such as your training, nutrition, clothing, and the weather during training and on race day. For the majority of marathoners, their best 42K is rewarded with a sense of personal accomplishment and pride, and their worst most likely is accompanied with some pain and disappointment that can subside in good time. For elite athletes, however, the stakes are much higher. Their best marathon can elevate them into another class, while their worst can devastate their career. Prior to the 2003 Boston Marathon (unless otherwise noted), these questions were posed to several elite athletes—veterans and newcomers, male and female, American and foreign. The responses were intriguing and the choices not entirely what someone else might have selected. But the reasoning behind their decisions and the lessons they learned are even more revealing when you consider the source.

PATTI (LYONS) (CATALANO) DILLON The four-time Honolulu Marathon champion and multicourse and world record holder was asked for her best and worst after the 2004 Boston Marathon, where she had come in second three times and set a course and American record. At first thought, the best choice for the Quincy, Massachusetts, native would perhaps be the 1980 New York City Marathon, where she became the first American woman to run a sub-2:30 with a time of 2:29:33. But the inaugural Montreal International Marathon in 1980 and her last Honolulu in 1981 came to mind for her as the best in an illustrious career. After the controversy of the 1980 Boston when Rosie Ruiz overshadowed winner Jacqueline Gareau and runner-up Dillon, Montreal was created with the Canadian and Bay Stater in mind. “I saw Jackie at all the races that summer with all the other runners, like Joanie [Benoit Samuelson] and Lorraine [Moller]; it was just like real heady stuff,” Dillon recalls. “And I was really kicking everybody’s butt, including mine. And all I had on my mind was Jackie, and I felt all she had on her mind was me because we were going to have this duel, this duke-out after Boston.” The Montreal field was under a hundred in 1980, including less than a half-dozen elite women. But the competition was nevertheless fierce. And Dillon, then Patti Catalano, turned in a victorious, record-setting 2:30:58 at the age of 27. “They put together the Montreal Marathon, this special race, for us, for Jackie and me, and for the elite,” Dillon says. “It was for Jackie and me to make up for Boston, to be fair. It was good and it was also hard, because the last six miles—I didn’t know, they knew but they didn’t tell me—is on a different part of an island [where] you have to cross the bridge. There weren’t any spectators, and I didn’t know where everybody was, and I was just running all by myself. It’s very lonely. But I worked so hard at Montreal, and I did another marathon record, and I wasn’t even running for the time. I was just so into running competitively and racing, just racing, and it was a great feeling. I was really focused. They were all focused, but this was different. This was really special.” The week of the 1981 Honolulu Marathon for Dillon was filled with more emotional baggage than she had ever expected, as her marriage to Joe Catalano was over. An emotional wreck that week in Hawaii, she dealt with the pain with three two-hour runs prior to race day. “I left Joe at the airport,” she says. “We broke up. But I knew I was in great shape because I was so emotionally upset. I wanted the American record and I wanted to do it there, and I was advised not to do it there because there was nothing in it [financially]. I took the edge off by running a two-hour run, and it felt easy and good. Couple of days later, I did it again and it felt real easy and good. And a couple of days later, well, I did it again that week. But I’ve done that before, so it wasn’t really anything. Not that I was pounding. I was just kind of going out, you know, it’s beautiful there. You do it early in the morning and it just ended up being two hours.” The Honolulu Marathon Hall of Fame runner won her fourth consecutive Honolulu with her fourth straight course record at 2:33:24. “I was floating, I was really floating,” she describes. As for her worst marathon, Dillon picked another 42K. The 1985 Rio de Janeiro Marathon, after which she officially retired, was her worst in large part because of what that race took out of her. It was also around the time in her career when invitations disappeared after a string of injuries, bulimia, being overweight, and depression. “I couldn’t get an invitation to a race if my life depended on it,” she says. “I would call people up and nobody would invite me. They’d say, ‘Oh, no, Patti. We hear you’re injured.’ And I’d say, ‘No, I’m doing really good.’” She finally convinced Rio and was assured by the race director that no other elite women had been invited, that is, until Dillon arrived at the hotel lobby and locked eyes with England’s Joyce Smith, who had finished 16th among women in 2:46:17 in New York in 1984, and Sissel Grottenberg, the third-ranked Norwegian behind Grete Waitz and Ingrid Kristiansen. “I almost choked, and they almost choked when they saw me, because he told them the same thing,” Dillon says with a chuckle. “We all choked when we saw each other. But mentally, I won that race in the lobby. I knew I won the race right in the lobby as soon as I saw Joyce Smith’s face when she saw me,” Dillon laughs. “I hid my surprise better than she hid hers. I was just like, ‘Be cool.’ And Sissel had never beaten me before, but she was tough.” Before the start, Dillon made 17 trips to the bathroom. She was not only dehydrated in the heat and humidity of Brazil, but she cut it so close getting to the starting line that a motorcycle was dispatched to whisk her away from the hotel. “I thought it was just prerace jitters, but I drank the water and I got diarrhea. I had the runs,” she recalls. “Physically, that was my worst. Fluids were a problem, and I couldn’t put any pressure on my stomach. My first 10K was 44 minutes. Just before that time, at 5K, we were all together and I’m running very stiff because I couldn’t put any pressure on my abdomen. I couldn’t bear down, and Sissel and Joyce are staying right with me. I want to tell them, ‘Please, don’t stay here.’ And I’m thinking I’m going to drop out at 10K by my hotel, that I’m just going to cut my losses and just drop out. But it comes down to this: I don’t think I’m going to get my way paid home if I drop out or something.” Dillon maintained a steady, albeit slower, pace and was left behind by her two main competitors. However, she did not drop out. In fact, she steadily improved and reestablished her focus and energy. “We’re out on a long bridge, and there’s a turnaround point, and they were just past the 10-mile mark, and they came back this way, and I made eye contact with Joyce,” Dillon describes. “And it was the same look that I saw at the lobby, and I knew I had her. I just had to get there. So I said, ‘OK. OK. I’ll do it. I’ll do it.’ I found a comfortable spot. I’m not bearing down on my stomach. Things are fine. I’m not getting crampy. I’ll just pick it up a little bit. And I’m cutting in close—11 miles and I’m getting close, 12 miles, it’s 20K, it’s almost half-marathon. And they’re over there with the lead car, and there are big lights, TV cameras, and motorcycles. And I’m way over here, and I’m just going to scoot by, and I’m not even going to let them see me, because I want the lead. And at the halfway mark, I have the lead. Yes!” With the lead, Dillon began the mind games runners often play to pass the time or for motivation. She promised herself a beer for every mile she held the lead. After several miles with the lead, however, she turned her attention to a developing problem. Panic set in around 22 miles, and Dillon began to lose focus. She began to lose her grip. Even with a good lead, her body was beginning to fail, and her thoughts were full of Smith and Grottenberg. “I’m tired and I’m having problems again,” she says. “And I’m panicking and I’m getting tight. My legs are crampy. I feel awful. I have them behind me and I’m thinking where they are behind me, but I don’t know. My hair is wet, and it’s hitting my shoulders, so I think they’re right there and I keep hearing it and keep turning. My energy’s going back instead of being in front. “And so I say, OK, pray,” Dillon continues. “‘Oh, God! Oh, God! Please help me, please help me.’ I’m not kidding. I did this. ‘OK. Pick up my right foot. Good! Put it down. Thank you. OK. Now, pick up my left foot. Oh, good! Put it down. Thank you! Thank you! Do it again.’ I did that from 22 to the finish line.” In her final competitive marathon, Dillon turned in a sub-2:40 win. And after she finished, the race director’s wife, who had watched from a race vehicle Dillon’s torturous latter miles, was struck by her transformation. “She said afterwards, ‘Patti, I don’t know what you did, but all of a sudden you just went—voom! Your form changed. You were like running a 5K,’” Dillon remembers. “The whole time I was praying. I could feel I was uplifted. I was smooth. I was tight. And I just kept focusing on picking up my feet.” Supported by two race officials in the medical tent, Dillon was drinking water for the drug test when she was advised to sit down so her shoes could be removed. A half hour later, still standing for fear of cramping, she finally sat. “My legs are out, because I can’t really sit,” she notes. “One lady takes off one shoe, and I said to just take off my socks. She said, ‘I’m not taking off your socks.’ There was blood all over my shoes, blood all over my socks. It looks worse because it’s wet. So I take off my Pedz [socks] and all my toenails came off. Every one of them—10 for 10. I never felt it. They got infected. They couldn’t put anything on my feet. That was the worst. It was my best and my worst. I ended my career right there at that race. It took everything I could possibly get out of me. It was hot, humid, and I had competition for it.” And what did the born-again Christian learn from this? “That God heard my prayers. That God is good. The whole running thing has been getting closer to God without even knowing that I wanted God. All I wanted when I started running was to have peace. All I wanted was peace.”

JILL GAITENBY It didn’t take long for the 1998 Bay State Marathon and 2002 U.S. national marathon champion to think of her best and worst, because, as she smiled at the thought, they were one and the same—the 2002 Boston Marathon, where she came in 13th in a time of 2:38:55. But for a slight heel problem that kept nagging her heading into the race, the Massachusetts native was physically fit. She had won the New Bedford Half-Marathon (1:15:23) a month before and was third in the Las Vegas Half-Marathon (1:15:35) two months earlier. But her heel and the 96 percent humidity made Boston one marathon she will never forget. “The humidity sort of affects my breathing a bit, and right away I just didn’t feel good,” says the two-time U.S. representative at the world championship marathon [2001, 2003]. “My breathing was off, but I got through that whole section. Then at about mile 16, my heel started to bother me. I got to the hills and I was limping, and I made it over the hills and I didn’t even care about my time. I just wanted to make it to the end.” The heel pain grew more agonizing as she passed Cemetery Mile, the stretch of Commonwealth Avenue that features a burial ground between miles 21 and 22 after the conclusion of the hills. It’s where many runners seem to fade and drop out. And shortly after she ran by Boston College, her alma mater, and headed toward the Beacon Street section of the course, the pain was unbearable to the point where the Northampton-born runner was forced to make some difficult decisions. “By mile 24, when I turned onto Beacon Street—and at that point I was the first American, so there was a video camera and motorcycle following me, so now I felt like the pressure was on—my heel was hurting so badly and I was limping and limping,” she describes. “When I got to mile 24, I actually stopped and started crying, and said, ‘I can’t do it.’ “I walked over to the side and I couldn’t start going,” she continues. “The crowd started cheering me on, and I just said to myself, ‘I’m going to go to the finish line no matter how I get there.’ I started limping. I couldn’t walk, but I managed to limp, and something within me overcame [everything] and I made it. With one mile to go, I saw the clock and said, ‘Oh, my gosh! If I run a 7:30 mile, I’ll run under 2:40, which is the Olympic A standard.’ And so I just blocked out everything, and I just ran as hard as I could to the finish line. When I finished, I started crying.” From the depths of a physical and emotional breakdown to the jubilation of finishing and becoming the first American woman for the second straight Boston, Gaitenby certainly experienced both ends of the spectrum in one 26.2-mile shot. And from that, perhaps not a realization while running the final miles, she grew as a marathoner. “I look back on that and I don’t know how I did it or how I made it through, because it was so excruciating,” she says. “But in the end, I learned so much. Now I know I’m tough—I never knew I was before. I always thought I was a wimp, really. I just found something inside me that I never knew was there. And in anything in life, whether it’d be on a personal level, professional level as far as working goes, I pulled something out of me that I never knew I had. My time was slower, but I think in the end that was one of the best marathons I’ve had, because that’s what this sport’s all about—getting through any situation and learning about yourself. And I think I did that a lot.” Had she quit, had Gaitenby decided to end the race at mile 24 when the pain forced her to stop, she never would have found that new level of ability she obviously possessed. No one, perhaps including herself, would have questioned her decision to quit. But on that April day, she raised the bar for herself without even knowing it at the time. “You’re right, I did set the bar. I didn’t think about that, but [I thought then] I can’t drop out now. That was my best and worst. It wasn’t my worst time, but other than that, all my other marathons have gone relatively well. That one I tested myself,” she notes. “I learned a lot about myself that day, and I also learned physically that if anything is bothering you prior to a marathon, it’s going to come back in some way, shape, or form, and it’s not going to be fun. And I also learned that even though you go through a bad patch—mile 2, mile 5—it’s going to get better. Marathon’s a long road, and if you’ve done the training, mentally if you have faith in yourself and faith in your training that you’ve done it, you’re going to make it through. “When I stopped, it was probably about a minute, maybe 30 seconds to a minute that I stopped, just based on my time that mile—that was a great experience for me,” she adds. “Right after that, I marked it all down in a journal, the entire experience, because I knew that I’ll read this again and it could get me going for the next race.” In the 2003 Boston Marathon, Gaitenby improved to ninth place with a time of 2:38:19. That 2002 experience is still with her as a constant training tool, a constant reminder of what she can accomplish. “The entire time [in 2002], there was a motorcycle with a camera on me, and I kept saying, ‘I have to get that tape,’ because that is pure marathoning,” she says. “I was crying. I didn’t think I could go. It’s just remarkable what the body can do when the mind wants to go. That was a remarkable feeling.”

KATHRINE SWITZER The Syracuse University alum in 1975 was ranked third in the United States and sixth in the world. Eight years earlier, while running the Boston Marathon with an official bib number she had received when she registered as K. V. Switzer (women weren’t officially allowed to run Boston for another five years), she had a scuffle with a race official that was photographed and shown worldwide, forever freezing the moment in the struggle for women’s running rights. Also to her credit, the first women’s marathon in the Olympics in 1984 owes a great deal to Switzer’s efforts. And while Gaitenby’s best and worst were the same marathon, Switzer says her best and worst were actually her worst and best. As the National Distance Running Hall of Fame inaugural class inductee and American Long Distance Running Hall of Famer explains, she won her worst and lost her best. “My worst marathon, in terms of how much it hurt and how disastrously I ran, was when I won the New York City Marathon in 1974,” she says. “I had trained and trained and trained and trained for this. I really wanted to break three hours. I was ready to break three hours, because in those days, that separated the men from the boys. It was four laps of Central Park; it was horrifically difficult. But I was that prepared. I knew I could break three hours on that course.” Despite the September heat, the heavy humidity, and the overall oppressiveness, Switzer was determined to succeed in her goal, so much so that despite the conditions, she maintained her goal pace for the first three laps of Central Park. (This was before the course moved to the city streets and boroughs.) And then the skies opened. “It was ungodly,” she recalls of the weather for lap four. “I was so focused at running under three hours that I went out at my sub-3:00 pace, and I was right off the lead guys. And I held, and I held, and I held for three laps. [With] almost another loop, right around 20-21 miles . . . it was just like life was going out of you. The heavens started like it was an apocalypse with thunderstorms and crashing lightning. And then it just was a torrential, torrential cloudburst and huge shards of lightning and tree branches falling—it was horrible. I kept turning away—it was like being in a bad dream, and the whole west side of Central Park was under water. I’ll never forget. Even now when I’m training, coming down alongside the lake there, I imagine sloshing through that water. It was up to [the ankles]. That was the hardest physical effort I ever did in my life, and I was rewarded.” At the age of 27, Switzer came within minutes of her goal with a winning 3:07:29 and the largest margin of victory in the history of New York at 28:49. While she feels this was her worst marathon, her best came just six months later at the 1975 Boston Marathon when she knocked off 16 minutes from her New York time. “This is the race I thought I was going to win,” she says of the 1975 Boston. “I was totally prepared. I had a brilliant day. It was 51 degrees, tailwind. I’m a good downhill runner. The other contenders that year I knew: the only other one was going to be [1974 and 1977 Boston winner Michiko] ‘Miki’ Gorman, and she had just had a baby, so I didn’t have to worry about her. And [1972 Boston winner] Nina Kuscsik was injured. So it was going to be my year, right?” Switzer was beside herself at how the stars had lined up for her when she ran on that Patriots’ Day Monday. There was no rain, no lightning, no thunder of her previous marathon, and she felt great throughout the entire run. For Switzer, it was, for all intents and purposes, the perfect race. “The road came to me, it was unbelievable. I could have just gone and gone and gone. I just felt it. And I had my best time and a wonderful performance. I ran a 2:51 and just blew the hinges off my previous time, and I was positive I was going to win the race,” she notes. But out of West Germany came Liane Winter, a world-best 2:42:24, and according to the Boston Athletic Association (B.A.A.) the second-widest margin of victory at Boston when she beat Switzer’s 2:51:37 by 9:13. (Kuscsik’s 10:09 margin over Elaine Pederson in 1972 is the widest margin.) “So here I was running the race of my life, the time of my life, and the perfect race, everything being wonderful, couldn’t have possibly done any better, and I got beat,” notes Switzer, who was still the first American woman. “Ever since that race, it’s been very hard for me to ever go back and run another marathon again, because it was perfect—everything!” As she looks back on those two races, Switzer is struck by the irony of what she considers her best and worst. And because of her outlook on both marathons at that time, only now can the lessons emerge in abundance. “It’s an interesting turn of that,” she remarks. “What have I learned from this? First of all, people say that marathoners run to find the perfect race, just like the surfers look for the perfect wave. And I was blessed to have one of those days, which was brilliant. Nothing hurt. It was just so wonderful. So that was a great plus. And yet it put me in my place in terms of humility, because I had the race of my life and somebody just ran a world record and I was in awe of them. I felt I could never have physically done what she did. And then New York, having everything in line and ready to go to do it, and then you’re a victim of the elements, you’re a victim of your time, you’re a victim of the weather and the circumstances that are totally beyond your control. You can only do your best.” Taking it one step further in regard to lessons learned, Switzer realizes the smart thing to have done in New York would have been to adjust her strategy and her way of thinking in light of the weather conditions. Then again, she ponders, would she have won had she readjusted? “When I look back,” she says, “if I had run with the effort that the 3:07 was, I wonder what that would have been on a perfect day? What I’ve learned is that you have to just go with what nature provides and take inspiration from it, whatever way you can. I was just so focused [in New York]. Any normal runner would say, ‘OK, listen. I’m going to change the plan. I’m going to crank it down. I’m going to be more conservative.’ I didn’t. That was my plan, and I was going to go with it. I was, like, tunnel focus. I was going as hard as I could go. I think I would have run slower [if adjusted]. In retrospect, I think I did the right thing.” However, Switzer was faced with another marathon shortly after those New York and Boston races in which she had to make some similar decisions. And based on her best and worst, she took heed of her experience. “My last marathon was the 1976 Boston in that terrible heat. And I thought, ‘Oh, my God. This is déjà vu all over again.’ And that’s when I did readjust it,” she explains of that 100-plus-degree race where over 40 percent of the nearly 2,000 starters dropped out. “I just cranked it down, and said, ‘OK. Get out there and just finish this.’ I ran 3:15 or something like that. The end result was I was still beat up, I was still tired, and my feet were so blistered and so lacerated and bleeding that I couldn’t run another marathon. I mean, I could have said, ‘I’ve got it in the bank. I’ll just wait a couple of weeks and do another one.’ I was so beat up after it anyway.”

JOHN SENCE From Cincinnati, Sence (who was interviewed before the 2003 Cincinnati Flying Pig Marathon) is a two-time Olympic Trials marathoner (1996, 2000). The two-time 25K U.S. national champion (1997, 1998) and U.S. representative in the World Half-Marathon Championship in Palermo, Italy (1999), points to the 1998 Chicago Marathon as his best. With his 2:15 in the Windy City that year, he came in 21st overall and was the third American finisher. He also chopped off six minutes from his previous PR. “I was pretty much just 10K training,” he says of his workouts at the time. “I was running 28:30 consistently for 10K, and I knew my speed was good. In the last two months leading up to it, I just increased my mileage. I wasn’t doing anything dramatically different other than running long. That was great because I pretty much stuck to what worked for me.” But after Chicago, a trend began when Sence drifted away from what had made him successful. He departed from his coach, with whom he regained contact for his goal of making the 2004 Olympic Marathon Trials (he did not), and his training session included various styles and regimens that ended up being counterproductive. “I just tried picking and choosing things that I thought would work based off of other people’s performances. And that didn’t work,” he points out. “I mean, you can pick up some things that work well, but then I think you always have to fall back on what works for you, and you have to be consistent with that, because it’s nothing that’s going to happen overnight. Especially with marathon training, it takes a long time for your body sometimes to respond. “I think sometimes you have to stick with what your body responds the best to and learn from that and use it,” Sence continues. “Because sometimes it’s easy to listen to what other guys are doing. You know, everybody says, ‘OK, what’s Khalid Khannouchi doing or whoever might be running hot at the time?’ But the big thing is, you’ve got to be consistent. Stick with what works for you. Don’t be thrown off course by listening to what other guys are doing. Sometimes going marathon specific and doing all the specific training for a marathon can be detrimental. For the right guy, it works. But I think every runner has to find the right recipe. You find what works for you. And that’s what I should have stuck to, because after [Chicago], I started thinking, ‘OK, now if I really trained for a marathon, who knows what I can do?’ And the best I’ve done since then is a 2:17.” Two years after Chicago, Sence experienced his worst marathon at the Olympic Trials in 2000. The Trials were in Pittsburgh, and his 2:31 finish was well off his original goal of a sub-2:12. “I really felt going into that race that I had a very legitimate shot to make the team,” he says. “My running was going incredibly. I took a leave of absence from work and went out to Boulder, Colorado, and trained for three months. Got into great shape. Got injured a couple of weeks before the race, but I thought I’d still be OK. Sometimes an injury is a blessing in disguise, because you’re rested.” Coupled with the stifling heat that day in Pittsburgh, Sence’s hamstring injury reappeared throughout the race and proved troublesome, eventually destroying his dreams of qualifying. The injury, however, as he points out, was avoidable and served as a lesson for Sence in future races. “The heat was ridiculous. By 12 miles I knew I was done, which was disappointing, because I put so much effort into that,” he notes. “The one thing I think I learned from that is a lesson a lot of elite guys learn, that more is not always better. When I was in Boulder, the last day out there—I was leaving the next day and I wasn’t scheduled to do a workout for a couple of days—I thought, ‘I’m going to squeeze one more in while I’m out here.’ And that’s the day my hamstring just started really tightening up. And when I got home, it was done. I ran I think three times in the last two weeks to get ready for that race. I don’t think there was any problem with not running. It was the fact I damaged the hamstring. That’s always in the back of your mind, and when you start feeling something, you’re toast.” During a marathon, especially an Olympic qualifier where much is riding on the result, a runner wants to start injury free and with a clear head to focus on the ensuing 26.2 miles. For Sence, a mistake weeks before came back to haunt him. “I think more is definitely not always better,” repeats Sence, who was one of the youngest competitors in the 1996 Olympic Trials. “The mileage was good up to that point. But there was no need to throw in an extra workout. There’s so much to lose and very little to gain by doing that. Everybody’s got that experience. I just picked the worst race of all time to do it on. You don’t do that before the Olympic Trials. You work so hard to get there and so many other guys had worked hard to get there that didn’t get there, you don’t want to DNF in a race of that magnitude.” So, Sence persevered in the Trials. “Unless you lay it out on the table, you don’t know if you’re going to have a chance either. You know, I finished. It was simply I didn’t want to drop out of a Trials race.” After defending his team marathon-relay title at the Cincinnati Flying Pig Marathon in May 2003, Sence continues to appear ready while training for a possible third Olympic Marathon Trials. Back with his former coach and reestablishing consistency in his training, Sence has learned from his mistakes and plans not to repeat them. In addition, he has learned how to train better and with more success, despite not making the 2004 Olympic Marathon Trials. “As I’m aging, my body’s breaking down with injuries. I find that I can’t run the mileage that I used to so I have to make the intense days very beneficial and I have to rest a little more going into the workouts. I have to make the most out of them,” he explains. “It’s not like I can do three of them a week now, I’ve got to do two and I’ve got to make them a little more ‘riding that red line a little tighter.’ It seems to be working. What used to be my problem was that I’d go for three or four months hard and then I’d break down. I’d take those steps back, and then you come back, and then you break down. Now, I’ve finally had a consistent six months where I finally feel like the body’s coming back. You just have to keep it that way and listen to what the head says to do instead of what others say.” BILL RODGERS The American running boom’s own “Boston” Billy Rodgers—the American Long Distance Running Hall of Fame, National Distance Running Hall of Fame, and National Track & Field Hall of Fame member who was thrice ranked number one in the world (1975, 1977, 1979) by Track and Field News—has a plethora of marathons from which to choose. He won Boston four times, New York four times, the Fukuoka Marathon once, and competed in the Olympics. Not a surprise choice for the best marathon was his 1975 Boston victory, the first of four wins in a six-year span (he skipped Boston to run the Trials in 1976 and DNF’d in 1977). His 2:09:55 in 1975 set an American and course record in Boston, both of which he broke by 28 seconds four years later. “Everything came together in ’75,” he says. “I had done a lot of good track training. My teammates at the Greater Boston Track Club and [coach] Billy Squires, really helped me. [This was] the one that had the most impact in my life. It was a good day for running. It was a total surprise. Everything finally jelled.” When Rodgers says “finally,” he means it. The 1975 win was his third try at Boston. The New England native registered a DNF in 1973 and came in 14th at 2:19:34 in 1974. “It took me about two and a half to three years to run the marathon that I was capable of,” he says. “On top of my other running I had done earlier in high school and college, just focusing on the marathon took me about two and a half years. I think usually you need to run three or four marathons to get it down to the nitty-gritty where you really can hammer. I think it does. A few runners break through earlier, some of the Kenyans, Alberto Salazar did. But you have to get your time down. I think that’s usually how it works.” Ironically, his best led Rodgers to his worst—the 1976 Olympic Marathon in Montreal, Canada, where fellow American Frank Shorter won the silver. It was less than a year after that Boston win for Rodgers, who admittedly entered the Games less than fit. “Boston enabled me to aim for the Olympics, and suddenly I started thinking I could make the Olympic team and all these things that have never happened to me before,” Rodgers notes. “[But] that nailed me, the 1976 Olympics. I hadn’t trained well for the final four or five weeks, stopped doing speed work because of a foot problem. And I lost my sharpness, I lost my overall preparation. I was a sitting duck. If you’re not at your very best there, you’re a sitting duck, because there are a lot of people who are [at their best].” It seemed the deck was stacked against Rodgers in Montreal with his injury, lack of proper training, warm weather, and Olympic pressure—all the elements that led to a 40th-place 2:25:14. “I was nervous because, you know, it was the Olympics and everything. It was big time. And I don’t like the heat and humidity either,” notes Rodgers. “The injury bothered me, it hurt, but I didn’t think it was going to be devastating. I had no idea. I tried to compete, but when you are taken by surprise, really by surprise, it’s hard to be objective of yourself. I had run well five weeks earlier. In May, I did a PR 10K and was fourth in the Trials, but by June, July, my foot was hurting me. Just an overuse injury, so I hit The Wall badly in the marathon. And that was that.” Despite his Olympic experience and DNF in Boston, his career would be filled with numerous victories, due in no small part to the lessons he learned on the streets of Montreal that summer of ’76. “What I learned mainly was that your preparation has to be pretty well rounded. If it’s well rounded, you’re going to run well, and if you run carefully,” he says. “I didn’t run carefully in the Olympic marathon, that’s for sure. I made mistakes. I’ve had my share of bad marathons, and I’ve got some wins. I try to learn from whenever I’ve had a downfall type of marathon, because you can always come back. That’s one thing you learn—you can always come back.”

BRUCE DEACON Much like Rodgers, who was his idol as a youth and with whom he corresponded as a kid, the two-time Olympian’s worst marathon was also in the Olympics. Deacon said his worst was in the 2000 Sydney Games when he ran for his native Canada. Sydney turned out to be a collection of errors for the six-time number-one-ranked Canadian marathoner. “Everything that could go wrong did go wrong. I got tripped at the start, I overdrank, and I got really bad muscle cramps,” he recalls. “I got tripped at about 25 meters into the race, and it did kind of break my focus. But I think I regained myself OK, but I never fell into a good rhythm. And the marathon’s all about rhythm. And the cramps started about nine or 10 miles, earlier than what you’d expect for cramping. If you’re going to get cramping, you expect it around 18 or 20 miles, but not that early.” There are certain things for which you can train and prepare in a marathon, and then there are instances where something unexpected and out of your control arises. At the 2000 Olympics, Deacon faced both. While he chalked up getting tripped as happenstance, he did learn a few lessons about his liquid intake and cramping. “I ran a few races where it was extremely hot, and I got used to drinking a lot of water during the race because you had to,” he explains. “You’re racing in Athens for a world championship, and it’s really hot weather, well in the 80s or 90s. So I just kept consuming the same volume of drinking for the cooler-weather races. The lesson I learned was I need to take liquids, but I don’t need to take as much as I thought I did. It wasn’t an obvious link. I guess the head scratcher was [asking] why is it that I’m not getting this kind of cramping in training and I am in some races? And so I looked at what am I doing different.” Deacon, of Victoria, British Columbia, then came across what is known as hyponatremia, when drinking too much water lowers the level of sodium in the bloodstream. As evidenced in the 2002 Boston Marathon, it can be fatal. “[Information has] become quite popular over the last year, and it’s causing the medical community to really reevaluate what their recommendations for fluid intake are,” he notes. “I just wished that they had those recommendations a few years earlier. That’s what I learned from the whole thing. It was a good experience.” Conversely, the three-time California International Marathon champion [1991, 1995, 2001] counts as his best marathon the 1995 World Championships in Gothenburg, Sweden, where he came in 11th place after being ignored as someone to watch. “It was kind of a Cinderella story,” he notes. “I guess I just learned patience, because I just started out at a steady pace and worked my way through the field and just got outkicked for 10th. I looked at the winning times, the times that were top 20 before, and I just figured if I run a steady pace, then I should be able to work my way through the field. And it was such a motivator to be catching people all the time as opposed to just hanging with people and hoping you don’t drop off the pace. As the race progressed, I felt better and better and better. That’s what keeps everybody in the sport, that rush that you get from a good race. And that’s the kind of thing that helps you weather all the disappointing runs.”

ELANA MEYER The South African Olympian has become a fan favorite on the marathon circuit, especially in Boston, where she ranks her best and worst. Although two women finished ahead of her in the 1994 race—Meyer was third with a national record 2:25:15 in her first 26.2-miler—it was the new experience at the long distance that made this one her best. “My first marathon was my best experience, because you don’t really know what to expect. It’s like a totally new challenge and something you’ve never done before,” she says. “So my first one was really my best experience, because it’s an untraveled road. I just loved the whole experience of coming [to Boston] the first time, because this is where I ran my first marathon. It was just so exciting. I’ve been a runner for many, many years, and then to step up to the marathon into untested ground . . . that was fantastic. For me, it was just such a big personal challenge, a personal test, and you go way beyond the comfort zone.” Meyer’s worst marathon was six years later at the 2000 Boston when she came in 10th place and was nearly six minutes behind Catherine Ndereba’s winning 2:26:11. “The first time I was third, the second time I was second, the third time I was second, and the last time I ran [in 2000] I was 10th,” she says of her Boston runs. “I just had a little injury problem coming into the race, which I thought was OK. But I think anything in the marathon becomes a disaster if it’s not perfect. So that was definitely my worst experience.” Throughout her early career, Meyer excelled as a track runner, specializing in the mile, 1,500, and the 10,000 meters, in the last of which she won Olympic silver in 1992. She also possesses a stellar half-marathon slate of wins and records and is more philosophical about her learning process. “Obviously, you learn new things all the time,” she notes, “but there’s also things that it’s good and it’s working and you stick by it. You also try to improve on your training and your preparation. It’s a bit of both. You can’t perform out of yourself, and you can’t change the strategy of somebody else. So the best you can really do is the best that you can do. For me, that’s always to keep focusing and say, ‘Look, do the best you can do.’ That would be your possibly best outcome of the race, because at the end, it’s a race against other people but it’s also a race against yourself. If you win the race overall or if you win your own race, I think that’s the best you can be on that day. I just try and do the best I can be. I think if you can do that, then you achieve your possible most-best outcome.”

MILENA GLUSAC According to the native Californian, she doesn’t really have a “worst” yet of her three marathons. In her 26.2-mile debut at the 2001 New York City Marathon and U.S. national championships, Glusac was the second American and 13th overall in a time of 2:34:46. The following year on the same course, she turned in a personal best 2:31:14 as the second American again and ninth overall. And at the 2003 Boston Marathon, the 27-year-old was eighth overall and once again the American runner-up in a time of 2:37:32. She is admittedly still in the early learning stages of marathoning. “There’re going to be periods where you feel really good,” she points out, “and during those good periods, you really have to say, ‘Wait, wait. There’s more to come. I have money in my wallet but haven’t visited all the shops’—that type of thing. And there are times in the marathon when you don’t feel well and you just have to know that those pass, too.” For six years from 1995 to 2000, Glusac suffered from a number of ailments, most notably the Epstein-Barr virus, “which is like mono but just wipes you out about a hundred times more,” she describes. “I was bedridden for a long time. But I started back racing in 2000 and training.” The University of Oregon grad worked hard to get back in shape for a marathon. Among her achievements along the way are the best showing for an American at the World Half-Marathon Championships in Veracruz, Mexico, with her 10th-place finish. But one of her biggest problems is dehydration, which she suffered in the New York races. “I stayed really focused [in 2001] and ran my own race, and the same in [2002], except I should have held back a little,” she says of her New York City Marathon runs. “In my first marathon, it was dehydration. My second marathon, it was dehydration during (the run) and also moving too fast too soon. I had all my bottles and I was grabbing cups at every station, but you grab it and there’s half of it (dumped) and by the time you drink it, there’s not enough. I learned that with that ratio, I need more sugars. “I did run my race [in 2002, but] I got a little excited about mile 16. I just felt so darn good,” she continues. “But you learn a lot in terms of hills, transitioning from downhill to flat. The marathon’s totally different. You could go out the first mile and say, ‘This feels easy.’ I did learn that racing starts way later in the race.”

GIACOMO LEONE According to the Italian Olympian, his personal best 2:07:52 at the 2001 Lake Biwa Marathon in Otsu, Japan, rates as his best marathon—better than his 1996 New York City Marathon win (2:09:54)—as his strategy of speed paid off. Where some may hold back until the moment they make a decisive move, Leone decided to keep the pace a fast one in Japan. “Go fast, because there are a lot of Japanese, that they start so fast,” he explains of his strategy, which resulted in second place and a national record. “I remember until half-marathon, I was in 10th position, and I saw I must follow the leader group. When we arrive to about 35K, there were only two runners—me and the winner. I tried to push for response.” His sixth-place showing at the 2002 Dong-A Marathon in Seoul, Korea, was Leone’s worst. Asked what he learned from Korea, he quickly explained his out-of-sight, out-of-mind theory of keeping the negative thoughts away. “I remember it was a no-good race for me, but I don’t remember,” he says. “I have canceled it from my mind, this race, and start for another marathon. It’s most important that your mind cancel the bad things for you next race.”

JOHN A. KELLEY

The late legend—a member of the National Distance Running Hall of Fame, American Long Distance Running Hall of Fame, and National Track & Field Hall of Fame—was a three-time Olympian (1936, 1940, 1948) and two-time winner of the Boston Marathon (1935, 1945). He also holds the record for Boston starts (61), finishes (58), and was its Grand Marshal for several years. And it’s at this grande dame of footraces where he counted his best and worst. “The 1935 Boston was the greatest marathon I ran. We had about a hundred starters, and about 12 men out of that hundred had a chance to win. And I was one of them. I learned to pace myself properly,” he said of his 2:32:07 victory. “When I won the marathon, my father and four brothers were at the finish line waiting for me. It so thrilled me.” Kelley’s reference to pacing takes on more weight, since at Boston he came in second place seven times, most of which he admitted could possibly have been victories had he properly paced himself. His first runner-up finish was the year before his first win. Kelley had traded leads with eventual winner Dave Komonen of Canada, who made his move around Cleveland Circle. On the international level at the Olympic Games, Kelley was 18th in the 1936 marathon and 21st (2:51:56) in the 1948 Games when he was 40 years old. (The 1940 Games were canceled because of the war.) While the Cape Cod resident didn’t specifically pick any of his nonwinning marathons as his overall worst, the cumulative record of his haste made the point. “I was always a hurry-up guy. From my own particular case, I have always been a very impatient person, and it cost me dearly in a lot of marathons. In a marathon, you can’t be impatient,” he explained. “[In 1925] I was running a 15-mile race, and Joe Smith from Medford was a long way back with two runners, and they said, ‘That’s Kelley up there.’ And he said, ‘We’ll catch him.’ And they went right by. So I learned from that mistake. Ten years went by, and I went down here [Boston] and I paced myself and won.”

JOHN J. KELLEY

Known as Johnny “the Younger” Kelley, so as not to be confused with the aforementioned Johnny “the Elder” Kelley (no relation), the Connecticut native was a two-time Olympian (21st at 2:43:40 in 1956 and the first American in 1960 at 2:24:58) and eight-time winner of the U.S. National Marathon Championship in Yonkers, New York, from 1956 to 1963. In the Boston Marathon from 1956 to 1959, Kelley came in second place three times and won in 1957 as a member of the B.A.A. Running Club, which hosts the marathon. And not surprising, the only B.A.A. member to win Boston points to his course record 2:20:05 win in 1957 as his most satisfying, if not best, marathon. “Boston’s always the magnet. No matter where you go, you refer to Boston as your baseline,” he says. “Everybody wants to win Boston. And Boston quite often dashes expectations. Because everybody’s gunning for it, the chances that even someone qualified to win it will win it are probably less than five out of 10 on any given day. So you’re terrifically elated if your number comes up and you do win it. And you’re quite often disappointed in Boston. Would I consider it my best marathon? I don’t know. But it was the most satisfying marathon.” Kelley trained well for ’57. He had turned in some successful Boston tune-ups and as a teacher, enjoyed the break of school vacation prior to the marathon. His slate was clear and his schedule was empty. In fact, the elder Kelley, who came in 13th at 2:53:00, lent him a hand as well. “Johnny was very close to us, and he invited us up to his then-fiancée’s home on the Belmont-Watertown line and we stayed there overnight,” ‘the Younger’ notes. “In the morning, he tapped on my door and we got up and got out with the robins on the golf course that was right behind his house for a stretch. And everything was perfect.” Kelley ran hard, yet conservatively, knowing resources in the latter stages of Boston are vital. The year before in 1956, he came in just 19 seconds behind Antti Viskari of Finland, who won with a 2:14:14. This time, Kelley wanted to remain with the leaders and not jump out too soon, a lesson he had learned from ’56 and other experiences. “You’re in with very good runners, and you can’t do any heroics early,” he explains. “A big mistake would have been to take a lead. I’d done that in the Olympic race four months earlier in Melbourne and I finished 21st and just about collapsed. I led early and it was a great mistake, and I thought, ‘Don’t do that again.’ So what I did [in Boston] was run in the cluster of leaders, and then finally it just wore slowly away so that there were Pedro Peralta from Mexico, a very good runner from Korea [Chiang Lim], and [Veikko] Karvonen from Finland, who I thought was the man to beat.” To plan his strategy and execute his eventual decisive move, Kelley kept a constant eye on Karvonen, who had won Boston three years earlier in 1954 (2:20:39). The New England native’s pace stayed steady until it was just the two of them in Newton. “We started up the first of the Newton hills, just toward the hospitals, and I just saw that he was sweating pretty profusely,” Kelley notices. “I was right behind him and his neck rivered with sweat, and I thought, ‘Geez, he’s sweating pretty hard. He’s probably exerting himself more than I am.’ I gave myself a boost, but you have to do those little psychological things in a race. I thought I’ll wait a mile, and if we’re still right where we are now, I’m going to try and break him if I can as we go around the corner into the second of the hills.” Kelley pushed it some, about 10 seconds a mile, and eventually broke free and led the race. He still wasn’t sure, however, because, as he pointed out, you never know until you cross the tape. But by Boston College after the hills, Kelley knew. “By the time I came on the downside on the last Heartbreak Hill by B.C., [race official] Jock Semple came by in a bus and he says, ‘Oh, you’ve got 200 yards.’ So at that time, I said (to myself), ‘I can’t hear him anymore. I can’t hear his footsteps, can’t hear him breathing. I think I’m going to win today.’ That was when I felt confident, unless I screwed up bad,” Kelley notes. “I had already run Boston a few times, and I knew how anything can happen anywhere on this course. You have to be very respectful of it, the marathon, anyway. Boston is a race that’s kind of a setup course. It’s relatively easy looking for the first five or six miles, and then it keeps pitching curveballs after that. The hills come at the long part of the course, and before you get into the hills, you drop steeply down. Many people would think a downhill run is good, but that can knock the hell out of your quads. So you’re kind of respectful of those things all the way. “I came down to Kenmore Square, and I was well in the lead,” he continues about the last mile. “People were cheering, and I felt quite elated. But even feeling good at that point in the marathon, you know you’ve taken so much out of yourself you’d hate to have to respond to a challenge there. But I knew I was well ahead. I had one more scare coming across Massachusetts Avenue with about three-quarters of a mile to go, my [leg] tightened up. I said, ‘Jeez, no. Not now.’ But I knew I had this safe lead, and I eased up maybe 20 seconds a mile for the next quarter mile and the cramp went away and I breezed home.” In 1993, Kelley, a member of the National Long Distance Running Hall of Fame and American Long Distance Running Hall of Fame, experienced his worst marathon in terms of pain when he ran Boston. No longer on the competitive circuit, Kelley was training an athlete to run and then decided to toe the line himself. He was 62, and it turned out to be his second-to-last marathon. “I didn’t intend to run the race, but I thought that since I was a coach of sorts I’d get into it, and I was going to be up there [in Boston],” he says. “But I hadn’t really put in the mileage, and my other commitments were such and I actually had burned out my competitive fires, too. I didn’t have the desire at that age to put in the real mileage you have to put in. As it turned out, I was doing some speed work about three weeks before the race, and I got a hamstring pull and it never quite came loose. So I got into the race with that tightness, and lo and behold at 10 miles, the other one went while this one was still [tight]. I was brought to a walk. I hobbled, limping, limping, and every once in a while trying a pitiful pace of running strides into the finish line. I was never in such real physical pain in a race in my life. My time—somebody said 3:28, but I think it was 4:28—doesn’t really matter, because it just felt so awful.” It took one more marathon—the Big Sur International Marathon in California—for Kelley to confirm that his marathon days were over. Despite the pain, he had to face 26.2 miles one more time to hammer in that point. And Big Sur certainly did that for him. “At that point [at Boston], I said, ‘You’re not training for this kind of thing. You’re not a competitor now. Don’t run these things unless you’ve trained for them.’ And I haven’t except for one. I fell off the wagon once and proved to myself that my previous judgment was right,” he says. “I did Big Sur and that race was a bear, too, and I said, ‘That proves what I said last year.’ And I haven’t gone back since. I wasn’t injured at Big Sur, but neither was I competitive. The race, as beautiful as it was, went on forever, it seems. And when I finished it, I said, ‘That’s just about it.’ It was a very scenic course, it was exotic, it was different, and I don’t need to do another marathon. So far.”