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With Son Healthy Again, Kara Goucher is Focused on the NYC Half Marathon
By David Monti (c) 2011 Race Results Weekly, all rights reserved.Used with permission.
(20-Jan)--It was supposed to be a stress-free return to competition last weekend for 2007 world 10,000m bronze medallist Kara Goucher. But it turned into an exhausting ordeal after her son, Colton, had to be hospitalized and received emergency treatment.
"Colt had started to have a large mass on his face," Goucher told reporters on a conference call yesterday hosted by the New York Road Runners. Three days earlier, she finished second (photo at left by www.photorun.net) at the P.F. Chang's Rock 'n' Roll Half-Marathon in Phoenix, AZ. "We took him to a specialist who said it looked like a tumor."That doctor wanted to operate immediately, Goucher said. But an MRI revealed that Colt, who was born last September, had an abscess which doctors were able to drain and treat with antibiotics.
"It turned out to be a staph infection in his lymph node," Goucher explained. She continued: "In the end, it ended up being the best of the worst. He's perfectly healthy and he's doing great. He's been amazing. He's totally recovered."
Kara Goucher, 32, who lives in Portland, OR with husband Adam, feels recovered, too. Spending days in the hospital with Colton wasn't the best preparation for a race, her first since finishing 10th (2:27:48) at the 2009 IAAF World Championships marathon in Berlin, Germany. She had hoped to run in the 72-minute range in Phoenix, but hardly slept in the days leading up to the event. Her coach, three-time New York City Marathon champion Alberto Salazar, told her not to worry about her time.
"With what happened during the week, I told her two or three days before that she should just go out conservative," Salazar said. "I told her she'd be exhausted once the adrenaline wore off." He added: "She ran exactly what I thought she would." And that wasn't a bad thing, Coach Salazar noted.
Kara Goucher announced yesterday that she would compete in the New York City Half-Marathon on Sunday, March 20, as part of her preparation for April's Boston Marathon. Goucher has already completed six 100-mile (161-kilometer) weeks of training, her highest mileage block of marathon training, ever. Salazar said that last week's crisis had not set her back.
"I feel her base is well on it's way to be established better than it every has," Salazar said.
Prior to last Sunday's defeat, Goucher had never lost in a half marathon. After winning her bronze medal in Osaka in 2007, Salazar brought her to the Great North Run in New Castle, England, a month later to see what she could do at the half-marathon distance. In an upset, Goucher romped to the fastest time ever by an American, 1:06:57, on the slightly aided point-to-point course, beating Paula Radcliffe by nearly a minute. Since then she's won the Lisbon Half-Marathon (1:08:30) and Rock 'n' Roll Chicago Marathon (1:08:05), both in 2009. She wasn't happy about surrendering her winning streak last Sunday in Phoenix when Mexico's Madai Perez beat her by over two minutes.
"You know, I lost by two minutes and I don't like it," Kara Goucher emphasized. "I hate to lose."
But the race helped Goucher re-learn her race routine, and how it would need to be modified now that she has to travel with a Colton. She's also been getting advice from her friend Paula Radcliffe, British women's marathon world record-holder, who had her second child, Raphael, last September. The two speak on the phone often, Goucher said, and should talk even more now that Radcliffe is in New Mexico for training, "the same time zone" as Portland.
"It's nice to talk to Paula," Goucher explained. "She knows what I'm going through more than anybody else. She's encouraged me. . to just keep at it."
Kara Goucher was the first athlete race director Mary Wittenberg announced for the New York City Half-Marathon, the richest half-marathon in the United States with a $100,000 prize money purse. The former University of Colorado Buffalo track star said that she picked the race in New York because it would provide an ideal fitness test four weeks before Boston.
"It seems like a great run-up for a spring marathon," Goucher responded to a reporter's question. "I know that New York will recruit a great competitive field. I really need to be pushed and run against the best women in the world."
Mary Wittenberg, a former rower and the 1987 Marine Corps Marathon champion, was clearly thrilled to have Kara Goucher back in New York. Wittenberg had recruited Goucher for her marathon debut; Goucher set the USA women's debut record of 2:25:53, still her personal best, and placed third in the 2008 ING New York City Marathon. Paula Radcliffe, who successfully defended her title in that race, had won the 2007 ING New York City Marathon less than ten months after giving birth to her first child, Isla.
"In New York City, we love comeback stories," NYRR CEO Mary Wittenberg commented.
On a course designed to celebrate New York City, the NYC Half-Marathon will take more than 9,000 runners on a loop through Central Park, down Seventh Avenue through Times Square, across 42nd Street, and along the expansive West Side Highway to Battery Park in the heart of the city’s financial district, finishing with a view of the Statue of Liberty.