Sunday, December 10, 2006
Olympic marathon bronze medalist Deena Kastor is the unquestioned queen of U.S. distance running, but Katie McGregor is the top-ranked American road racer for 2006, according to Running Times -- which nonetheless chose to put a winsome Carrie Tollefson on its January/February cover.
No matter for McGregor, a former NCAA cross-country champion at Michigan, for which she still bleeds (quite a bit in the past week) maize and blue. McGregor, 29, has been working hard at the running game for half her life, but last month she bumped into a difficult reality that may mark the limits of her talent when she ran 2 hours 32 minutes 36 seconds and finished ninth in the New York City Marathon.
"I'm happy, I'm fine with that, I'm okay with it," she said. "I would've liked to have gone faster, but I'm ready to be done with it."
For a runner of McGregor's credentials, it was a disappointing debut, but one she hopes will help her rededicate her efforts on the more arcane worlds of track and cross-country, where she has achieved her greatest success.
"I want to focus on the 10 [kilometers] for the 2008 Olympic trials," McGregor said. "The threat of injury in training for another marathon is too great."
The women's Olympic trials marathon will be the Boston Marathon in April 2008, and the track trials will be in Eugene, Ore., later that summer. For McGregor, the marathon may wait until the 2012 Olympic trials, when she'll be 34.
In the 2004 trials, McGregor finished fourth in the 10,000 meters and did not qualify to compete in Athens. The next year, she won the 10,000 meters in the national championships and finished 14th in a personal-best 31:21.20 at the world championships.
"Everything worked out last year," she said. "But why couldn't that have happened in '04?"
In 2000, McGregor lived and trained in Arlington but now lives year-round in Minneapolis, hardly a haven for world-class runners. "It's not freezing," she said, despite a recent run on a 24-degree day. "Well, technically, I guess it is."
Again, no matter. McGregor has miles to go before she finishes.
ยท ON YOUR MARKS: The Cherry Blossom 10 Mile Run, scheduled for April 1, opens online registration at 10 a.m. tomorrow at http://www.cherryblossom.org. Last year, registration closed in two days.
-- Jim Hage
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