Janet Bawcom has won USA road race titles at 15-K, 25-K, and 10 Miles, but hadn’t really gotten serious about the marathon until the Olympic Trials in January, when she ran 2:29:45, a personal best by eight minutes, to place fifth. She later made the U.S. Olympic team for the 10,000 and was 12th in the London Olympics in 31:12.
“There were a lot of unknowns, and I learned a lot from just running the Olympic Trials in the marathon,” Bawcom believes. For Sunday’s New York City Marathon, “I feel like I'm stronger, just getting a little speed really helped,” she stated in a Wednesday teleconference. “I think I'm in the best shape, the best marathon shape I've ever been. We'll just see what happens on Sunday.”
Bawcom lives much of year in Rome, Georgia, but she’s been training at altitude in Flagstaff, Arizona, for a month. A U.S. citizen since 2010, she’d gotten a scholarship to Hardin University in Arkansas with the help of 1988 Olympic 1500-meter gold medalist Peter Rono. “I didn't expect any of the things that have happened in my life to have happened, and it's one more blessing ahead of me that we can all come to New York,” submits Bawcom.
After the London Olympics, she headed back to Kenya. “I've never really had a long season like this, so it was a really good downtime,” she points out. “It was a really great time to have both sides of my family there, so we spent about a month, and it was just awesome.”
“It rained every single day, I think, but I had a really good group of people,” she continues. “It was hard to chat when I was running. Running on the muddy ground was a challenge.”
She really did revisit her adolescent experience while in Kenya. “I have a big family, and the best way to spend time with them is just to do the chores together,” she explains. “We would go to the river to get water like every single day with a group of them and just eat like we were growing up when I was in my 16s (ie, when she was 16). So it was fun. I really enjoyed it, and I think it was part of the strength training anyway. “
