Day 71: Gordon Knows

I reported on 12/23/09 ("Day 53: Run Like a Girl") that I'd switched Half-Marathon training schedules from one designed by Hal Higdon, to one designed by a woman, Gordon Bakoulis. I first heard about Gordon on the NYRR site, where her schedule is featured in conjunction with the women's Half I am going to run on April 25th. Gordon is the editorial director of New York Road Runners, is the author of the book, How to Train for and Run Your Best Marathon, has been Editor-in-chief of Running Times magazine, as well as held editorial positions at Women's Day, Fitness Swimmer, Health, Working Woman, New York Runner, The New York Times, Parenting, Runner's World, Running Times, and Women's Sports and Fitness. What a sweet editorial resume!

Her running resume is even more impressive... She is an RRCA-certified coach, the founding coach of Running Divas NY, and has qualified for the U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials five times (1988, 1992, 1996, 2000, and 2004). She has run a marathon in 2:33 and a half-marathon in 1:11. Gordon is a seven-time winner of the New York Road Runners Club's Fred Lebow Runner of the Year award and has twice placed among the top 10 finishers in the New York City Marathon! That's no joke.

So, if "Bo Knows" about baseball and football cross training, then my Gordon knows about cross training writing and running! (As for me, I still know Diddley!)* So, Gordon is my hero and the perfect person to tell me what the heck I'm supposed to do on the trail because we have our feet in the same two camps. I've never met Gordon, but I went out on a limb and sent her an email asking her a question about her schedule. She wrote back and said she'd checked out my blog, and it was "great" and "really inspiring" and that she is going to keep following me, and we should stay in touch. *so flattered* We are now friends on facebook.

Anyway, I like having a female mentor, especially one who is so nimble in ways I respect. I don't aspire to be an Olympian, or a running role model in any truly athletic sense; I don't even aspire to inspire anyone. Like I've said before, I just don't like not understanding something and no matter how many intelligent, well meaning, patient people tried to explain running to me, I just couldn't get my head around it. So, this was simply something I needed to find out for myself.

Unfortunately, I don't have an avatar to send in on this journey, so it's all me, my legs, my body, doing the work, infiltrating the runners' landscape, prying open their Pandora's box of pleasures and pains. Now that I'm in their rich and mystical woodland, I see there is precious material far beyond the superficial benefits I was briefed on before I left the mother ship. I'm completing the trials they set out for me, and taking every lesson I'm given to heart. I entered as a visitor, an objective journalist, hoping to report back to my Colonel with critical intel; but keep this secret if you can, until I'm sure: things are shifting, and I am beginning to feel a desire to become one of them...

*If you were in a coma, living in a cave, or not yet born in 1989, hit the following link to understand the above Nike ad reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bo_Knows