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Runners can make good customers
By JOE SHAFRAN
In the years of writing this column, I would say one of the subjects of concern that continually presents itself is knee or leg injuries, so allow me talk for a moment about the ultimate in those injuries by a runner of sorts, Joe Paterno, the Penn State football coach. I only do this as a Penn Stater, with some feeling for the poor guy. JoPa was hit accidentally last Saturday on the sideline by one of his own players. It did in his knee and his leg. His only public running consisted of that brisk jog onto the field with his players each game day, something he’s done for 50 years, which I think should qualify him for Boston or at least allow us to call him a runner.
You can be sure that Paterno will be soon be out there on the sideline, knee and leg injuries not withstanding. Football fever itself will slow down after the bowl games and the Super Bowl, but as for running it never seems to let up. We’ve just finished back-to-back Marine Corps and New York Marathons with more local runners competing than I can begin to mention. There’s the Richmond 26.2 miler this weekend and many others in numerous places as we just follow the sun around the world aiming for the Disney in December and the Boston in April. Around here, the running beat never seems to subside and with the popularity of the sport expanding, it seems only natural to be getting another running store in Annapolis. It will be a Fleet Feet just over the Spa Creek bridge in Eastport operated, Marty and Scott Boerman, husband and wife runners from Annapolis. And also on the subject of running, I have come to notice that good runners become modest. You’ve heard the expression, “my son the doctor”. In the running world, It turns out to be “my daughter the runner”. I’ve heard this in the past from proud mothers and just this past week, a mother made mention that her daughter ran the Marine Corps Marathon. I looked it up and sure enough, Allie Hollander, 29, the Realtor, did the somewhat difficult run in three hours and 50 minutes. She was number 544 for women and 2,748 overall out of the thousands in this race. Not bad at all. In the last column, I mentioned that Dr. Bill Tham, the Annapolis doctor had eaten pasta for the week before the race, hoping he could run the Marine at super speed and qualify for Boston but I don’t think his 3 hour and 47 minute timing would do it. He’s got to get down to about the 3 and a half hours. I would say to him that he should not be discouraged. It took me four Marine runs to get down to the then 3:20 qualifying mark that got me to the Boston in 1982. I know the good doctor will keep trying. His very first run was the New York a few years back.
In one of those Marines that I ran, I didn’t pay much attention that a young kid from Annapolis was the winner. It was Scott Eden. If it wasn’t Bill Rodgers winning it, I could have cared less. Bill may very well have run that one. It was only in recent years that I have come to know Scott Eden, now a doctor here, who has never lost his love for running which seemed to be picked up by his son Will, a standout at Annapolis High in recent years. However, in talking with the doctor just recently at the County Cross Country championships at Arundel High at Gambrills, he tells me that Will, now in college, is hampered with some leg problems. The doctor is one of the coaches at Annapolis. As expected, the winner at Arundel was 17 year old Matt Centrowitz of Broadneck, who also follows a tradition of family champions in running. I see in the Capital this past weekend that Matt will enroll and run at Oregon, his father’s alma mater.
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I propose that the the runner of note in this column is Maria “Nica” Shields of Davidsonville. There isn’t an area race of any distance that she doesn’t run, but she also gets on a plane and flies to California to do the nearly impossible Big Sur in California, which she does in the 3:45 range .She’s headed to Boston next year and in December of 2007. As a native of Portugal, she’ll do the marathon in Lisbon where her parents can say, “Our daughter the runner”. It’s interesting with Shields, in her mid fifties, 5 feet tall, weighing just over a hundred pounds, married, that she qualifies for Boston in most every marathon. Her first run in 1997 was the Marine Marathon. She feels best about her time at the recent Steamtown Marathon in Scranton, Pennsylvania in 3:35, first in her age group. Training about six days a week, she’s headed soon for one of the Philadelphia marathons.
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My tip of the week. Speaking of Joe Paterno’s injury, people always ask how my knees and legs have held up all these years of running... knock on wood. I don’t necessarily hang out on the sidelines on game days, but some years ago, a sports medicine doctor at George Washington University in Washington, D.C, suggested that if I wanted to run until I was a hundred, I should run on grass or a treadmill and stay off the hard surfaces. I took him up on that. And that theory might be catching on. I know that Commander Len Hamilton, in his forties, at the Naval Academy, a long-time local marathoner, gave up long distances on hard surfaces and switched to triathlons, and in a story of the Annapolis group in the November issue of What’s Up Annapolis, James Houk, 27, an Annapolis runner, writes of his switch from running the streets of the city to doing triathlons to save his knees.
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Running Calendar:
Sun. Nov. 12, Marley Station Mall. Pasadena 8 A.M. 5K runs and walk. The Jingle Bell for Arthritis. log on to www.arthritis.org or call 410.544.5433.
Sun. Nov. 19, 8:30 A.M. South River High, Edgewater, The Striders Cold Turkey 10K. in memory of Kati Fisher. For information, call the great duo of Donna Cogle 443.623.628 , or Penny Goldstein at 410.721.6614.
Sat. Dec. 2, 8 A.M. Greenbelt, Wright Stuff 5K run and walk. At the Youth Center. Commemorates the 102nd anniversary of the first powered flight. Call Austin Conatey, at 301.982.9246.
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