JOAN’S LONG RUN

Maine’s own long-distance runner Joan Benoit Samuelson will be trying out once more for the Olympics on Sunday. She’s not expecting to make the U.S. team again, as she told The New York Times: “Oh, God, no. It’s just me against me. I want to run 2:50 at age 50.” That’s two hours and 50 minutes for the 26.2-mile course.

Mrs. Samuelson, who won the first Olympic marathon for women in 1984, is running an hour or two a day in preparation for this year’s trials in Boston. She used to run 120 miles a week, but she told The Times, for an article published last Sunday, “Now I’m down to 70 or 80.”

“I run maybe a dozen races a year, but I haven’t run a marathon since 2005,” she said. “I’m slow, not fast. Some days I run faster. I used to plan my day around running. Now I plan running around my day.”

With Mrs. Samuelson, “slow” is a relative term. Consider some of her statistics. She entered the 1979 Boston Marathon and won in 2:35:15, eight minutes under the record there. She won Boston again in 1983 in 2:22:43, more than two minutes under the world’s best time set the day before by Grete Waltz in the London Marathon. Her time in the 1984 Summer Olympics was 2:24:52, more than a minute ahead of anyone else. The United States trials that year had come only 17 days after surgery on her right knee and six days after she pulled a muscle in her left leg. She won the trials in 2:31:04 and qualified for the Olympics.

She told The Times: “I still can’t realize how I could do that. After those Olympics, I made my family and friends promise they would not think that moment would change who I was.” That fits well with what she once told Runner’s World magazine: “One of the things I like best about Maine is that I’m no big deal up here. No one bats an eyelash. They accept me for who I am and not what I’ve accomplished.”

She has plenty to do these days besides running. She lives in Freeport with her husband, Scott. They have two children, Abby, a sophomore at Bates College, and Anders, a high school senior. Her activities besides running are said to include lobstering, skiing, stamp collecting, knitting, sewing and canning preserves.

“I see myself as having a responsibility to lead as strong a life as I possibly can,” she told Runner’s World. “In my life as a role model, I try to lead as good and clean a life as I can, so that children out there can aspire to do the things I’ve been able to do.”

Keep it up, Joan, and we’ll hope to continue to catch a glimpse of you running by now and then.