Hello There, Guest! (LoginRegister)

Post Reply 
Becky Wade
Author Message
seniorowl Offline
1st String
*

Posts: 1,069
Joined: Nov 2005
Reputation: 23
I Root For: Rice and Navy
Location: San Diego
Post: #1
Becky Wade
Podium finish and first American at the Houston Marathon. Amazing. Bought her book yesterday at the expo.
01-15-2017 11:25 AM
Find all posts by this user Quote this message in a reply
Advertisement


georgewebb Offline
Heisman
*

Posts: 9,582
Joined: Oct 2005
Reputation: 110
I Root For: Rice!
Location:

The Parliament AwardsDonators
Post: #2
RE: Becky Wade
Nice column by Dale Roberson on chron.com, with several comments by Becky and her coach, Jim Bevan, as well as the men's and women's champions:
http://www.chron.com/sports/article/Keny...858900.php

Quote:Becky Wade, third place, serves notice Chevron Houston Marathon

The Ethiopians and the Kenyans are at the top of the food chain when it comes to running long distances. They're the New England Patriots. Everyone else is the Texans, bravely aspiring to be competitive, to prove they deserve a spot at the table, too, while outside observers chuckle under their breath.

And while there would be no break in form in the Chevron Houston Marathon Sunday morning – A Kenyan man, Dominic Ondoro, and an Ethiopian woman, Meskerem Assefa, won their respective races – a for-real Texan, as opposed to a nick-named one, at least attempted to crash the party.

Becky Wade is from Dallas and her current training base is Boulder, Colo., but she made her bones as an elite runner competing for Rice, and this dreary damp day Wade parlayed the "home field advantage" into hugely satisfying, uplifting third-place finish. Among the women, only Assefa and the runner-up, defending champion Biruktayit Degefa, covered the 26.2 muggy miles through the city's center at a faster pace than Wade.

Yes, they did reach the finish line in Discovery Green well in front of her, Assefa in 2:30:18 and Degefa another 26 seconds back with Wade crossing more than five minutes later in 2:35:57. Nonetheless, in what she labeled "a comeback" from the biggest setback of her career, Wade served notice on the course, then later said as much from the podium, that she's conceding nothing to anybody, all those gifted East Africans included.

At 27, Wade insists there's still plenty of time for her to "bridge the gap" and, re-energized, she's determined to put in the "ton of work" it's going to take to be taken seriously.

"I think it's possible," Wade said, sounding like she was channeling the Texans when they were asked about narrowing the great divide that separates them from the Patriots. "This was a really big step toward my re-establishing myself as a strong marathon runner. It was only my fourth marathon and I learn something from every race (taking) a little pressure off. The more I do, the better chance I'll have of being able to mix it up with the strongest runners, and I think I've got eight to 10 years of serious running still ahead of me."

Wade profited from an intimate understanding of the toll Houston's oft-oppressive humidity – almost 100 percent Sunday – can take on an endurance athlete, and she strategized accordingly. Rather than try to hang with the Ethiopians in the early stages, she chose instead to lay back, lie low, then "pick off" as many of her rivals as she could as the race wore on. The goal going in had been to finish between fifth and eighth place. Coming in third? That was the best-case, pie-in-the-foggy-sky scenario.

"I'm very happy," she said. "Today was a blast. This was one of the most fun races I've ever been a part of. My parents, my coach (Rice's Jim Bevan), friends on every corner – I probably saw 40 people I knew – it was like a big reunion out there."

About this time a year ago, she was very sad, having staggered to a "heartbreaking" 85th-place finish with a 2:52:35 in the U.S. Olympic Marathon trials on a sultry 80-degree day in Los Angeles, after going in thinking a top-five showing would be possible. She believes she over-hydrated early and that gave her "a stitch" in her side about seven miles out. Being the "type A" personality that she is, she refused to quit, but the entire experience couldn't have been more miserable.

Suddenly, Wade had lost her next-great-thing luster. There would be no trip to Rio and no more talk about her maybe being the most promising female American marathoner since Deena Kastor. In order to re-calibrate, she thought she needed a change of scenery and, fortunately, her boyfriend, Will Firth, a former Rice distance runner, too, landed an engineering job in Boulder following his graduation last spring. But Bevan, the Owls' cross-country guru for the last 30 year and the man who recruited Wade to Rice a decade ago, continues as her coach from Houston, relying on frequent conversations and video tape that Firth sends.

"You can't force somebody's learning curve," Bevan said. "It's got to come to them. At her very first Marathon (she ran a 2:30:41 in Sacramento in 2013), conditions were perfect so, for her it was like, 'Everything is awesome. Everything I touch is going to turn to gold.' But you've got to pay your dues. She has struggled mentally. She put a lot of internal pressure on herself because she's so good and all these people were looking at her.

"It takes a while to process everything and mature. She's a perfectionist. Although running is simple, when you're carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders you can't run as fast. Today was the right injection of medicine she needed."

During college, Wade spent time studying and training in Ethiopia, which gives her an honest perspective on the mountain she's trying to climb. The running culture is deeply engrained and presents a Tom Brady-sized challenge for American runners of both genders.

The 31-year-old Assefa became the 11th consecutive Ethiopian woman to leave Houston with the champion's cowboy hat. The 28-year-old Ondoro, for his part, ended an eight-year streak by Ethiopian men, but he may have prevailed only because the twice-defending champion, Birhanu Gedefa, got stuck in Ethiopia because of visa problems. A farmer in Kenya, Ondoro said he'd use his $45,000 purse to possibly buy another cow (he has two) or invest in more land.

He separated from a group of four front-runners with about nine miles remaining and was never threatened by Yitayal Atnafu, who lost by 11 seconds to get stuck in the runner-up spot for the second year in a row. The last Kenyan to win was three-time champion David Cheruiyot in 2008. Ondoro was fifth and fourth in two his previous Houston visits, producing a personal course best of 2:09:40 in 2015.

Ondoro said he held off making his move until he was just shy of the 25-mile mark because of the difficult conditions and because "I know the other guys. They are strong. But we work together." This time he had prepared for the race with "more hill work" because the Chevron course has a bumpy patch on Allen Parkway, thanks to the underpasses at Waugh and Montrose.

His winning time, however, became the slowest since 2005. Assefa's winning time, in turn, was much slower than the 2:25:17 she posted for a third-place finish in 2013 and the 2:25:59 that made her the runner-up in 2014.

Still, the result delighted Assefa. Through a translator, she admitted feeling ill late because of menstrual cramps and the breezy conditions proved challenging as well. On the home stretch, she glanced back at Degefa on several occasions, sensing a closing gap.

"I wanted to win and worked hard (to prepare)," Assefa said. "I concentrated on running fast today. It was difficult, but I didn't want anything to stop me."
01-15-2017 06:14 PM
Find all posts by this user Quote this message in a reply
Advertisement


WRCisforgotten79 Offline
Hall of Famer
*

Posts: 10,600
Joined: May 2007
Reputation: 50
I Root For: Rice
Location: Houston
Post: #3
RE: Becky Wade
Congratulations to Joe Karlgaard, who finished the marathon in 3:08:19, a time which qualifies him for the Boston Marathon. He needed to hit 3:15 or faster, and he made it by almost 7 minutes - when the weather was awful for distance runners.
01-16-2017 12:19 PM
Visit this user's website Find all posts by this user Quote this message in a reply
Almadenmike Offline
Hall of Famer
*

Posts: 20,573
Joined: Jul 2005
Reputation: 161
I Root For: Rice Owls
Location: San Jose, Calif.

DonatorsNew Orleans BowlDonators
Post: #4
RE: Becky Wade
(01-16-2017 12:19 PM)WRCisforgotten79 Wrote:  Congratulations to Joe Karlgaard, who finished the marathon in 3:08:19, a time which qualifies him for the Boston Marathon. He needed to hit 3:15 or faster, and he made it by almost 7 minutes - when the weather was awful for distance runners.

He finished an admirable 174th overall and 23rd in his age group (40-44), according to this list of Rice-related participants compiled by Alan Shelby.

That list also includes best-in-group finishes by Sean Wade (no relation to Becky; 50-54) and Lisa Thompson (Visually impaired), 3rd in 45-49 group by Edward Aviles, 6th in Elite women by volunteer track coach Mary Davies, and "King of Crazy" Jack Lippincott finishing his 43rd consecutive Houston Marathon (5:36:24; 18th in 70-74 group).
(This post was last modified: 01-16-2017 04:05 PM by Almadenmike.)
01-16-2017 03:58 PM
Find all posts by this user Quote this message in a reply
Post Reply 




User(s) browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)


Copyright © 2002-2024 Collegiate Sports Nation Bulletin Board System (CSNbbs), All Rights Reserved.
CSNbbs is an independent fan site and is in no way affiliated to the NCAA or any of the schools and conferences it represents.
This site monetizes links. FTC Disclosure.
We allow third-party companies to serve ads and/or collect certain anonymous information when you visit our web site. These companies may use non-personally identifiable information (e.g., click stream information, browser type, time and date, subject of advertisements clicked or scrolled over) during your visits to this and other Web sites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services likely to be of greater interest to you. These companies typically use a cookie or third party web beacon to collect this information. To learn more about this behavioral advertising practice or to opt-out of this type of advertising, you can visit http://www.networkadvertising.org.
Powered By MyBB, © 2002-2024 MyBB Group.