“Amazing Awaits”

She wore a bright yellow hat, is 50 years old, and had run in more Olympic Trials races than any women in U.S. history. In 1984, she won the Olympic Gold Medal for the Women’s Marathon, and this Sunday, Joan Benoit Samuelson finished 90th out of 124 of the county’s top female athletes with a time of 2:49:08. At the post-race press conference, Joan announced that this past Sunday’s race was the last Olympic Trials she would ever run.

After the post-race press conference, she came into the media room, sat about four seats away from me, and dug into a huge ice cream bar. =) Nice. My kind of gal.

Though I was beyond unhappy about being at the Fairmont Copley Hotel this Sunday for the 2008 Olympic Trails – Women’s Marathon at 6:20 in the morning, being there made my weeks, hours, and late late nights of work worthwhile. These women were absolutely amazing! Seeing them run – I’m sorry, FLY – 26.2 miles around Boston and Cambridge was just incredible. The top finishers ran every mile of the race under 6 minutes – Deena Kastor ran every mile from 15 to the finish line under 5:40. Magdalena Lewy-Boulet – an absolute unknown from California – held the lead until mile 23, sometimes by over a minute twenty seconds! She originally qualified for the Trials as #44 out of 150 with a time of about 2:42:38 (Deena’s was 2:19:36), and even with Deena on her heels, she still came in second at 2:30:19 (Deena came in at 2:29:35). IT WAS INCREDIBLE! Such an exciting race.

Just as fun was sitting on the sidelines with the press-only bib list of runners and everyone around us saying, “Who the hell is 43??! You with the list – who the hell is that! Someone time how far she’s leading by – where’s Deena?!” Deena “showed up” and decided it was game time at about mile 15; Magdalena’s minute-plus lead suddenly became Kastor’s playground. At one point the jumbotron near the finish line split to show Magdalena and Deena at about mile 20, and Deena’s legs were flying at almost twice the speed of Magdalena’s (or at least it looked that way). It was almost funny, as if it would be pointless to even mention to Magdalena, “hey, uh, just so you know, Deena Kastor just cut your lead in half in the last three miles, may want to kick it.” Kastor became a machine. Not that Magdalena’s performance was anything to scoff at. But I mean, crushing a minute-plus lead with straight 5:23 miles in the last ten miles of the Olympic Trials Marathon… who does that? Kastor, obviously. Fantastic.

I actually didn’t get to see the finish line though because my intern duties demanded me to be in the Athlete Recovery Tent… which I found to be just as intense, if not more, than the finish line. The first runner I came in contact with was Kate O’Neill. She had been training with Deena Kastor and was favored to claim a top-three spot to make the Olympic Team, but something happened to her knee and she dropped out of the race. As I walked into the recovery tent, she was laying on a table while someone examined her knee, and her face was so pained that I didn’t even want to talk to her. “Dropping out was never an option,” she told her mom as tears were streaming down her face. This was one of those times I decided to ignore my boss’s instructions to “Go get Kate and bring her back out here for interviews!” “Media ethics” prevailed over my portfolio and “the public’s right.” Eventually though, Kate hobbled up, put on a smile and walked with me outside of the tent to a swarm of reporters. Brave woman. I would have told the reporters to buzz off unless they had an ice cream cone.

Now “technically” I wasn’t even supposed to be in the Athlete Recovery Tent. My boss though, must have thought I was looking especially trustworthy and inconspicuous that day, so she shoved me through the flaps with a list of runners to retrieve. Meanwhile I also had four of my own runners to get on the phone to newspapers around the country. I know, this all does not sound too difficult, but considering that every one of these women had just sprinted 26.2 miles, most were cramping to the point that they couldn’t walk, some couldn’t walk, the only way to identify them was by their numbers (which most of them had torn off), and, understandably, all of them wanted just to speak with their families and coaches and go home – task then not so easy. Thankfully only one of my four runners declined a phone interview, and the reporter from Maine that I connected to Kathleen Castles (#110) is not only writing an article from my pitch letter, but also is going to use the photo I took of Kathleen for the Maine Current!! Honestly, I’m more excited about having my shot in a paper than any of the other three interview clips. Maybe I chose the wrong major…

Speaking of noteworthy runners, I also got to interview Emily LeVan of Wiscasset, ME, whose three-year-old daughter was recently diagnosed with Leukemia. Emily decided to run the Trials as a fund-raiser for her daughter’s treatment, and you can check out her and her daughter’s story (if you didn’t catch it on NBC nightly news!) at http://twotrials.org/. I talked to her at a press conference this past Thursday and told her about my running for the Leukemia and Lymphoma society, Dad, and my injury, and we had a nice heart-to-heart about the mental stress of running for a loved one (and the consistency of traffic lights in Boston versus Maine). She’s lovely, and did a fabulous job in Sunday’s race too – finished 67th with a time of 2:45:45.

In other news, I got an email from the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society today – my final fund-raising count is $7,139.00! Pretty much blew the $4,000.00 goal right out of the water HURRAH! This past week though, was tough at times. Being that I’m interning for the Boston Athletic Association, I had to drive the Boston Marathon course this past Wednesday to pass out “spectator guides” to places along the miles and let me tell you – the course is beautiful. The beginning in Hopkington is really nice, rolling hills, trees and lakes. Then it runs from town center to town center, surges up heartbreak hill and into the city. Thankfully one of my coworkers from the gym did the drive with me, and we actually ended up having a lot of fun. The company was great – I was only sad a bit of the way. This Monday was difficult at times as well, but I took the job of screaming above everyone else for any Team in Training runners I saw quite seriously, and furiously rang my cowbell until about 4:00pm. As of now, my number is deferred until next year’s Boston Marathon, but as to whether or not I’ll end up running – stay posted. Either way I will be back to conquer the marathon again some day, just exactly which marathon is up in the air. How about 2012 in Denver? If all goes as planned… (more on that later).

Now, what’s to become of my blog? After graduation (May 18th!) I will be spending the summer working my butt off in Boston at the Allston BSC until my apartment lease runs on on August 31st, quickly dropping into Chicago for a “hello,” back to Maine for my cousin’s wedding September 6th, then by the 8th, off to Europe for a few months of “shoe-string” exploration. I have a number of friends all about England, one in Geneva, and my best friend Jess is going to be living and working in Brussels, so I have plenty of places to stay and travel from, (though I’ve heard that the Brits do not enjoy peanut butter and jelly sandwiches so I may have to bring a jar lest I don’t discover another form of “cheap travel food” =). The final goal around December is to make it to Sydney to visit my best friend from middle school who moved there before high school, and hopefully stop in New Zealand to visit my friend Josh. Then it’s back to the U.S. just in time to depart in some sort of service abroad program.

I’ve never been to Europe before (or anywhere abroad! Besides Canada…), and I can’t even tell you how excited I am to go. I’m even going to sell the Beep (the Jeep, tear!) before I leave. One thing is for sure though – before I leave I am going to have to invest in a few huge memory cards for my camera; there’s no way I’m making it through even one month abroad with my father’s genes on 1,000 photos. As for 2009, the Peace Corps is – as of now – looking like my best option. Since high school I’ve toyed with the idea of an extended service abroad program, and the more I examine my past few years and think about those ahead, PC just seems to fit. They’re government run, so they defer your student loans (!!), I can use my communications/PR/psychology/IR/anthropology studies in one of their programs, and they have an association with a number of colleges around the country for graduate schools. PC clicked for me recently when I was examining the graduate schools that they partner with a bit further; throughout my four years at BU, I have endeavored to combine my communications/public relations major with psychology, anthropology, and international relations classes to mold my major into more of an “international business and culture communications” realm of study. The PC is associated with three graduate school’s for communications, and the University of Denver’s program that is paired with the PC is titled: “International and Intercultural Communications.” Aka, “we made this program specifically for Amanda S. Wybolt so get here.” Done and done.

So there’s the life plan as of 5:16pm, Earth Day 2008. I’ll keep the blog updated to let you know for sure =)

Again, thank you all so much for your fantastic efforts and contributions in my effort to raise money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society in memory of Dad. Even without running, we did one heck of a great thing raising all of this money, and if all goes well, our efforts will help to save a family or two from the pain and loss we all went through, and continue to feel everyday.

I hope to see all of you soon, or at least before I set off this September! In avoiding getting too emotional before I go into work this evening, we’ll leave it there (for now).

Love,
Amanda