There's no surprise in life if you know where you're goin'

I was watching the Bud Greenspan Olympic documentary  "16 Days of Glory" about the the 1984 Summer Games in Los Angeles. and the segment on Joan Benoit had few little nuggets of insight for me, buried in the overall arch of the story.

The big picture was that 1984 was the FIRST  time that women were allowed to compete in a race longer than 1500 meters. Joan had qualified for the Olympics 17 after having arthroscopic knee surgery with a time of 2:31:04, and won the inaugural Women's Olympic Marathon 3 months later with a time of 2:24:52. Amazing stuff.

The first little nugget was when Joan was talking about running the Boston Marathon in 1979.  As she was running, she asked a male runner where the infamous 'Heartbreak Hill' was on the course.  The guy gave her an incredulous look and said that she had finished it ...over 2 miles back.

The second nugget was during the Olympic Marathon segment itself.  There was a section of the race that took place on a closed section of the 110 freeway.  Joan said that when she was running this section,it reminded her of the solitude of her training runs back in Maine.  She had heard other runners complaining about this stretch of the race. Joan then said that hadn't looked at the race course before she ran...in fact she NEVER looked at a race route.  She enjoys the sense of discovery, the 'let's see what's around the next corner' feeling.

It really struck me.  We spend so much time and effort planning and researching, that sometimes we forget to just discover.  Don't get me wrong...Joan had done a MASSIVE amount training for this run.  She didn't just show up that day and start  running.  The race for her, was in her, not the course.

This is a song that pops up on my iPod when I'm running..it always makes me smile.  Now I have a better understanding of why.

Here are some great links about Joan Benoit Samuelson and the Bud Greenspan documentary 16 Days of Glory
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_Benoit
http://www.marathonguide.com/history/olympicmarathons/chapter26.cfm
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090559/