Win or lose at this morning’s 36th annual Cherry Blossom 10-mile run, Catherine Ndereba has her sight set on one day this year — Aug. 24 — the women’s Olympic Marathon in Beijing.
“[Cherry Blossom] is a good tuneup for the Olympic preparation,” said the 35-year-old Kenyan, who splits training between Nairobi and the Philadelphia suburb of Norristown, Pa.
“I’m not doing a spring marathon,” said Ndereba, bypassing the Boston Marathon, a race she won four times (2000, 2001, 2004 and 2005). “According to what I had done last year, I decided not to do a spring marathon. I did the world championships in August in Japan and New York in the fall. If I ran a spring marathon and then the Olympic marathon in August, that would give me four marathons in 12 months, and that’s a lot on my body.”
Ndereba would have considered Boston and its $100,000 first prize, according to her agent Lisa Buster.
“We haven’t been invited in three years,” Buster said. “She’s interested though.”
Instead, Ndereba and her team of Buster and coach El-Mostafa Nechchadi have decided to return to the District for her second appearance at Cherry Blossom. In the 2004 race, she was pitted against Kenyan Isabella Ochichi, fresh off a world record 5K performance at Carlsbad, Calif., a week before, and ended up about 53 seconds back in second.
Just four months later, Ndereba won the silver in the Olympic marathon in Athens.
She already has been named to the Kenyan Olympic team, by virtue of her victory at the 2007 World Championships in Osaka, Japan, and by medaling in the 2004 Games.
After a half-marathon in Montreal on April 20, Ndereba’s schedule leading up to Beijing will consist of a steady diet of speed workouts and races, Buster said.
On her schedule thus far is the Bloomsday 12K (May 4), probably a 10K in Jersey City the next weekend, the Great Manchester Run 10K in England (May 18), a 10,000-meter race at the Kenyan Prison Championships, as she is employed as a Chief Officer 1 (May 30/31), a half-marathon in Sapporo where she is two-time champ (June 15), a 10K in London (July 1) and then whatever tweaking she might need for the Olympics.
“I’ll just kind of do 10-milers, 10Ks and two half-marathons before Olympics,” Ndereba said. “I’m here in America for a month and two weeks, then Kenya for a month, then back here for month and a couple weeks and then to China.”
Buster hopes the months of July and August in Norristown are hot and humid in preparation for Beijing.
But Ndereba is not concerned about conditions in China.
“The heat and pollution, I know it’s there, and I know everybody is talking about it, but it’s something that we cannot do anything about,” Ndereba said. “What I can say is that it is a factor we cannot control so we all have to train, and it’s going to be hard for all of us.”
August will be Ndereba’s first time in China, and she said she wanted to do the Beijing marathon once but decided to miss it because of the SARS scare.
Known as “Catherine the Great,” she has earned the title. Only one woman — Paula Radcliffe of Great Britain — has covered 26 miles and 385 yards on foot faster than Ndereba’s 2:18:47 at Chicago in 2001, at one time a world best. Only Radcliffe has run more sub-2:20 marathons — four to Ndereba’s three.
The gold medal is important to her, but it’s not all-encompassing.
“Yah, it’s very, very important, but it’s not like if I don’t get the gold I’m a failure,” said the married mother of a 10-year-old. “It’s 50-50 whether I get the gold or not. You have to be flexible.”
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