New York City is buzzing today as everything is set for tomorrow morning NYC Half-Marathon. In five years, the race has quickly jumped to top status, and a pair of loaded men’s and women’s fields will toe the line tomorrow morning for the run from Central Park to Battersea Park. Tomorrow is forecast to be somewhat cold (mid- to upper-30s), perhaps warming a bit to lower- to mid-40s by the finish; hopefully, the breezes of this morning will not return. Boulder Wave has a dynamic group of women set for tomorrow’s combat. 2010 ING New York City Marathon champ Edna Kiplagat (Kenya/Nike) heads the invited field. Sunday will be Edna’s first international race as a Nike athlete since signing a three-year sponsorship deal with the company this winter. Yuri Kano (Japan/Second Wind AC/Mizuno) comes in off last Sunday’s cancelled Nagoya marathon as the reigning Sapporo Half-Marathon Champion. Yuri has never finished lower than 4th in her three times to run New York’s half. Adriana Pirtea (Romania/ASICS) brings a 69:59 PB and has been in fine shape after her 7th place in Osaka in January, including an impressive 25K piece while pacing last month’s Yokohama Women’s Marathon. Irvette van Blerk (South Africa/adidas) tore up the South African Half-Marathon Championships last summer to win in 71:09 at only age 23. And Fiona Docherty (New Zealand/ASICS), who is now in serious contention to make New Zealand’s 2012 Olympic team, looks to make a big improvement on her 74:20 PB, four weeks out from her appearance at next month’s Virgin London Marathon. Two of our men were set with invitations for tomorrow’s race, but Justin Young pulled out with knee problems, while Gilbert Koech focuses his energy on helping Edna’s final preparation. The New York Road Runners TV station will have a live broadcast of the race, beginning 7:30 a.m. EDT, Sunday, April 20th.
Boulder Wave Articles
Busy Weekend in Seoul, New York City, LA, and Boulder
Last Sunday’s Nagoya International Women’s Marathon was to have been the third and final qualification race for Japanese women to go to this summer’s IAAF World Championships in Daegu, Korea. With the earthquake and tsunami barely 24 hours old, race organizers and the Japanese Association of Athletic Federations made the necessary decision on Saturday afternoon to cancel this year’s Nagoya race. After several days’ discussion, all the while watching the devastation mount, the decision was made to use the April 17th Nagano Olympic Memorial Marathon as the replacement qualification race for Nagoya. While cognizant of the longer-term fundraising and attention that will have to be provided to Japan, throughout this past week a number of international race directors contacted me with their offers to do “whatever we can” for the Japanese women and the other athletes affected by last Sunday’s cancellation of the Nagoya Women’s Marathon. I informed our coaches and friends in Japan’s athletic federation about the quick kindness and generosity from overseas, no easy task for race directors whose invited athlete budgets had been depleted long ago for this Spring’s major races. Los Angeles, Seoul, Rotterdam, Vienna, London, and, of course, New York, had me relay their offers to our friends across Japan. Monday morning the first request came from Yuri Kano’s coach, Manabu Kawagoe, to see if it might be possible for Yuri Kano (Second WInd AC/Mizuno) to compete in this weekend’s New York City Half-Marathon. The response to my e-mail to Mary Wittenberg was nearly instantaneous. A clear and emphatic text back from Mary: “Absolutely. We will figure out Yuri and other Japanese.” Yuri has competed in New York City races more than any other elite Japanese athletes; Sunday will be her ninth appearance on the city’s roads. Very quickly, two other of this weekend’s major races followed suit. The City of Los Angeles Marathon has invited Eri Okubo (Second Wind AC/MIzuno) and Russia’s Albina Mayorova, both of whom were due to run Nagoya, while the Seoul Dong-A Marathon quickly arranged the logistics for Lidia Simon (ASICS) to travel from Nagoya to Seoul. For the other Japanese women, the response has been heartwarming…Rotterdam, London, and Vienna have put open offers on the table to accommodate the Japanese women if Nagano fails to take place or if any of the women decide against racing there. There is certain to be some big news as we work these invitations out next week.
Get acquainted with Diane Nukuri Johnson
Photo courtesy of Victah Sailer/PhotoRun
“Without running, I would be nowhere.”
One of our newest athletes, Diane Nukuri Johnson of Burundi and now Iowa, has quite a life story to tell. Several publications in her adopted home state of Iowa have covered Diane in the past few years, detailing her life’s story from running back and forth to school while growing up in Burundi, to her experiences in civil war at home while still a child, to her appearance at age 15 as Burundi’s sole female track and field athlete at the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games.
The articles track Diane’s education from catholic school in Canada, to Butler Community College in Wichita, Kansas where Diane was nine-time Juco national champion, winning two titles each in the mile, 3000 meters, 5000 meters, and half marathon, and one title in cross-country. Diane then made the transition in 2006 to the University of Iowa, where she blossomed under the tutledge of head coach Layne Anderson. Diane became the school’s first-ever regional champion and went on to place eighth at the 2007 NCAA Division I Cross-Country Championship Meet where she was an All American.
Diane is now a multi-lingual 25 year-old married college graduate. She is focusing her sights on a marathon debut this autumn, and longer term on the 2012 London Olympic Games. She still lives in Iowa City, training under Anderson’s direction. As she looks to the future and behind, Diane says on the importance of running, “without it, I would be nowhere. Running was my way out.” Fiona Fallon, a former Iowa teammate summed up Nukuri’s impact best. “She’s an amazing person on and off the field. She leads by example. We were brought up in our own world, and sometimes we may forget how much harder someone had to work to get where they are.”
See below for two stories with more details on Diane, as well as a pair of Flotrack interviews.
