This is Part 2
Joan Benoit Samuelson is 54 years old. This amazing athlete is from Cape Elizabeth, Maine.
Ms. Benoit Samuelson is a marathon runner who won a gold medal in the 1984 summer Olympics in Los Angeles. This was the year in which women ran for the first time in the Olympics.
Benoit Samuelson still holds the fastest times for an American woman at the Chicago and Olympic Marathons. Her time at the Boston Marathon was the fastest time by an American woman at that race for 28 years.
Joan started running to help her recover from a broken leg. She was an athlete at Bowdoin College and then as an unknown entered the 1979 Boston Marathon. She won and beat the record. She set a record once again in 1983 which she held onto for the next 11 years.
Ms. Benoit Samuelson won the Falmouth Road Race (MA), which is a 7.1 mile run six times breaking the course record on four of those run.
Since her retirement from competitive running, she has written books including Running Tide and Running for Women, and has opened a running clinic. She coaches women's cross-country and long-distance athletes, and is a motivational speaker and sports commentator.
She founded the Beach to Beacon Road Race. This is a 10k (6.2 mi) race held in Cape Elizabeth, Maine each August that goes from Crescent Beach State Park to Fort Williams Park and Portland Head Light. The race attracts many of the world's top distance runners.
In 2003, at age 46, Benoit won the Maine half marathon, defeating a field dominated by runners two decades younger than she. Joan was faster than all but six men overall. At the 2008 Olympic Team trials, at the age of 50, she finished in 2:49:08, setting a new US 50+ record.
Benoit lives in Freeport, Maine with her husband, Scott. Her daughter, Abby, was a cross-country and Nordic Track skier at Bates College. She competed against her mom in a run in 2010. The race was one Joan runs every year - Freihofer's Run for Women. Abby mostly runs to keep in shape for Nordic skiing, her preferred sport. They went hiking after the race.
In August, 2011, their 21-year old son Anders Samuelson talked about the Kenyan runners he stayed with this year. “Their focus on what success can mean to their families and homes separates them from other distance runners.” Meet Anders here.
Read Boston runners invited to Kenya and
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