On November 6 she will pursue the $130,000 overall top prize
that goes to the first man and woman finishing the 26.2-mile race through
Staten Island, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and Manhattan.
Deba has the runner’s resume to be considered among the top
five in the elite women’s field at the 2011 New York City Marathon.
Last June she won the Rock n’ Roll San Diego Marathon in
2:23:31, blazing the first half of the downward course in 1:09:53. Three months
earlier she won the Honda Los Angeles Marathon. Last year she was victorious at
the Twin Cities and Grandma’s marathons in Minnesota.
But the New York City Marathon is a demanding 26 miles, 385
feet (42.195 kilometers), with five climbs onto bridges, that runners seeking
fast times typically avoid in favor of running over relatively flat courses in
Berlin or Chicago.
Still Beyi insists if the weather is pleasant, Deba has a
good chance of beating the New York City Marathon course record of 2:22:31.
“In San Diego she ran the first 5K in 16:0-something,” he
said. “Her 10k time was 32 minutes, she was on world-record pace. Then until 23
miles, she was on sub-2:20 pace.”
The husband-coach told Tadias that he first met Deba when
she was age 13, and a year later attended one of her races, positioning himself
along a clearing about 400 feet from the finish line.
“Buzunesh was second, a good distance behind the leader,
when she came by,” said Beyi. “I shouted ‘Go, go, go’ the next thing I knew she
began to run faster. She passed the other girl and won the race.”
“When I congratulated her after the race I asked her how did
she manage to pass the other girl so quickly?,” he continued. “She said, ‘You
gave me power. You are my power.’”
The pre-New York marathon training through which Beyi led
Deba peaked this autumn at 130 miles a week covered in two-a-day workouts. In
recent days, Deba began tapering to about 90 miles a week with robust-morning
and easy-evening sessions.
“Nutrition is very important for running a marathon,” Beyi
said. “Marathon training is very hard, you have to eat properly. Up to one
month before the marathon we ate a lot of meat and injera, but injera makes you
heavy. Now we eat mostly vegetables, with a little chicken and some lamb soup.”
Deba gives a lot of credit for her success to Beyi — both
his training and cooking.
Beyi, a world-class athlete, competes less now because of a
medical condition and instead focuses on coaching Deba. Quite a cook also,
friends say, Beyi said he prepares their meals so Deba can stay off her feet
after training.
For Deba, the ascension was gradual to becoming a legitimate
contender at one of the World Marathon Majors – a series held in Berlin,
Boston, Chicago, London and New York.
Arriving in New York on an athlete’s visa in 2007, her early
performance was hampered by chronic ankle problems.
With uneven success, she competed across the country at
various races. It was not until September 2009 that Deba ran her first race
over a 26.2-mile course — The Quad Cities (Iowa) Marathon — and won.
She found her winning stride, and with coaching from Beyi
and altitude training in New Mexico, victories followed at the 2009 and 2010
California International Marathon as well as in Minnesota, Los Angeles and San
Diego.
Deba is at the precipice of becoming a marathoner with wide
recognition. She has been besieged with media requests – already interviewed by
The New York Times and The New York Daily News about the upcoming race.
If Deba is successful in her bid to win the New York City
Marathon, it would mark the first time a female runner has left her homeland as
an adult and rose to world-class status on the North American road-racing
circuit. Only Khalid Khannouchi, who was born in Morocco and lived first in
Brooklyn and then in Ossining, NY, has done that to date, winning the 1999
Chicago Marathon in a world-record time of 2:05 42 that since has been broken.
Meb Keflezighi, winner of the 2009 New York City Marathon, was born in Eritrea
but as a child moved with his family to the United States — growing up in San
Diego.
With a victory in New York, Deba would take a big step from
a network whose members survive by the same pattern she had followed in the
U.S. until this year — racing here and there, virtually anywhere, to secure
enough funds to support themselves and send home to family in Ethiopia.
More than dozen Ethiopian runners living in New York and
Washington, D.C., are pursuing with season-highlight anticipation that New York
City Marathon race-within-a-race from which Deba is attempting to move on. For
them there is still gleam in the prospect of being the first city resident or
New York Road Runners member to finish, and the money that comes with the
distinction.
Pride unites the network of Ethiopian runners who live in
and around New York, training in Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, Rockefeller
State Park in Tarrytown and in Manhattan’s Central Park.
The pride is both for their homeland and in their
resettlement in a country that offers greater opportunities — if they can find
them amid all the competition from other Ethiopian nationals not to mention
Kenyans, East Europeans and other ethnic groupings on the running circuit.
Friendships survive the race competitions, in which one runner’s
success often means another’s failure in monetary terms ranging from several
hundred to thousands of dollars.
Schadenfreude is a reality after each race, with everyone
getting to share in it at some point as they hope for better for themselves in
their next competition.
Should Deba fail in her quest to win the 2011 New York City
Marathon, there will be a fair amount of schadenfreude among her friendly
rivals within the Ethiopian running community of New York. However, if she wins
there will be much greater joy and pride.
That is the manner in which relations within the network are
affected by the hands of fate. One’s success is shared; one’s failure means
there is opportunity for some other runner to move up.
The New York City Marathon brings local media attention to
the running community each year. The scrutiny has not always been embraced by
its members.
Nearly three years ago Village Voice reporter Graham Rayman
extensively interviewed Ethiopian and Kenyan runners living in the Bronx for a
post-New York City Marathon story. Rayman and photographer Jesse Reed spent
days into weeks interviewing and photographing the runners in their homes as
well as at training grounds in Van Cortlandt and Rockefeller State parks.
The result was a front-page story with a full-page picture
of Ethiopian runner Abiyot Endale, who has photogenic looks to match his
athletic prowess. However, Photoshopped onto the bib of Endale’s running outfit
was the headline: Will Run For Food.
The Ethiopian running community in New York was outraged.
Kassahun Kabiso, a Bronx runner who was featured in the
report, noted Rayman had befriended the runners and they had accepted him and
his photographer into their homes and apartments. “He was our friend,” Kabiso
said at the time. “Maybe his editors changed the story.”
Rayman did not respond to a request for comment sent to his
email account at the Village Voice.
The article, published December 17, 2008, is still viewable
online along with additional comments but sans the cover photograph shown
below.
The Ethiopian running community in New York is still
stinging from the article, and wants the world to know that while their
lifestyle is not luxurious neither is it impoverished.
“That was a bad article,” Beyi said shaking his head after
leading Deba through a training session last week.
Endale and Derese Deniboba, who live at a Perry Avenue address
in the Bronx that for the past six years has been home for Ethiopian runners,
note that while they may live four people to an apartment the conditions are
clean and well-maintained, if Spartan.
Deniboba recently recalled a conversation he had last summer
with his absentee landlord.
“He called me over and said, “You know, you are not like the
tenants I used to have. You guys are quiet, and never cause any trouble. Where
are you from?”
“I told him Ethiopia,” said Deniboba. “Then he asked, ‘What
you do?’”
“I told him we are runners,” added Deniboba. “Then he said,
“You guys are disciplined, you are in good shape. None of you are fat. I think
I will take up running, too.”
Deba is running the New York City Marathon for the glory and
the money.
Her six-figure annual earnings and a $40,000 Mizuno
sponsorship, along with a 2011 Honda Insight hybrid car that was part of her
prize for winning in Los Angeles, has her and Beyi preparing to buy a house in
their adopted city — as she pursues United States citizenship.
Should Deba not win the New York race, but finish second,
she would earn $65,000; plus bonus. A third-place finish would net her $40,000,
fourth $25,000, fifth $15,000, sixth $10,000, seventh $7,000, eighth $5,000
ninth, $2,000 and 10th $1,000; all plus bonuses.
November 6 very likely will be a big payday for all the hard
work and discipline Deba has put in every day the past few months, including
rainy days on which Beyi suggested she rest but she insisted on going out and
running in the rain for hours.
“I will do my best,” Deba said this week with a confident
smile, which may have been a bit of humility coming from a runner who, when
asked by a reporter after winning the 2009 California International Marathon at
what point did she know she had won the race. she replied: “At the start line.”
http://www.tadias.com
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