Sylvia Ruegger used to be a Canadian household name and if you know your marathon history you will know that she remains the Canadian Women's Marathon record holder after 26 years. In 1985 Ruegger won the Houston Marathon crossing the finish line in 2:28:36 and now the IAAF (International Association of Athletics Federation) is trying to rescind it and other records held by women including the world record of 2:15:25 set by Paula Radcliffe in 2003.
Why you ask? Because the IAAF feels that these records were aided by male pace bunnies and therefore should not stand. They feel only records set in women's only races or in races that start the elite women first. While Sylvia isn't bitter she feels that the time of the IAAF would be better spent going after drug cheats then changing the rules 26 years after the fact. Her point is if you are going to allow pacers, what difference does it make what sex they are. "Go after the dopers. There's assisted, right. We did it clean. We did it on hard work and sacrifice. If one of those guys wants to come and look at all my journals of what I did, the price I paid to run that time, it was not because there was a guy running in the race, it was because I ran 200 kilometres a week and gave up everything else."
A pacers job is to keep the runner on task, not too fast and not too slow, allow the runner to draft and then to peel off at a designated point to allow the runner to finish. In record setting efforts, a pacer or pacers can hold a designated pace for a shorter period of time requiring the record setter to finish the last few miles unaided. The argument for women is that using male pacers they can often hold the pace all the way to the finish line giving the runner an unfair advantage. In an article posted on
www.womentalksports.com they ask the question, "Does it matter?" Does it matter that women training and racing with men makes them faster? "Each gender can learn from the other whether it's in increasing speed and strength or improving balance, technique and flexibility." John Craig, managing director of Athletics Canada states, "To me, the sex of the pacesetter is irrelevant. It just doesn't make any sense to me. It's not a male or female thing. It's a pacesetter thing. You either allow pacesetters or you don't."
The beautiful Niagara Falls International run was held last weekend with four distances. In the 5k were Allison Latchford (42:28) and Debbie Leblancq (38:59), while Tina Kearney (5:25:30), Dave Boyko (3:35:14) and Patrick Conlin (4:59:48) ran the marathon. In the half marathon were Keith Robinson (2:05:52), Alexi Pelanne (2:01:58), Christina Jones (2:18:12), Jay Moxness (1:25:06) and Julie Soule (2:08:26). In the 10k were Rita Zeran (1:12:45), Ian McPherson (46:57), Karen McPherson (55:24), Tanya Eybel (50:53), Cynthia Norman (1:16:17), Karen Haveman (1:15:46), Kimberly Suurdt (1:07:21) and Deborah Vreugdenhil (1:19:15).
