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Kenyan, Ethiopian triumph, but Rice ex Wade makes strides on women’s side
The Ethiopians and Kenyans are at the top of the food chain when it comes to running long distances.
They’re the New England Patriots. Everyone else is the Texans, bravely aspiring to be competitive, to prove they deserve a spot at the table, too, while outside observers chuckle under their breath.
And while there would be no break in form in the Chevron Houston Marathon on Sunday morning — a Kenyan man, Dominic Ondoro, and an Ethiopian woman, Meskerem Assefa, won their respective races — a for-real Texan, as opposed to a nicknamed one, at least attempted to crash the party.
Becky Wade is from Dallas, and her current training base is Boulder, Colo., but she made her bones as an elite runner competing for Rice. And on this dreary, damp day, Wade parlayed the “home field advantage” into a hugely satisfying, uplifting third-
place finish. Among the women, only Assefa and the runner-up, defending champion Biruktayit Degefa, covered the 26.2 muggy miles through the city’s center at a faster pace than Wade.
Yes, they did reach the finish line in Discovery Green well in front of her, Assefa in 2:30:18 and Degefa another 26 seconds back, with Wade crossing more than five minutes later in 2:35:57. Nonetheless, in what she labeled “a comeback” from the biggest setback of her career, Wade served notice on the course, then later said as much from the podium, that she’s conceding nothing to anybody, all those gifted East Africans included.
At 27, Wade insists there’s still plenty of time for her to “bridge the gap.” And re-energized, she’s determined to put in the “ton of work” it’s going to take to be taken seriously.
“I think it’s possible,” Wade said, sounding like she was channeling the Texans when they were asked about narrowing the great divide that separates them from the Patriots. “This was a really big step toward my re-establishing myself as a strong marathon runner. It was only my fourth marathon, and I learn something from every race, (taking) a little pressure off. The more I do, the better chance I’ll have of being able to mix it up with the strongest runners, and I think I’ve got eight to 10 years of serious running still ahead of me.”
Wade profited from an intimate understanding of the toll Houston’s often oppressive humidity — almost 100 percent Sunday — can take on an endurance athlete, and she strategized accordingly. Rather than try to hang with the Ethiopians in the early stages, she chose instead to lie back, then “pick off ” as many of her rivals as she could as the race wore on. The goal going in had been to finish between fifth and eighth place. Coming in third? That was the bestcase, pie-in-the-foggy-sky scenario.
“I’m very happy,” Wade said. “Today was a blast. This was one of the most fun races I’ve ever been a part of. My parents, my coach (Rice’s Jim Bevan), friends on every corner — I probably saw 40 people I knew — it was like a big reunion out there.”
Bounce-back year
About this time a year ago, she was sad, having staggered to a “heartbreaking” 85th-place finish with a 2:52:35 in the U.S. Olympic Marathon trials on a sultry 80-degree day in Los Angeles, after going in thinking a top-five showing would be possible. She believes she over-hydrated early, and that gave her “a stitch” in her side about seven miles out. Being the “type A” personality she is, she refused to quit, but the entire experience couldn’t have been more miserable.
Suddenly, Wade had lost her next-great-thing luster. There would be no trip to Rio and no more talk about her maybe being the most promising female American marathoner since Deena Kastor. In order to recalibrate, she thought she needed a change of scenery, and fortunately, her boyfriend, Will Firth, a former Rice distance runner himself, landed an engineering job in Boulder following his graduation last spring. But Bevan, the Owls’ cross country guru for the last 30 years and the man who recruited Wade to Rice a decade ago, continues as her coach from Houston, relying on frequent conversations and videotape Firth sends.
“You can’t force somebody’s learning curve,” Bevan said. “It’s got to come to them. At her very first marathon (Wade ran a 2:30:41 in Sacramento in 2013), conditions were perfect, so for her it was like, ‘Everything is awesome. Everything I touch is going to turn to gold.’ But you’ve got to pay your dues. She has struggled mentally. She put a lot of internal pressure on herself because she’s so good and all these people were looking at her.
“It takes awhile to process everything and mature. She’s a perfectionist. Although running is simple, when you’re carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders, you can’t run as fast. Today was the right injection of medicine she needed.”
During college, Wade spent time studying and training in Ethiopia, which gives her an honest perspective on the mountain she’s trying to climb. The running culture is deeply ingrained and presents a Tom Brady-sized challenge for American runners of both genders.
1 streak alive, 1 over
The 31-year-old Assefa became the 11th consecutive Ethiopian woman to leave Houston with the champion’s cowboy hat. The 28-year-old Ondoro, for his part, ended an eightyear streak by Ethiopian men, but he might have prevailed only because the twice-defending champion, Birhanu Gedefa, got stuck in Ethiopia because of visa problems. A farmer in Kenya, Ondoro said he’d use his $45,000 purse to possibly buy another cow (he has two) or invest in more land.
He separated from a group of four front-runners with about nine miles remaining and was never threatened by Yitayal Atnafu, who lost by 11 seconds to get stuck in the runnerup spot for the second year in a row. The last Kenyan to win was three-time champion David Cheruiyot in 2008. Ondoro was fifth and fourth in his two previous Houston visits, producing a personal course best of 2:09:40 in 2015.
Ondoro said he held off making his move until he was just shy of the 25-mile mark because of the difficult conditions and because “I know the other guys. They are strong. But we work together.” This time he had prepared for the race with “more hill work” because the Chevron course has a bumpy patch on Allen Parkway, thanks to the underpasses at Waugh and Montrose.
His 2:12:05, although the fastest on the course by 28 seconds, became the slowest winning time since 2005. Assefa’s winning time, in turn, was much slower than the 2:25:17 she posted for a third-place finish in 2013 and the 2:25:59 that made her the runnerup in 2014.
Still, the result delighted Assefa. Through a translator, she admitted feeling ill late because of menstrual cramps, and the breezy conditions proved challenging as well. On the homestretch, she glanced back at Degefa on several occasions, sensing a closing gap.
“I wanted to win and worked hard (to prepare),” Assefa said. “I concentrated on running fast today. It was difficult, but I didn’t want anything to stop me.”