Unfortunately, Catherine Ndereba won’t be racing on Patriot’s Day this year. She has won the Boston Marathon 4 times, in 2000-2001 and 2004-2005. She has a muscle tear between her spine and femur.
The men’s race is also a little depleted, with current course record holder Robert Cheruiyot announcing a couple weeks ago that a hip injury has prevented him from being able to train and that he wouldn’t be racing.
The field still looks strong, though, with both Dire Tune and Salina Kosgei getting ready to toe the line along with Madai Perez and Teyba Erkesso in the women’s race, all of whom have run sub-2:24 marathons. The men’s race still has 7 people racing who have run under 2 hours and 7 minutes, among them Ryan Hall and Abderrahim Goumri.
(Hat Tip: NY Times – Elite Athlete Field: BostonMarathon.org)
It is a shame that Catherine had to pull out of Boston but she will recover and like she says, “Boston is every year; there’s always next year”! Love her positive outlook!
It’s great advice. “They’ll always make another marathon.”
For anybody that doesn’t notice, Stephanie’s name links to http://www.wincatherine.com -- she’s putting together a documentary.
There’s more information on her blog about the injury:
http://wincatherine.blogspot.com/2010/04/sad-to-report-catherine-ndereba-has.html