The Atlanta Constitution from Atlanta, Georgia • 90

Atlanta journal DTHE ATLANTA CONSTITUTION 6-C. SUNDAY, JULY 3, 1983 The Norwegian schoolmarm who has rewritten records and helped establish the women's marathon as an Olympic sport is recognized simply as By Jack Wilkinson Staff Writer HI .1 ill I 1UW I Wl i "1 0 Vf 1 .4 obliged to run. I was already in New York." And she ran, and finished second, 15 seconds behind Anne Audain, last year's Peachtree winner. It was only the second time Waitz had ever lost on the road, but, she insists: "I never felt so good about getting beaten in mrr'" life. After the first 400 meters, I knew I didn't have iUS But I did my best and felt good about finishing second As Audain led Waitz through Central Park, the spectators unknowingly shouted, "Joanie, go Joanie!" They didn't know who Audain was.

Naturally, they -assumed anyone who was beating Crete on the road must be Joan Benoit. When Audain crossed the finish line at Tavern on the Green, she then stopped, turned, waited for Waitz and applauded for Grete as she came in second. That is the esteem that even one of the best road runners in the world has for Grete Waitz. And afterward, Audain approached a race She was carrying a copy of the yearly L'Eggs poster, "Could you please take this to Grete and ask her to autograph it for me?" Audain said. "But don't tell who it's for." Yet if the top runners still revere Waitz, some no longer fear her as they once did.

Times change; Grete now has some competition on the road. "If this was 1978 and 1979, 1 could win road races with just my track training," she said. "Not now. But the competition's good. Now, it's hard to guess who's going to win.

Before, you could guess who would win before the race. In one way, I think it's good. "It takes the pressure off. I felt so much pressure to win races before. Now, there are so many good it's hard to pick.

Some people have a hard time accepting that, though. If I lose, they think something's wrong, I had a bad race. I say, 'No, I ran a good race, she just ran Yet surely no one will run better than Waitz on Monday, when she runs her first Peachtree. Audain is not defending her 1982 victory, and Wai'z is coming off a victory in the Cascade Run Off in Portland, where she ran 48:43.9 for 15 kilometers. "This is the first year I'm not running track this summer," Waitz said.

"Now, I've more or less quit track. It's very hard to combine track and the marathon. I enjoy road racing a lot, and now I just don't have the basic speed to run track. Not only on the track, but on the road, too." After Peachtree, Waitz will return home to Oslo and continue training for the first World Games, in Helsinki in August. Neither Benoit nor Roe will run the marathon there, but Julie Brown will.

So will Grete Waitz. "I feel I can't let a big race like that miss," she said. "I might be hurt for the Olympics. And I'm not getting younger." She will turn 30 on Oct. 1.

Waitz may run New York again, depending on her ir recovery from Helsinki. But she won't run the uphill Boston course next April. "Unless," she said, grinning, "they run it the opposite way." This year, Waitz was on a 2:23 pace in Boston when her quadriceps tightened up coming downhill from Heartbreak Hill. She dropped out with 2Vi miles to go. This spring, she was on the other side of the Atlantic when Benoit shattered the world record.

Next summer, though, it is hoped both Waitz and Benoit will be healthy and in Los Angeles for the Olympics. .1 "I think it's great," Waitz said of the first women's marathon in the Olympics. "I just wish I was six years younger. But I wish they had added something longer than the 3,000." Women will also compete in the 3,000 meters in LA. 1 In past Olympiads, the 1,500 was the longest race for women.

"It's ridiculous," Waitz said. "There are so many women who would do good in the 5 or 10 (kilometer runs), and they have to choose whether to run the 3,000 or marathon. The 3,000 is more for milers. "I don't think it's fair that most people (Olympic officials) who make these decisions are old, conservative men. Now, it's changed, but it's changed so slowly." For that, and for so much more, women can thank Grete.

She is sitting in a restaurant in Colony Square, lunching on a sprout-smothered salad and a baked potato, and listening to a question about her place in history. Crete Waitz will have none of this the history, that is, not the sprouts. But her brother, John, knows. He nods his head as Crete is asked if she realizes the crucial role she has played in establishing, and popularizing, women's long distance running. John knows his sister has indeed made herstory, not history.

"That's what people say," Grete Waitz said. "But I don't think so. I'm just happy that people have accepted the fact that women can run more than two laps around the track." Now, hundreds of thousands of women run marathons around the world. Next year in Los Angeles, women will run the marathon in the Olympics for the first time. On Monday, around 7,000 women will run the 14th Peachtree Road Race.

Grete Waitz has played a significant part in all of this. No woman has had more of an impact on women's running than Waitz, the former schoolteacher from Oslo, Norway, who is a five-time world cross country champion and a former world record-holder in the marathon. Back home, she is revered as a Norse goddess, one of those special people who are immediately recognized by their first name alone. Indeed, when Waitz runs in meets in Norway, she is simply introduced, as she steps to the starting line, as "Crete" (pronounced No last name is necessary. And now, it is so in this country, too.

But it was quite different on an October morn in 1978, when Grete Waitz stood in the toll plaza on the Staten Island side of the Verrazano Narrows Bridge. To most people that day, Waitz was an unknown. Indeed, she still remembers the race number they gave her: No. 1173, hardly a fitting number for a women about to break the world record in the marathon. But by the time Waitz crossed the finish line in Central Park, the million spectators who lined the race route knew who this gangly blonde was.

Grete, simply Grete. And Grete became synonymous with' the following New York City Marathons, and the sister L'Eggs Mini-Marathon, the run in Central Park each spring. She always set world records irrboth races. MICHAEL PUGHStafl HARATHOK WOMAN: Grete Waitz, the toast of Norway and the world. But two years ago, Waitz had to drop out of New York in the middle of the race, and New Zealand's Allison Roe went on to win and break Waitz's world record with a time of 2:25:29.

When Waitz won again in New York last fall, Roe didn't run. And last April, wher Waitz tied Roe's world mark, she knew it wouldn't last long. "Actually, I ran 2:25:28," Waitz recalled of her victory in the London Marathon. "But it was 2:25:28 and a couple of hundreths, so they rounded it off to 2:25:29. Everyone was excited, but I said, 'Calm down, there's another race And that race was the Boston Marathon, for which Joan Benoit was obviously primed: she obliterated the world record with a time of 2:22:43.

"It didn't surprise me," Waitz said. "I predicted 2:23, but she ran faster than I thought." A month later, Waitz ran a race that was as remarkable as Benoit's Boston, but for different reasons. "At L'eggs this year, I shouldn't have run," Waitz said. "I got a cold, I went to New York and it got worse." She held her forefingers up to her nose. "Sinuses.

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