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Lead Stories: Sunday, July 20, 2008

Josh Cox: Carpe Diem
(Elite Athlete Blog - Entry #2)

Posted February 6th, 2008 at 3:15 PM by Josh Cox

Section: News & Results, Marathons, Motivation, Olympics, Elite Athlete Blogs, Josh Cox

Check back every other Wednesday for his latest entry and for more information about Cox, also please visit: www.joshcox.com

In ‘97 Cox ran and won a 50-mile ultra, in ’99 he ran his first marathon making him the youngest Trials qualifier. The following year he clocked 2:13, which opened the door for him to train with the world’s best in Kenya. Cox has tried his hand at Reality TV, been all over magazine covers and is a fixture in the sport.

CARPE DIEM

“If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven played music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.”
- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Baptist minister and civil rights leader

“It is a sad fate for a man to die too well known to everybody else, and still unknown to himself.”
- Francis Bacon, English philosopher and statesman

“Never, never, never quit.”
- Winston Churchill, Author, soldier and Prime Minister

October 1980, Paul David Hewson and his band - formally known as “Feedback” and “The Hype” - had just released their first full-length album, Boy. Their single “I Will Follow” climbed the UK charts and their star was born. Around that time, the band joined a religious group in Dublin, the Shalom Fellowship. Time passed and some of Shalom’s leaders began criticizing the bands “involvement in the world.” The leaders told the band that in order to please God they would have to give up rock ‘n’ roll.
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DFMC Team: A Worthy Challenge for the Fleet of Foot

Posted January 30th, 2008 at 11:09 AM by Jeremy Sussman

Section: News & Results, Marathons, Columns, SPOTLIGHT

Training for the Boston Marathon certainly provides runners with the experience of a lifetime and countless health benefits. Some even run fast enough to help improve the health of others.

The Dana-Farber Marathon Challenge (DFMC) team is looking for qualified runners who want to add a new dimension to their training by running for others as well as themselves. Runners who have run a qualifying time at a certified marathon after Sept. 23, 2006, can join the DFMC team and run to raise money that supports researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. These researchers have taken on another type of challenge: Curing Cancer.

Each Challenge runner agrees to raise at least $3000 by May 21, 2008, a sum that is easier to raise than most think. The average amount raised per runner in 2007 was more than $7000 and 100 percent of the money goes to the Claudia Adams Barr Program in Innovative Basic Cancer Research at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
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Boston Marathon Executive In Personal Cancer Fight

Posted January 3rd, 2008 at 6:00 PM by David Monti

Section: News & Results, Marathons

The executive director of the Boston Athletic Association, Guy Morse, announced to his staff today that he was recently diagnosed with prostate cancer. The B.A.A. is the not-for-profit organization which owns and manages the Boston Marathon and other athletics events.

“Clearly, we are fortunate to work and reside in the Boston area,” Mores wrote to his staff in an annual goodwill message. “On another, more personal level, this is even more evident to me as I was recently diagnosed with prostate cancer, as some of you are aware. After that surprise and several weeks of research and second opinions, I have now begun my own marathon of sorts, an aggressive six month treatment protocol under the direction of The Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Brigham and Women’s Hospital.”
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NYC Firefighter & Marathon Coordinator Victor Navarra Succumbs to Cancer at 56

Posted December 31st, 2007 at 10:30 AM by David Monti

Section: News & Results, Marathons

Victor Navarra, the retired New York City firefighter who was the start coordinator of the ING New York City Marathon for 25 years, died this morning after being in a coma for two days. He was 56 and had suffered from cancer which had begun in his sinuses.

“The more someone gives in life, the harder it is to lose them,” said ING New York City Marathon race director, Mary Wittenberg, in a prepared statement. “Vic was a giver. In every way. Of his time, energy, emotions and passions.”

Although he was retired, Navarra volunteered to work at Ground Zero after the attacks of 9/11 in 2001, spending long hours on “the pile” as the rescue workers called the massive heap of rubble left after the World Trade Center was brought down. In 2005 he was diagnosed with malignant tumors adjacent to his sinuses. Efforts to eradicate the cancer failed, and Navarra’s health was failing in the lead-up to this year’s marathon. Nonetheless, he was still engaged in the planning process and was still at the start of the race despite losing his eyesight to the cancer.
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Athletes on Performance- Enhancing Drugs Risk Harming Their Children

Posted November 30th, 2007 at 4:10 PM by Jamal Walker

Section: News & Results, Nutrition, Supplements, Health & Fitness, Drugs In Sports

Some people think that we should let athletes take performance- enhancing drugs because they think that these athletes can only harm themselves and do not harm others. We already know that anabolic steroids can cause liver damage, heart attacks and strokes, and that growth hormone causes heart attacks by causing the heart muscle to outgrow its blood supply. Now a two-year study of former East German athletes shows that athletes who take these drugs can harm their children.

In the 1970s and 80s, almost all government sponsored East German athletes were forced to take anabolic steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs. A study of 69 children of 52 of these athletes showed that seven had birth defects and four
were mentally retarded, an unusually high incidence for a group of this size. More than 25 percent had allergies and 23 percent had
asthma. The women suffered 32 times the normal incidence of miscarriage and stillbirth, 25 percent suffered cancer and 61 percent had therapy for mental disorders. The study was conducted by Dr. Giselher Spitzer at Humbolt University in Germany.
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JOSH COX: Interview Excerpts

Posted November 1st, 2007 at 9:30 AM by Adam Jacobs

Section: News & Results, Marathons, Olympics, Special Features, Interviews

Below are textual excerpts from my interview with U.S. Olympic Marathon hopeful JOSH COX.

NOTE: To listen to the interview in it’s entirety via Episode 99 of The Final Sprint Podcast, please click here.

In the interview Cox talks about a multitude of topics, such as: Sunday’s U.S. Olympic Men’s Marathon Trials, his comeback, his father’s battle with cancer, their father-son relationship, faith, his “calling”, GodTube, Team Running USA, the transition to Mammoth, and much more!

On Competing in Sunday’s U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials:

“I’m gonna run November 3rd like it’s the last 26.2 miles of my life”

“[Once I’m at that start line] - I’m gonna let it rip. A lot of guys are motivated by a lot of different things but I am running this [race] for my Dad.”

On His Comeback – Physically, Mentally and Emotionally:

“I’m excited that I am excited about running again which is something I hadn’t been for the last two years.”

“I was basically the fat kid when I first showed up to Mammoth] … I am just getting’ my butt handed to me daily by Meb”

“My Dad told me, ‘Just be faithful with what God has entrusted in you’ … [and now when I run] that’s what this is all about.”
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Wildfires Force Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure Postponement in San Diego

Posted October 29th, 2007 at 1:00 PM by Martha Jones

Section: News & Results

Due to the wildfires in San Diego County, the Komen San Diego Race for the Cure which was scheduled for Sunday, November 4, has been postponed to Sunday, December 2, 2007.

“We want to make sure that the most healthy and secure environment is available to all involved” said Race Chair, Samm McDonald.

The event will take place at the same location as previously planned - Balboa Park’s west side near 6th and Quince.

For more information, please visit: InMotionEvents.com

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TFS News Briefs: 10/22/07

Posted October 22nd, 2007 at 1:55 PM by Jimmie R. Markham

Section: News & Results, Marathons, Track & Field, Olympics, TFS News Briefs

Back and Batons: Classical Music Festival to Coincide with Olympic Trials
The Oregon Bach Festival, a two week classical music festival of “choral-orchestral concerts centering on the music and wide-ranging influence of J.S. Bach,” will coincide next year with the U.S. Olympic Track & Field Trials. OBF executive director John Evans said, “I see this as a long-term investment, with the festival reaching out to a broader state-wide audience year on year, while presenting leading Portland-based artists and ensembles here in years to come.” Read more at: [DailyEmerald.com][Oregon Bach Festival]

Journalist asks “What’s a Runner?”
Journalist Natalie Sayewich (right), a staff writer at the Sun Journal in New Bern, NC struggles with the question, “what’s the difference between someone who runs and a runner?” as she prepares to compete in her first 10k race this coming Saturday. Read more at: [New Bern Sun Journal]

Race for the Cure Weekend
The annual Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure nationwide event was held this weekend to raise money for and awareness of breast cancer. Check out some of the hundreds of articles on Google News. Read more at: [Google News]
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Note on the News: Lance Armstrong in NY Times

Posted October 3rd, 2007 at 11:15 AM by David Monti

Section: News & Results, Marathons

Lance Armstrong was in New York City yesterday to speak with the media on the 11th anniversary of his cancer diagnosis. As reporter Frank Litsky explains in today’s New York Times, Armstrong will once again be running the ING New York City Marathon to raise money for the anti-cancer Lance Armstrong Foundation.

“I’m shooting to break three hours again,” said the seven-time Tour de France champion. “I think I can do it, I hope.”

You can read the full story here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/03/sports/othersports/03lance.html

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English marathoner Jane Tomlinson dies after 7-year battle with cancer

Posted September 4th, 2007 at 3:20 PM by Martin Kennedy

Section: News & Results, Marathons

Jane Tomlinson, who defied terminal cancer for seven years by running marathons, entering triathlons and cycling vast distances while raising large sums for charity, has died, her family said Tuesday. Tomlinson, 43, died Monday night at St. Gemma’s Hospice in Leeds, her home town in central England.

She was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 1990. Ten years later, she was told the disease had spread and was incurable, and that she would die within six months. She continued to work as a nurse and, despite the effects of chemotherapy and other treatment, she pursued a grueling exercise program.

She ran three times in the London marathon and was said to be the first terminal cancer patient to finish the race. She ran once in the New York Marathon and competed in an Ironman triathlon in Florida completing a 180-kilometer (112-mile) bike ride, a 4-kilometer (2.5-mile) swim and a full marathon within 17 hours.
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