Posted: September 27, 2005

Athletics: Samuelson To Run Twin Cities Marathon

From David Monti

© 2005 Race Results Weekly, all rights reserved RaceResultsWeekly.com

The Twin Cities Marathon announced today that Joan Benoit Samuelson would line-up for their race this Sunday in Minneapolis.

Samuelson, 48, the 1984 Olympic Marathon gold medalist, will be trying to qualify for yet another U.S. Olympic Trials as she competes simultaneously in the U.S. Women's Marathon Championships and U.S. Women's Masters Marathon Championships.

Samuelson has not run a marathon since jumping into the Honolulu Marathon in December, 2003 on a whim. A guest at the race, she was having trouble sleeping and decided an hour before the start to run (the race began at 5:00 a.m.). In humid conditions she clocked 2:53:54. An Achilles injury has curtailed her running the last two years.

Also entered in the TCM is Mbarak Hussein, the Kenyan-born American who at age 40 is the favorite for the overall victory on Sunday, which would be worth at least $38,000 in prize money ($5000 for an all-comers' victory, $25,000 for the U.S. title, $5,000 for the U.S. masters title and $3,000 for the all-comers' masters title). In Philadelphia two Sundays ago, Hussein ran a pending U.S. masters record of 1:03:23, equivalent to a 2:13:04 marathon. He's clearly the strongest, most experienced marathoner in the field, three times the winner of the Honolulu Marathon. He has a lifetime personal best time of 2:08:10 set in Seoul in March, 2004.