Merv, and Rosa

Right outside the Hotel Gym, sits "The Griff" Merv Griffin's enormous yacht. I took a stroll and had a look. Must be nice.

45 minutes at 6 am on the treadmill this morning from Marina del Rey. This was the first time I used my iPod for exercise in over 4 months. It did help me to run stronger and make the workout on the treadmill a bit more interesting. Sunday is a recovery run of 8 miles and then next Saturday: 26.2 Miles!


Read about Rosa Mota:


As told by John Beach:

"Ten years after her elite marathon career ended, Rosa Mota has slipped quietly into the history books, not forgotten, but not the first name that comes to mind when discussing the best female marathoners of all-time either. In her era, Rosa Mota did not create controversy. She did not set any world records. What she DID do was win races, especially the biggest marathons of all: Boston, the European Championships, the World Championships, and the 1988 Olympic Marathon in Seoul Korea.Consistency was the hallmark of the diminutive runner from Porto, Portugal.She won the Boston Marathon on three occasions, in 1987, 1988, and 1990. Her times in those three Boston's were: 2:24, 2:25, and 2:25. She broke 2:30 on12 separate occasions, but the most significant statistic is that she won nearly two thirds of the marathons that she ran.Her lifetime PR came in a third-place finish, 2:23:29 in the 1985 Chicago Marathon (yee haw!), behind Joan Samuelson's 2:21. In 1988, she won the World Championship Marathon in Rome, then followed that up with the gold medal in Seoul, in which she surged with two miles to go to win by 13 seconds ahead of Lisa Martin. As for now, Mota says, " I run every day and sometimes twice a day. One hour in the morning and 45 minutes in the afternoon. Maybe I'll start competing again. I like to do charity events. I try to run with children and old people. (Did she really just say that? A good-souled elite runner…) I have been running small races in Japan for children who have cancer."A true ambassador to the sport, Mota won the 1998 Abebe Bikila Award for global contributions to the sport of long distance running. Asked about her biggest contribution Mota cites the effect her career had on other female runners in Portugal. And the people she met during her years as a world-class runner are her most prized possession. " If I was not a world class runner, there are so many people I would not have met. It's my friends that are most important. When I am finished as a competitive runner, they will always be my friends. "

Thank you for your moral support and donations in the fight against AIDS!

Total Training Weeks: 18.4
Total Training Miles: 298