Joan Benoit is born in Maine in 1957. She wins the Boston Marathon in 1979 and again in 1983, when she also sets the course record. In 1984 her knee stops her: she has arthroscopic surgery only seventeen days before the US Olympic trials. Yet in Olympia, Washington, she wins anyway, in 2 hours 31 minutes 4 seconds. On 5 August 1984, in Los Angeles, the first women’s Olympic marathon in history is run: Joan wins it in 2 hours 24 minutes 52 seconds, several hundred metres ahead of Grete Waitz.
What does sport science say about stopping? In 2018 seventeen international experts signed, in the International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance, a consensus statement titled «Recovery and performance in sport», born from a symposium held in Germany in September 2016. The document describes recovery as a multifaceted restorative process, physical and psychological, to be balanced against training, competition and the other demands of life.
Among its practical points: recovery should be programmed as an integral part of training; responses vary from person to person and within the same person, so there is no single recipe; and improvement does not come from a high quantity of recovery activities, but from quality and individualisation.
A note of caution: it is an expert consensus document, not an experiment, and it concerns athletes; it says nothing about Joan Benoit or her knee, and we do not know how she managed her own recovery. Extending it to everyday life is our own reasoning, not the authors’ conclusion.
A suggestion of our own, not the study’s: if a pause is needed (for pain, tiredness, an overly full period), put it in your diary as you would an appointment, with a day and a length. Stopping to heal does not mean giving up: it can be the way to reach the next start in shape to run.
And you, which restart is only waiting for a little trust? Tell us in the comments: your story may give courage to someone else.
Sources
- Kellmann M. and 16 other authors (2018). Recovery and performance in sport: Consensus statement. International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance, 13(2), 240-245, DOI 10.1123/ijspp.2017-0759.
- Joan Benoit Samuelson, encyclopedia entry, for the account of the Olympic trials and the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic marathon.
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