(October 30, 2011, NY Times International Herald Tribune)--Most mornings, Buzunesh Deba does as thousands of other running-mad New Yorkers do: she jumps out of bed, laces her sneakers and heads to the park. And once she starts running, the questions from astonished strangers begin.
“They say, how come you are so fast?” said Deba, a tiny, bright-eyed 24-year-old who moved here from Ethiopia six years ago.
Deba is no casual weekend jogger. After finishing first this year in the L.A. Marathon and the San Diego Marathon, she is a contender to win the New York City Marathon on Nov. 6.
While many of her fellow elite marathoners decamp to sunnier, higher climes in Arizona, New Mexico, California and Europe, Deba has stayed in New York to train, sharing sidewalks with the amateurs who make up most of the city’s jogging population.
For runners in Central Park in Manhattan and Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, where Deba does most of her training, it is a little bit like seeing Rafael Nadal practicing ground strokes on the next court.
Some bystanders pepper Deba with questions about proper form. Others ask her what they can do to become thinner. (She tells them to run more and eat less.)
“Here she is, every day, on our streets and in our parks, and people don’t know she’s one of the best in the world,” said Mary Wittenberg, the director of the New York City Marathon.
Deba is also in striking distance of a singularly local honor: if she wins the marathon, she will be the first person living in New York to do so since the race expanded to all five boroughs in 1976, according to Wittenberg. FULL ARTICLE AT The New York Times »
“They say, how come you are so fast?” said Deba, a tiny, bright-eyed 24-year-old who moved here from Ethiopia six years ago.Deba is no casual weekend jogger. After finishing first this year in the L.A. Marathon and the San Diego Marathon, she is a contender to win the New York City Marathon on Nov. 6.
While many of her fellow elite marathoners decamp to sunnier, higher climes in Arizona, New Mexico, California and Europe, Deba has stayed in New York to train, sharing sidewalks with the amateurs who make up most of the city’s jogging population.
For runners in Central Park in Manhattan and Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, where Deba does most of her training, it is a little bit like seeing Rafael Nadal practicing ground strokes on the next court.
Some bystanders pepper Deba with questions about proper form. Others ask her what they can do to become thinner. (She tells them to run more and eat less.)
“Here she is, every day, on our streets and in our parks, and people don’t know she’s one of the best in the world,” said Mary Wittenberg, the director of the New York City Marathon.
Deba is also in striking distance of a singularly local honor: if she wins the marathon, she will be the first person living in New York to do so since the race expanded to all five boroughs in 1976, according to Wittenberg. FULL ARTICLE AT The New York Times »
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