Subtitle:
The
Courage to Stand Up
Introduction, Preface
Posted
on 5/5/2023
By
Olivia Baker
Sometimes the longest races in life are not the ones
we run. They are the long term goals that we spend years pursuing, the
unexpected challenges on the road to success, and the struggle to hold out hope
in the face of adversity among many other things that come up in life. As a
distance runner, Kara Goucher's story is certainly one of many long races, but
outside the lines of the oval track there is an even greater story of surviving
abuse, standing up for others, and speaking truth to power that we would never
have known.
I chose The
Longest Run by Kara Goucher for the 16th installment of Runners
Who Read because I believe that this story needs to be shared. Aside from the
lessons that can be learned from an elite distance runner who reached the
pinnacle of the sport, there's a massive level of vulnerability and courage
that it takes to confront some of the biggest powers in sports through her own
story. To go to such lengths and take on the great risks that come with such a
task is a display of bravery and endurance that we can learn from in and of
itself, but to further fight to share details that otherwise could have easily
been swept under the rug suggests to me that this story holds a level of
urgency and importance in its need to be told. As co-writer and investigative
journalist Mary Pilon discusses in the introduction regarding the process of
writing this book, "Along the way, I often found myself wondering, Why did Kara speak out? Why did she keep
going, in the face of death threats and lawsuits? How does a person summon the
courage to take on an abuser, a company, an industry, with such dismal odds of
winning any sort of justice? Thanks to Kara, I now know the answer,"
(pg#XV). I, for one, would like to know too.
Discussion
Questions:
1. What
is the furthest distance you've ever run, walked, or jogged? Under what
circumstances did you go that far?
2. What
are you looking forward to about reading this book?
Subtitle:
Descent
into Disaster (mini-blog #1)
Chapters 1-12
Posted
on May 11, 2023
By
Olivia Baker
From an outsider's perspective, it can be easy to look
at the news headlines and have trouble seeing how Kara Goucher ended up in the
situation she was in. Many might go further to say "It could never be me. I
would never stay in a training group that walked in such an ethical gray area
both on and off the track." After all, how does one explain away questionable
ethical practices, drunk driving, and sexual assault at the hands of a coach
for so many years? Throughout the first few chapters of The Longest Run we begin to understand the factors that contributed
to Goucher's predicament:
Firstly, she felt like she had something to prove. After a disappointing final year at the University
of Colorado and an injury-riddled first few years as a pro, when the offer came
around for her to keep her contract and for her and her husband, Adam Goucher,
to join the Oregon Project under revered coach Alberto Salazar, she jumped at
the opportunity. Others had tried out and did not make the team, and she had
felt that she, the only woman on the team at the beginning was allowed to join
mostly because Salazar was interested in coaching her husband. Furthermore,
despite having the right to reduce her for not competing (due to injury), Nike
retained her contract and even picked up some of her medical bills. She had a
strong desire to prove that she belonged and a willingness to go to great
lengths to do so.
Secondly, her identity
was strongly tied to her racing results. As she began to rise to the top of
the sport during her early years at CU, she acknowledges "My self-worth was
tied up in my running times—a dangerous, double-edged sword. When I ran well, I
felt at one with the universe, that everything in life was going exactly how it
should be. When I didn't, my ego crashed with my race results, and something as
silly as literally running around in circles on a track would force me to
question my entire framework around life's meaning," (pg#24) Such a mindset,
that we've now seen expressed in one way or another in many of the athlete
memoirs we've read to date, leaves a person very vulnerable to abuse by tying
outcomes to identity itself.
Lastly, despite the horrific situation, Goucher still
found herself having plenty of success. Between
bouts of injury, she made world teams and was able to race competitively on
that stage. Having developed a keen ability to compartmentalize and focus on
her running after dealing with the loss of her father and loss of relationship
with her stepfather early in life, it was easy for her to push aside her
feelings that things weren't right in the face of accomplishment on the track.
Given these things and a plethora of other factors, we can start to see how Goucher ended up in this situation and how so many more like her possibly could if we don't continue to push for greater accountability at the highest levels of sport.
Discussion
Question:
1. Today's
quote comes from the beginning of the book. After beating her 6th
grade boyfriend in a race, rather than have his feelings hurt, he responded
with genuine congratulations. As Kara thinks back on this, she writes "Today,
there's lots of talk about how to raise and empower girls. That matters. But
when I think about how we need to raise boys, I think of Scott and how he handled
being beaten by his sixth-grade girlfriend." We've spent a lot of time talking
about creating a better environment for girls in sports at a young age through
the lens of parents, coaches, and girls themselves, but what role do young
boys, who often play sports alongside girls before puberty, have to play in
this discussion? What are some ways we can encourage young boys to make
sporting spaces more welcoming for girls?
Subtitle:
Know Your Worth (Mini-blog #2)
Chapters 13-25
Posted
on May 18, 2023
By
Olivia Baker
"If
you don't know your own value, somebody will tell you your value, and it'll be
less than what you're worth." - Bernard Hopkins,
former professional boxer, undisputed middleweight champion (2001-2005)
Throughout the middle chapters of The Longest Run by Kara Goucher, we read about the peak of her
career. Her 2007 season was highlighted by a World Championship bronze medal in
the 10,000m and American record in the half marathon in her first ever run at
that distance. She followed that up in 2008 with an Olympic appearance in both
the 5,000m and 10,000m and a third place finish in the NYC marathon—running the
fastest ever time by an American on that course and breaking Deena Kastor's
debut record time for an American. However, shockingly, behind the scenes of many
of these moments of great accomplishment was also great disappointment and
emotional abuse. Goucher writes, in many instances, about times that she placed
well, broke records, or simply gave it her all in a given race and it was
rarely good enough for her coach, Alberto Salazar, who was constantly finding
ways to tear her down.
After her magical marathon debut in New York, her
emotional high coming off of a great race was shot down quickly as her coach
emphasized her (very few) mistakes and decided to bypass all celebrations to go
home and get back to work for the next race (pg# 137). When she placed 3rd
at the 2009 Boston Marathon, in her second ever marathon, she was met with a
diatribe from Salazar scolding her and telling her that her performance wasn't
good enough and he was "so deeply mad at [her], which further twisted the dagger
of my own disappointment," (pg# 147). After placing 10th at the
World Marathon Championships, the highest finish for an American woman since
1995, she listened to her coach and performance director debate whether she was
"actually good at running" (pg#150).
Despite such emotional abuse at the hands of her coach
and trusted sports psychologist/performance director, Kara Goucher never let it
devalue her sense of self-worth. She fought for equal appearance fees to those
given to men of equal accomplishment at major marathons, most notably in 2009
at Boston. During her pregnancy, her impact in advertising provided hard data
to show the strong marketing value of female athletes who decide to give birth
during their careers. And, though she lost her battle with Nike to be paid for
the time she spent doing all of that advertising (due to a clause in her
contract regarding how often she had to compete), her outspokenness about this
issue helped pave the way for professional running contracts to have clauses
that allow female athletes to go through pregnancy without the suspension of
their pay. When other parts of her world were crumbling, Kara Goucher never
wavered in how much she knew she was worth and in doing so not just fought for
herself, but made way for the sport to be better for those who came after her.
Discussion
Question:
1. What
are some of the ways that we as a society tend to measure self-worth? What are
some ways that you remind yourself of your worth regardless of what anyone may
think?
Subtitle:
Why
Kara Spoke (Mini-blog #3)
Chapters 26-38
Posted
on June 6th, 2023
By
Olivia Baker
"It
struck me that if I was looking around and wondering why someone hadn't done
something, it might be a sign that I was the person who was supposed to do it." -
Kara Goucher, The Longest Run, (pg# 208)
In the introductory blog this month, before we started
reading The Longest Race by Kara
Goucher, I wondered aloud what could drive someone to have the courage to stand
up to her abuser, her former sponsor, and some of the biggest powers in the
running industry as a whole with such small odds of achieving justice and the
great risk of personal and professional ostracism. Now, I know the answer and
can truly see why she described this battle as the longest race of her life
thus far. However, before we get to that answer, let's take a brief look back
at the rest of the journey to this point.
After a years-long legal battle to be paid by Nike for
the year she did not compete due to pregnancy, both sides settled in private on
paying her for 6 months of that year, hardly a victory in Kara's mind
considering all she had done to elevate their marketing to motherhood and
femininity during that period. Throughout this time, she was also dealing with
multiple instances of sexual assault and emotional abuse from her coach,
Alberto Salazar that remained compartmentalized and unaddressed. Finally, in
2011 during the lead-up to the 2012 Olympics, Goucher began seeing more and
more evidence of what she believed to be doping by her teammates Galen Rupp and
Mo Farah, facilitated by Salazar. As the group performed at its peak in 2012
and prepared to expand and recruit more athletes, she couldn't bear to see the
cycle of cheating and abuse repeat itself. No one else around her was both
armed with enough evidence and willing to speak, so she took it upon herself.
A fierce supporter of clean sport, Goucher first took
her claims to the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) in 2015, motivated by a strong belief that the sport
deserved to be clean. She had seen too many anticlimactic medal upgrades,
missed opportunities to make World Teams, and athlete livelihoods burned to
remain silent. Shortly after going to USADA, she went to SafeSport to report the
abuses of her coach. Particularly seeing Jordan Hasay and Mary Cain, who was
only 17 at the time, decide to join the Oregon Project scared her. Through a
long trial and appeals process, countless interviews from running media after
races, and the trauma of facing her abuser in multiple court rooms, she finally
received some semblance of justice. In late 2021, Alberto Salazar and Dr.
Jeffrey Brown were handed 4-year bans from USADA and SafeSport further handed
Salazar a lifetime ban.
So why did Kara speak out? For justice, for future
athletes, and for the future of the sport she loves so dearly. The sport is at
least a slightly cleaner and safer space today in part because Kara Goucher
decided to share her story.
Note:
Neither Galen Rupp nor Mo Farah were charged with any anti-doping violations
and both have denied any wrongdoing.
Discussion
Questions:
1. Do you feel that in the end, justice was served in Kara Goucher's case? Why or why not?