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TCS NYC MARATHON

November 3, 2016

Janet Bawcom

New York, New York

Q. Are you ready for your favorite position, fifth place?
JANET BAWCOM: Oh, my goodness.

Q. Or your favorite time, 2:37?
JANET BAWCOM: Both of those won't be too bad. Fifth place, 2:37, you never know.

Q. You should be fast coming off the 10,000 meters, right?
JANET BAWCOM: No.

Q. Dathan ran 2:07 after not making the Olympic team.
JANET BAWCOM: You never know. It's New York.

Q. It's not as fast as a lot of other courses.
JANET BAWCOM: Sure. But I'll get out there and do the best I can for sure. Just compete.

Q. If Mary Keitany goes off on like a crazy, like faster than half marathon pace, will you go with her, or are you going to try to stick with whatever pack?
JANET BAWCOM: No, I am going to stick with the pack that I think I can run with.

Q. Have you talked to any of the other runners?
JANET BAWCOM: Not really because we just got here late last night, and then we had breakfast, I ran, and then I'm here. We'll get to chat.

Q. How was Rio?
JANET BAWCOM: I didn't go to Rio.

Q. Oh, sorry.
JANET BAWCOM: Oh, well. Fifth place wasn't good enough.

Q. Do you think of yourself as a marathoner or half marathoner?
JANET BAWCOM: Just a long distance runner.

Q. Is there any kind of tactic on Sunday for you to gun to be -- like will you be watching the other marathoners on Sunday to try to get ahead of them?
JANET BAWCOM: Not really. Maybe 50-50, but at this point, I'm just going to probably just run my own race and see if there's anybody around that I can work with, with the Americans, and then see what we can do and try to be top five. That would be great.

Q. Top five overall?
JANET BAWCOM: No, American.

Q. Top Five American.
JANET BAWCOM: Yes.

Q. You were fifth last two Olympic trials in the marathon.
JANET BAWCOM: Yes.

Q. Why haven't you run more marathons?
JANET BAWCOM: That's a good question. So I actually like to race the roads a lot, but when you do a marathon, you got to take some time off and wait for a while before you come back and do another one and do it really well and successfully. So I guess I've just enjoyed doing the circuit so much, and it's paid off for sure.

Q. You like racing, and in marathons you wouldn't be able to race as often?
JANET BAWCOM: I do, yes.

Q. Is it economic? Can you make more money by running shorter distances?
JANET BAWCOM: Yes. In my case, yes, I feel like financially I probably did better, but you never know. The marathons are pretty good if you win. In New York, it's a great payday. But I think I didn't really get my mind in that.

After 2012, I thought I would do more, and I had a few injuries. With injuries, you can't really train successfully and run a marathon, but I could get away with the shorter stuff. At 38, hey, I'm still going.

Q. How do you feel this buildup has been for you?
JANET BAWCOM: It's been okay. I will not say I kicked it out of the park, but from August I was doing really well. Then I had some hamstring issues, and I was trying to do the faster stuff at the beginning and then do my longer stuff towards the end, and every time I would get a setback, so I just focused on doing more tempos and long runs and just doing all the strength work I can do. So if somebody will go 5:25, oh, well, too bad for me, but you know what, I think I have done the best I could just to get strong and see what the East Coast can give me on Sunday.

Q. Is that something that comes with age, not being able to hit those faster speeds as you get up there in age?
JANET BAWCOM: I don't know because this is the first time I've been 38. I don't know. I see Deena running 2:27, Meb making the Olympic team. So I don't think so. I don't think so, but it's probably a bump on the road.

I feel like I have to be a little bit careful now. I can run a race weekend in and weekend out, but recovery is taking a little longer than when I was 30, but I think I can still do it. I was hitting those paces in February. I was running five ohs the beginning of this year. So I don't think that's the biggest thing.

Q. You said hamstring issues. When did those go away? When were you healthy again?
JANET BAWCOM: September. So I made a mental note to just take it easy and get healthy before I go back to training for sure.

Q. And you said that hitting those faster paces, you hadn't had issues before. You were hitting the faster paces in workouts before the trials, right?
JANET BAWCOM: The hamstring issues started actually after the trials, and I had it at the World Half, which I can't say, oh, it's because of that that I cannot run 5:10 pace because I was running 5:10 pace before the World Half. So it's just something, it just got irritated for some reason in August. I came back out of it, and I think I have enough strength stuff to get me through the race on Sunday.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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