NEW YORK CITY MARATHON

November 5, 2000

Ludmila Petrova

LUDMILA PETROVA: Thank you.

LUDMILA PETROVA: I am very, very, very extremely happy to win here. This is my first win in a big marathon, especially considering the fact that there were so many great athletes running next to me, Fiacconi, Fernandez. I think that I was always ready for 2:27, 2:26 range, but probably wasn't training properly and getting ready for New York, I changed my training a lot. It obviously helped. Other things that helped is changes in my family. My husband -- her husband -- wasn't much of a help before. She has two daughters and she had to cook for them, cook for her husband, obviously for herself, clean the house, general women's work at home. Recently, her husband realized that something has to change and he started helping and as of now, she doesn't do any cooking at home, only communicating with her children, and her husband takes care of her. And I assume that he will take even more care after this. And part of this victory belongs to him, too, because of those changes.

LUDMILA PETROVA: Sergei.

LUDMILA PETROVA: Homework. (Laughter).

LUDMILA PETROVA: She use to stay here for two or three months at a time for training in Boston. But this time she changed completely. She came from Russia on Tuesday.

LUDMILA PETROVA: It is hard to explain, but the easiest way to say this is I think that I used to run too fast.

LUDMILA PETROVA: Too fast in training. So by the time the race was coming, she didn't have any energy left to exercise that shape. So now, I kind of cooled down, chill out in training, and apparently, there is more energy left for racing. There is energy left for marathons in particular, which as you might know, requires some effort.

LEONID SHVETSOV: I think it is a blood thing. Not only, just a rabbit, but a Russian rabbit. It was helping me psychologically, as if I was passing some force -- like may the force be with you. So that was the force that I was giving her. That's why I had to drop out at 21 miles. She was taking the force from me.

LUDMILA PETROVA: Well, if the husband behaves well, he'll get the car.

LUDMILA PETROVA: I'll keep the scooter.

LUDMILA PETROVA: It is a small town outside of Cheboxary.

LUDMILA PETROVA: 12 and 7.

LUDMILA PETROVA: Okay. I'll tell you its 160 centimeters and 45 kilograms. You do the conversion. The wind was a big factor for me, too, and there was -- well, try to run against the wind. I am very thin, slim, and it is easy to be blown away rather when you are a feather than when you are a brick. It moved me.

LUDMILA PETROVA: Its hard to remember. I remember it was a hard course, but this time, it was almost a new experience, because I felt different. Three years ago was more -- just more difficult.

LUDMILA PETROVA: It wasn't that much pain. It was just part of the nature, maybe it helps, I don't know. Sometimes it might be more pain in other races, but it wasn't that bad.

LUDMILA PETROVA: Yeah, there was some little bit of a side stitch, just for a short period of time.

LUDMILA PETROVA: I just tried to keep a fast pace and it happened. It wasn't really like accelerating. It was not accelerating. It was the others fading back. It was nice to break away, too, because big names were lined up and she felt much more comfortable running ahead of others.

LUDMILA PETROVA: I trained in high school and then I had a seven-year break in my running career, no running at all, and then after the birth of my second child, I felt some jealousy from the other runners in my area, and I decided that I wanted to do it again, at a very high level, and I started and it was the year 1994, so six years ago, and it turns out to reach that world-class level pretty quick. Two years after I resumed my training, my running I got to that level. I even had dreams about it.

LUDMILA PETROVA: Yes, I think that I just kept the pace hard and the Kenyan slowed down.