	products recent interviews FastScripts archive about ASAP Sports

Our Clients:

Browse by Sport

Find us on

Subscribe to RSS

Click to go to
Asaptext.com

View our
e-Brochure

ING NEW YORK CITY MARATHON

November 5, 2006

Deena Kastor

NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK

THE MODERATOR: Sixth place at a time of 2:27:54. Let's go ahead and open it up to questions.

Q. Can you talk about why you didn't race frequently as a lead-in to New York?
DEENA KASTOR: I was really focusing on this race. I missed my summer season due to some back and I guess biomechanical problems, not feeling well running. So I cancelled my track season. Just realized I've been traveling a lot this year, even though I didn't race very much this year and I was traveling a lot and decided that I needed to stay home and put the training in for this race.
I really had high hopes out there today, and it put in a tremendous amount of focus to try to win here and it continues to be my dream. I'll definitely be back to try again but really the main reason I haven't put in races leading up to this is because I wanted all of my competitive energy going into competing here in New York City and staying at home, traveling out of Mammoth Lakes is quite a production. We live three hours away from the nearest airports. I didn't want to do any travel, just stay at home and put in the training for this marathon.

Q. Can you talk about the relatively slow pace early on, and about the break and when the break was made and how that affected your race?
DEENA KASTOR: Tactically this was a very strange race. I can only attribute it to the fact that there was so many -- so many respectable women out there that everybody was just waiting for somebody else to make a move. I wanted to stick with where the masses where in the first half of the race, and it was a mistake in hindsight, a mistake not to go with her at the halfway point when she broke away again.

Q. How did you feel when Kathryn started to pull away?
DEENA KASTOR: When Kathryn started pulling away, another mistake. When you get sixth place, there's a lot of mistakes that add up. Another mistake was to the going with Kathryn and another point in the race I felt terrible. I had to go to the bathroom at that point. Kathryn pulled away, or the three women pulled away, and I didn't really feel good to go with them. And about a half-mile later when it was too late, I started reeling them back in and then I could tell on my catch and seeing where they were that I was catching them again, and then waited again after that. So it was just kind of going through the ups and downs that is marathoning, and they just happened at the wrong time today.

Q. You said that you would come back to try and win; will you continue to make this race the focus now in the future, since you want to be the leader at should point?
DEENA KASTOR: The question was in regards to continuing to come back here to try to win this race. It is definitely a focus of mine and a dream of mine, the ING New York City Marathon was my first marathon in 2001 and immediately made me a fan of the sport. But also having the Olympic games coming up, that is going to be the focus in the next year, as far as putting my races together.

Q. Is it too much, I mean, there's so much attention on the American drought and you being the favorite of the Americans, is that too much to carry around with you in addition to trying to win your own race?
DEENA KASTOR: I don't look at it as pressure. I put myself out there, stating that it was my dream to win this race and that I was working all year for that goal.
And I never feel pressure from anybody. I like to think of it as support and I like to feel that I've got a tremendous amount of support from the New York Road Runners, the New Yorkers themselves and from everybody that's covered this race, I feel like people have put a lot of faith in me and I'd like to live up to those expectations, and I'm going to fall short sometimes. But really, I think of it as a genuine support system that I have and I appreciate it a lot.

Q. Not to go too far into the bathroom issue, but you brought it up, was this a stomach thing?
DEENA KASTOR: The question was, my stomach issues and not going with Kathryn. It comes and goes and it's happened in marathons before. But they seem to come at better times.
Today it was just bad timing. My drink didn't settle well. Once it settled, I was ready to go and wasn't able to make up the ground I had already lost.

End of FastScripts

ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297