Super Siberia!

“In 1990, I was one of the first Westerners to run in the Siberian International Marathon. It was my 68th marathon and I set a personal best time of 2:45:35. I returned last year, ran again and raised my total to 83. This year I am running my 100th marathon. This will be a very special race for me and I want to celebrate it where it will mean something special. I could run it where I ran my first marathon back in 1981. That one took 3:15. I was so stiff afterwards I had to walk downstairs backwards for two days. But that race has changed its venue, so it wouldn’t be a true celebration.

Or I could go to Guildford, where I broke the 3-hour barrier for the first time in 1984. I also won there in 1989: but the Guildford Marathon has not been run since then, so I can’t go there. Guernsey Marathon also holds special memories for me. I won my first ever prize there in 1988 and returned there the following year to complete my 50th marathon and run a then PR of 2:45:46. Alas, that one too is no longer run.

So then I thought of going overseas. New York was my first foreign race but it is also my slowest to date (4:13 in very hot and humid weather), or maybe back to Boston. But I want to go there in 1996 when they have their marathon centenary. Paris perhaps, or Moscow?

In the end I rejected all these options. Instead I decided to return to Omsk. It may not be the most accessible place or the most glamorous. The road surface is not the smoothest nor the scenery the prettiest. But it is the friendliest. Nowhere else have I been given flowers during the race. Nowhere else have I made friends who have written to me regularly during the year. Nowhere else have I felt the same warmth and encountered the same generosity as in your city.

So, I will be back. I will run my 100th marathon in Siberia, and I will celebrate. I hope you will celebrate with me.”

Race organiser Dimitri Khodko tells us that Fred Lebow, AIMS Vice-President Emeritus, accepted an invitation to Omsk for the 1992 race and was hoping to run the half-marathon. Dimitri sent us photographs of the first Siberian Christmas Half-Marathon, run on 29 December 1991. About 70 runners aged 16 to 62 took part in “typical Siberian weather” – temperature of –16C, sunny and dry.

The runners wore tracksuits and wool caps, except for two hardy Siberians, who ran in shorts. First man back was Andrei Lavrikov (1:20:55) and first woman Galina Kuragina (1:31:15). The race is to be run again on 7 January 1993 – the Orthodox Christmas holiday in Russia.