Lewy Boulet: 'I Did Not Plan to Be Alone'

SF Bay Area runner, Magdalena Lewy-Boulet of adidas-Transports, qualified for the Olympic Marathon on Sunday.
Lewy-Boulet (right) beside winner Deena Kastor

April 20, 2008

By Toby Tanser
Photo by Jeff Dengate

It was the hard worker's way -- mile after mile grinding away, really and truly running her own race. Her face locked in a stern, determined fashion, with one mission, one goal: to make the team.
Two weeks before the U.S. Olympic Women's Marathon Trials, Magdalena Lewy Boulet, 34, PR'd on the track, racing to a third-place finish in the 10,000 meters at Stanford, clocking 32:33. A great time to hit a PR, if you have done the marathon training. But knowing that Magdalena is coached by Jack Daniels, and has been since the 2000, you just knew she had done that training.
The real journey began with the offer of opportunity, one that she is quick to reflect upon with every word. The opportunity of America. The daughter of Janusz, a long-distance trucker, and Lucja, a mother who holds a degree in agricultural studies, Magdalena grew up in Katowice, Poland, under a Communist regime. In 1988, following her father who had gone ahead to make the journey possible, she moved to Kiel in the north of Germany, before ending her voyage for freedom in Long Beach, California, in 1991.
"I actually started running because I realized I could get school paid for if I ran," she says. And run she did, straight onto a track scholarship at Berkeley. On September 11, 2001, she became a U.S. citizen at a shortened ceremony in San Francisco. "I was expecting a three-hour ceremony," she says. "It was five minutes. They said, 'Get in the car and go home.'" She learned about the tragedy of 9/11 on the car radio.
Soon after, she married Richie Boulet, a 3:53 miler, and started prepping for the 2004 Trials. That race proved to be disappointing as she finished fifth. "I did not run my best race. I blew it between miles 23 to 24," she says. Shortly afterwards, she started a family -- but never lost her Olympic dream.
Fast forward four years. The mother of Owen, three years old next month, had been leading today's U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials for well over two hours. It was a perfect day for running: bright, crisp skies with temperatures in the mid-50s.
"I did plan to run the pace I was running," says Lewy Boulet, "but I did not plan to be alone." And alone Magdalena was, maintaining a lead straight from the gun. Both race winner Deena Kastor and the third-place finisher Blake Russell professed that they had not recognized it was Lewy who made the early break from the large pack that stayed glued together. “If I had known…,” they both mused.
Running alone was not a problem for Lewy; that's how she does all of her training, either on the roads or on the treadmill. Due to her busy life, that's just the way it plays out. "I get up very early in the morning to run. I always have been working full time when I have been running. Before my current job (working as a coach at Berkeley for the men's and women's running teams), I was in the sports nutrition world." Her husband, who holds the family marathon PR with a 2:25 (“that’s one of my goals!”), also works more than full time too -- he has a couple of running stores, called Transports, in Oakland and Berkeley.
When a smooth-running Kastor ultimately caught her at mile 23, Lewy Boulet did not worry. "Because of the criteria course I knew I had about two minutes on Blake, and with two miles to go I knew I could still run six-minute miles and get on the team." As EPSN commentator noted on the finish line, "Even when she slowed down, the wheels did not fall off. That is when you could see she is a strength runner... she never even hit a six-minute mile."
Kastor professed that she thought Lewy Boulet was going to win the race; she was looking so strong. Kastor would have been content with that (“I had succumbed to second place”). Magdalena also thought she could pull off the win when she was zipping along. "I kept on hearing one minute forty, two minutes... but I knew Deena would be coming. When the crowd stopped telling me the time, I knew it was close."
If Deena was the overall winner, then Lewy Boulet should get the architect's prize for making the race. George Hirsch, chairman of the New York Road Runners, who was out in the sun on Boylston Street, marveled at Lewy Boulet at the mile-eight point. "She looks amazing, like a machine," he said.
It was a mechanic performance as her style from gun to tape remained the same; a marathon's fatigue could not falter her stride. "The marathon was planned months ago. I knew I would be running 5:30's to 5:40's the whole way. I planned to pass half way in 1:15; I think I was 1:14 something."
When she crossed the finish line, there were tears in the eyes of not only Lewy Boulet but her husband as well. "We both cried; it was just the moment."
The moment: A Polish immigrant and an American citizen minted on 9/11 now going to Beijing to represent the U.S. in the blue-ribbon event of the Games. "I'm really proud of myself. There was something my husband and my coach said to me, 'The race is not going to come to me, I'm going to have to go out there and get it.' "
Get it she certainly did.

Courtesy of Runner's World