Monday’s 115th Boston Marathon is a peak experience for most runners. Former University of Georgia stars Coco Miller (Dream) and Kelly Miller (Washington Mystics), twin sisters, ran their first marathon fast enough to qualify, but decided basketball outranks Boston.
After the Dream’s season ended in the WNBA finals last fall, we trained for a marathon where we live in the off-season: P.F. Chang's Rock ‘n' Roll Arizona Marathon in Phoenix. It was something we always wanted to do, plus we started a personal-fitness business, Kelly and Coco Sports Performance Training. We help build strength, conditioning, agility and overall fitness. Our workouts and nutrition are high priorities for us.
A marathon is very similar to basketball in terms of goal-setting. It requires a lot of dedication and perseverance. Basketball is a team sport, where other players are counting on you. In running, we push each other to do well.
The challenge is that basketball and running are at totally different ends of the fitness spectrum. A marathon is about endurance and aerobic capacity. Basketball's up-tempo pace requires such short-distance sprints. It’s more anaerobic.
As far as shoes, we play in Adidas and run in Mizuno. Both of us are size 9 1/2 women, 7 in men shoes. Thank goodness there are lighter shoes for running. Basketball shoes are much heavier and provide more stability for cutting and changing position.
We had run a lot in the past, but never that long of a distance. Ten miles, max, and we thought that was really, really long. Before the marathon, our longest run was 17 miles.
Fortunately we don’t have any problems with allergies, but being outdoors that long is a contrast to being in a gym. We like mixing it up.
On Jan. 16, we ran that race together and finished in 3 hours, 35 minutes. The cutoff for Boston for women our age (32) was 3:40. Running on that Monday would interfere with our basketball training, but hopefully after we retire from pro ball, we could compete in Boston. We’ve always followed it on TV. It’s fun to see how the top runners run 5-minute miles for that long -- 26.2 miles.
Just knowing we made the field carries over to our [WNBA] season. ... If you can do a marathon, you can do anything. It’s as much mental as physical.
-- Reported by Michelle Hiskey
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