Part Eight - Houston Marathon

Jean Driscoll: Today is January 20th. Today is the day before my debut race after breaking my leg. I'm doing the Houston Marathon tomorrow.

Narrator: Training in Houston has given Jean a chance to become re-acclimated to the road. She has not pushed long distances outside of the roller room in over five months. This morning she does eleven miles of technique work. She practices cornering at high speeds and putting long sequences of strokes together. She is also getting used to her new chair. The chair is so new it hasn't had a chance to be painted her trademark Wisconsin cheese-yellow.

Jean Driscoll: I'm anxious about the distance. It's been a long time since I've done this many miles at one time. But with positive imagery and lots of rest, I should have a good day tomorrow. I'm not real sure if there's going to be other women here. I kind of hope there's not and I know that sounds horrible because when you're competing you need competition. But this is my first race back and I mean, I kind of hope there's competition here, but then again I kind of hope that I can race against myself and race against the clock. In my mind, I've already decided I'm going to be keying off the men and hopefully can be real close to them if not beating most of them.

Narrator: The morning of the Houston Marathon Jean finds she is the only woman at the starting line. But she still has to race against herself. She still wants to finish in less than two hours.

Narrator: For the first six miles of the race Driscoll keys off the men. But then she gets a flat tire. After fixing it with her spare, the other tire flats at mile ten. When Driscoll reaches the long overpass climb at the half way mark, she has already pushed three miles on a flat tire and she still has thirteen miles left to go. Driscoll finishes the Houston Marathon with a time of two hours and thirteen minutes, forty minutes slower than her top marathon speed.

Jean Driscoll: For the last twenty miles, I pushed at twelve or thirteen miles an hour. Sometimes, it fell to ten. Then I went through stages of being mad and then just working on my technique and staying with it. And the goal was to finish and I met that goal.