Lafayette Journal and Courier

Class trains for marathon miles
By Tanya Brown

April 26, 2006

It's 3:30 in the afternoon and while most students are in class, Emily Lynch is running.

It's cold, colder than it has been for some time in West Lafayette, and each time her foot slaps the wet asphalt track, she draws a gust of chilly air into her lungs.

Her cheeks are red, her blonde hair, drawn up into a ponytail, is starting to frizz in the wet air.

She calls out to her professor through sharp breaths, "How far do I have to run?" and when he calls back, "Four laps," she ducks her head and keeps going.

Lynch is one of the pack: An entire class of Purdue University students is training for the Meijer Derby Festival Marathon, a 26.2 mile race in Louisville this weekend. Participation in the run represents different things to each of them.

For Lynch, 22, it's the chance to do something she never dreamed she could do.

"It's something I want to cross off my life's list of things to do," she says, smiling. "I'm not a runner, but I'm doing it now. Anybody could who trained like this."

Michael Flynn, an avid runner and a professor of health and kinesiology, began offering the marathon class several years ago as a way to combine a sport he loved with solid physiological course work.

Students aren't required to run a marathon to pass the class, but the majority -- unless held back by injury -- do so.

"The Derby Festival marathon has conveniently fallen at the end of the semester each of the last three years," said Flynn, who will be running right alongside his students for the first half of the race.

"There are about 7,000 people who run the half and fewer than 1,000 who run the marathon."

Flynn, who normally runs the entire race, dropped back to the half this year.
His students, he said, still have youth on their side.

"It's pretty extraordinary the number of miles this class will have accumulated over the semester," Flynn said. "Some are probably doing 35 to 40 miles a week. The more advanced students are up to 50 or more."

For the first time this year, the marathon course will veer off Louisville's Fourth Street and bring contestants around the track at Churchill Downs.

"They'll run about a half mile or so on the infield because I think the main track would be too sloppy," he said. "So that will be fun for them."

For most, simply finishing is the key. Most aren't professional runners. This year, only two out of 20 have run a marathon before.

They'll learn first-hand what it means in the runner's world to "hit the wall," and the trick for the majority will be running through the pain of it, the utter fatigue of energy drainage, to the very end.

"My husband is coming to watch," says Alli Cipra, 24. "I can't wait for that feeling, of seeing him and getting that incredible feeling when I finish it."