Janet Cherobon-Bawcom scored fifth place in the womens’ Olympic Marathon Trials in Houston on Jan. 14, 2012.<\/p>\n
Cherobon-Bawcom ran the marathon \u2014 26.2 miles \u2014 in two hours and 29 minutes. The average time it takes for a woman to run a marathon, according to a New York Times article published on Nov. 2, 2009, is four hours and 43 minutes, which means Cherobon-Bawcom ran it in about half the time it takes the average woman.<\/p>\n
“I was so glad to get done,” Cherobon-Bawcom said. “Part of me was just like finally, finally I got a good race. I was just excited about it for sure. It was fun.”<\/p>\n
Cherobon-Bawcom graduated from Harding University in May 2005 with a degree in health management.<\/p>\n
Her personal best outdoor meet records are: 34:21.8 for 10,000 meters, 32:37 for 10 kilometers, 49:58 for 15 kilometers, 1:10:59 for a half-marathon and 2:29:45 for a full marathon. Her best indoor meet was 16:19.59 for 5,000 meters, according to the International Association of Athletics Federation.<\/p>\n
Cherobon-Bawcom began running in her early 20s in Kenya because she needed a scholarship to go to college, but originally she did not intend to keep running after she graduated from college.<\/p>\n
“[I thought] I’ll just hang my shoes and be done for … for forever, I guess,” Cherobon-Bawcom said. “Then I just kept going, bigger and bigger and bigger, until I ended up going to the Olympic trials.”<\/p>\n
When Harding gave her a track scholarship, she started running under the guidance of Coach Bryan Phillips. Steve Guymon, the current women’s track coach, took over the Lady Bison track team during Cherobon-Bawcom’s sophomore year.<\/p>\n
“I think a lot of my base, my just learning about running, is through Harding,” Cherobon-Bawcom said.<\/p>\n
“While she was here the things that I noticed most is how dedicated and hard a worker she was,” Guymon said. “She was very determined. When she raced, I knew she was going to race really hard. She just was such an extremely tough competitor.”<\/p>\n
Cherobon-Bawcom runs about 16 miles a day, taking a day off only about twice a month, she said. She said she still believes she has room to improve, though, because most Olympic marathon runners run about 20 miles a day.<\/p>\n
“I still have that catching up a little bit,” Cherobon-Bawcom said.<\/p>\n
She said her future running plans include trying out for the 10 kilometer Olympic trial in June, and “just to go have fun and get another experience.” <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Janet Cherobon-Bawcom scored fifth place in the womens’ Olympic Marathon Trials in Houston on Jan. 14, 2012. Cherobon-Bawcom ran the marathon \u2014 26.2 miles \u2014 in two hours and 29…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":380,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[268],"class_list":["post-2113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports","tag-hurricane-florence"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/380"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2113"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2113\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}