Gorman remains the one U.S. women chase in N.Y.

Beating Miki Gorman in a footrace these days is not overly difficult.

At age 75 and having not run a lick this calendar year, she is easily winded, especially when matched up against younger competition.

"The only running I have done lately is chasing after my two grandchildren, who are 6- and 4-years-old," Gorman said in a recent phone conversation from her home in Vancouver. "After an afternoon in the park with them, I'm pretty tired."

Hop in your hot tub time machine, travel back about three decades, and you would be hard-pressed to find many runners on Earth who could beat Gorman in the marathon.

Despite not picking up the sport until she was 38, Gorman set an unofficial world record for the women's marathon of 2:46:36 at the Western Hemisphere Marathon in 1973. Four months later, she won the Boston Marathon in a course-record 2:47:11. In 1976, she won the New York City Marathon for the first time, and the following year won in both Boston and New York. She is still the only woman to win both races twice.

She is also the last American woman to win the ING New York City Marathon.

"I still can't believe it," Gorman said.

When Meb Keflezighi ended the American drought of champions in the men's race last year, almost everyone could recall that the last U.S. winner before him was Alberto Salazar, largely because Salazar remains an influential figure in the sport.

There are few people outside of the New York Road Runners, who put on the race, who could tell you that Gorman was the last U.S. women's champion, let alone cognitively recall her final triumph, in 1977.

Gorman has some fond, and funny, memories of that performance.

"Kim Merritt (1975 race winner) was always my closest competition," Gorman recalled. "I could never beat her in the middle distance races. I would always be staring at her blond ponytail in my face. That's all I thought about while I was training.

"I felt good on the day of the race and was really running strong. I never talk to anyone when I am running, but when I came up on Kim late in the race, I said, ‘Is today a slow day for you?' That wasn't very nice.

"When I got inside the Central Park, the police escort was already there to accompany the top females. When I passed Kim at the 20-mile mark, I was so tired. I used so much energy that I could hear myself breathing. I tried not to breathe so people wouldn't hear me the last three miles."

Gorman won in 2:43:10, four minutes slower than the course-record 2:39:11 she ran in 1976.

"My reaction after the race was exasperated," she said. "I didn't raise my hands or smile. A couple of policemen held me up because they thought I was going to fall down. It wasn't until I want back to the hotel and took a hot bath that I got a full feeling of joy."

When asked why her victory remains just a footnote in history, Gorman has a couple theories.

The first is her late start to running and thus-shortened career.

"My husband is very outgoing and he didn't want me home sewing," Gorman said. "He wanted me to become more athletic so I could go out, meet new people and make new friends. I was also 87 pounds and he thought it would help me gain weight."

Another is a false sense of accomplishment that she had at the peak of her career.

"Back then, the target time for women was 2:40," she said. "I did that in relatively short time. I felt full when I should have put my goals much higher. I guess you could say I lost motivation."

One commonly-believed notion that Gorman wants to dispel is that injuries sustained while running drove her from the sport. "I actually got hurt tap-dancing," she said. "But that didn't drive me away. By 1981, I wanted to do other things, especially with my daughter, Danielle."

Gorman said she hasn't followed the sport closely since then, but as this year's race draws near, she wonders aloud why no other American woman has been able to do what she did 33 years ago.

"There have certainly been many good runners," she said. "Maybe Americans today are too rich. Their lifestyles are not like ours were. When I grew up in Japan, no one had a car. To go to school, I had to walk 10 kilometers each way. We had no candies, no sweets, no junk food, no distractions. Maybe the incentive isn't there."