Feel free to distribute this to your friends and fellow runners.

Tony

Member Information Update

Since the first of this year, over 400 new members have joined. Due to our growth, we’ve experienced a slight (but happy) growing pain; more members of the news media are interested in learning about us and their local runners. We recently were seeking runners in the Buffalo, NY area for an article (below).

http://www.buffalonews.com/sports/other/running/story/316680.html

Since we only collected information at the state level and some members had moved, the message was sent to everyone. We’re fine tuning our information to more quickly respond to the media. While reducing the number of emails that you receive. Also, our international members noted that we didn’t have a method to identify their countries.

To update our records, we created a very short data entry form to capture your major metro area and country. As the NBMA Board of Directors travel around (and outside) the country, this makes it easier for us to arrange meetings/dinners with our members. We recently had informal gatherings at the ING Georgia and the Go! St. Louis Marathons and some corresponding media attention.

Also, I’m interested in meeting members in Denver this Sunday evening, April 13, and Jacksonville (FL) on the weekend of April 25. So, send me an email message and we’ll make arrangements.

If you’re in the military and stationed overseas, enter your home city and state. However, enter the country in which you’re stationed. If you live overseas, just enter the city and country. Leave the state blank.

Also, many newspapers run weekly running and fitness columns. We want to contact them about our upcoming events. Please take a few minutes to include their information. The web page may be found at

http://www.blackmarathoners.org/Member_Update.htm

Congratulations To Rudy Snith

Rudy finished running marathons on every continent!!! His final marathon was the Mt Kilimanjaro Marathon. Believe it or not, we met for the first time at the Great Wall of China Marathon in 2006. It’s a small world. We’ll hopefully have more information about his adventures and photos in the next newsletter.

Boston Marathon Participants

Several members have qualified for the Boston Marathon and are interested in gathering. Unfortunately, because I’m “speed-challenged”, I won’t be attending. After looking at the Expo layout, I’d like to recommend that the members meet at 11:30AM on Sunday, April 20 in the lobby by the coat room entrance. This is near the rotunda escalators and across from the entrance to pick up the race numbers. Be sure to wear a red shirt, so you may recognize one another. Also, please take a camera and get a bystander to take a group photo. We’d like to include it in our next newsletter.

Jacksonville, FL Running Club

The Jacksonville, FL running club, Team Mocha, has been added to our Black Running Clubs section. If you enjoy running on the beach, check out their website.

The American History of Black Runners

Several of our members have blogs, including Marc and Tanya. We featured them in an earlier newsletter and had the pleasure of meeting them at the Lost Dutchman Marathon. They recently included information about Black runners as far back as the late 1800’s on their March 28 and April 2 blogs at

http://gtmfitness.blogspot.com/

During the October interview for the February edition of Runner’s World, the reporter and I talked extensively about the late Ted Corbitt, a Black American. He’s considered the father of American distance running. When he passed away last December, we distributed an email about him.  Due to space limitations, this part of the interview did not appear in Runner’s World.

I noted that when I started distance running in the 1970’s, there were very few people involved in distance running or walking, let alone marathons or ultras. Thus, you learned about running by reading books. Most, if not all, of my old books mentioned Ted’s accomplishments, such as being on the 1952 Olympic marathon team and his philosophies. However, they never mentioned his race or had a photo of him. Thus, while we knew about Ted, we didn’t know he was Black.

Be sure to visit the blog to learn more about our history.

Maasai Warriors To Run The London Marathon

The following information was sent by Michael from Dallas. This caught my attention because the Maasai warriors had an aid station during my Kenyan marathon last year.

By Kate KellandMon Apr 7, 12:29 PM ET

They survive on fresh blood drained from the neck of a living cow, they often run for days and nights on end to find water and their shoes are made from car tires cut up and strapped to their feet.

So running the London Marathon should be no problem for six Maasai warriors who have come to Britain from their village of Elaui in northern Tanzania as part of a campaign to raise money to find a vital water source (www.maasaimarathon.org).

"Back at home we sometimes run for 5 or 6 days, day and night," Isaya, a young warrior clothed in a red robe and adorned with traditional beaded jewelry, told Reuters in an interview. "Twenty-six miles not far."

He and his fellow warriors, all between 20 and 25 years old, expect to reach the finish line of Sunday's race within four and a half hours.

They will run in traditional dress -- a red "shuka" blanket toga and car-tire sandals -- carrying spears and shields showing their running numbers, and will sing and dance along the 26.2 mile route through the British capital.

"And we will do the whole marathon with no water," Isaya adds. "We often travel for many days, eating only twice a day, and we have no water."

"If we have no milk or meat, we cut the cow's neck and let out the blood to drink. If I drink enough blood -- maybe two or three liters -- it gives me a lot of energy and I can go for days without food or water."

The Maasai warriors, whose role is to protect and help provide for their people, hope to raise enough money to find and access a fresh water source for their community -- something they say could cost up to 60,000 pounds ($120,000).

An estimated 500,000 to one million Maasai inhabit scattered and remote villages across northern Tanzania and southern Kenya, living a semi-nomadic existence.

DROUGHT

But years of drought in the region around Eluai, where these six warriors live with their elders and children, is killing their cattle and threatening their way of life with disease and famine.

Two thirds of the children born in Eluai die before they reach the age of five.

"It is a large village which has a very bad lack of water. We have only one small dam and the water from it runs out very quickly," said Isaya.

"It is affecting our people. Our children are dying. We are infected with disease from water which is dark and dirty. We sometimes have years with no rain."

Paul Martin, an expedition leader with the Greenforce charity which has been working with the Maasai since 2005, said ground surveys of the area around Eluai had found an underground water source which could offer the Maasai a lifeline.

"It's an enormously difficult and expensive procedure, but it's so desperately needed that we have to make sure we get something out of there, even if we have to go down to depths of 100 meters (yards)," he told Reuters.

Martin suspects the sight of thousands of London marathon runners taking two sips of water from a bottle at each mile and throwing the rest away is likely to horrify the Maasai runners, but says it will only fuel their determination.

"The Maasai are a proud people ... If they achieve this, they will return to their village as heroes," he said.

And Isaya has no doubt he and his fellow runners will do it.

"The finish line for us is not at the end of the race, it is when we can turn on a tap in Eluai," he said. "I really believe that can happen."