Penders Goes the Distance

Dec. 6, 2011

By Myles Udland

Jim Penders never had a reason to run a marathon. But slowly, Father Time came knocking. "I don't remember who I said it to, maybe one of my high school buddies, but I told someone I would run a marathon before I turned 40," said Penders. "And I quickly started running out of years."

Penders, who will begin his ninth season as head coach of the Huskies baseball team this spring, completed the Philadelphia Marathon on November 21 in a time of 3:29:41. Penders, who averaged 8:00 per mile for the 26.2 mile event, began his training with a modest goal in mind. "I wanted to beat Oprah," said Penders. "I saw somewhere that she had run a marathon in four and a half hours and I thought, `I can't lose to Oprah'."

Penders anchored his training with 22-mile runs he would begin at 4:30am on Saturday mornings. This training regimen, which Penders designed himself, almost didn't get him to the starting line. "I was stubborn about getting advice on the race or my training, and I ended up overtraining," said Penders. But with the help of UConn athletic trainer Patti Kula, Penders overcame a bout of Achilles tendinitis that flared up in the weeks leading to the race. "I used to call the training room a black hole, because once a guy goes in there he never comes out. But after this experience, I take back every negative thing I've ever said about the training room."

While Penders made his way to Philadelphia healthy enough to compete, the day before the race provided for some last minute doubts. Big city marathons like Philadelphia, which had over 25,000 registrants between the half and full marathon this year, require participants to pick up their race number the day before the race and the registration tables in Philadelphia were arranged by t-shirt size. "I thought something was wrong," said Penders. "I saw the `XL' table, and no one was in line. Then I looked at the `L' table where I was supposed to go, and there was no line there either. But the medium and small tables looked like people waiting for the bathroom at halftime of a Patriots game. That was when I realized that maybe this wasn't a great idea."

Although Penders may have felt out of place in the large t-shirt line, his performance placed him among the top 1500 runners to cross the finish. This finish, however, did not come easily. "I fell off a cliff in the last three miles," said Penders. In Philadelphia, competitors wear bib numbers with their first name on the front to allow spectators to offer more personalized encouragement during the race. "It was therapeutic in the first half of the race to not hear my name, because I knew I looked good. But from miles 23 to the finish, all I heard was `Come on James!' It wasn't pretty."

As for an encore performance, Penders remains non-committal. "I've thought about maybe doing New York," said Penders. "Running the marathon there would be a great way to see that city. I'd love to do Boston, but it's on a weekday in April, and with our schedule, there's just no way that would work." But Penders, who began running every day in September of 2007, knows he is unlikely to end his marathon career by meeting his goal of running one before 40. "Next time I'll probably say, `I've got to run another one before I turn 50."

University of Connecticut Athletics

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