Branded the Ironwoman of Romanian athletics, Constantina Dita enjoyed a lengthy and successful career as one of the world’s foremost female endurance runners
With a reputation for thriving on hard work and regularly logging more than 200km a week in training, Dita also excelled in cold, wet and windy conditions.
So when she awoke on the morning of the 2005 World Athletics Half Marathon Championships in Edmonton, Canada, to light rain and chilly temperatures, the US-based distance runner was unperturbed about what she faced.
“The rain worked in my favour, I always run well in the rain,” explains Dita, who for the past 19 years has been based in Boulder, Colorado.
“Often in Boulder we have cold weather and strong winds and sometimes I’d run 30km in a strong wind. But I never gave up. I never train inside at the gym.”
First of eight world half appearances in 1998, Few athletes embraced the World Half Marathon Championships more than the Romanian who made the first of her eight appearances at the event in 1998.
That was in Uster, Switzerland, where she placed 29th and secured team silver for Romania. At the 1999 edition in Palermo she placed 13th before finishing 32nd in Bristol 2001 and 22nd the following year in Brussels.
New Delhi bronze and Chicago Marathon win on back-to-back weekends, Besides placing a disappointing 20th when struggling in the intense heat at the Athens Olympic Games her 2004 season was also a success. She claimed a podium spot for third in that April’s London Marathon and bounced back from her Olympic pain to win a bronze medal at the World Half Marathon Championships in New Delhi.
“In New Delhi the temperature was nowhere near as hot as it had been in Athens,” she recalls. “It was a very flat course and I just kept patient in the race. It was nice to finally win an individual medal (at the World Half Marathon Championships).”
World marathon bronze and half marathon gold in 2005, “It was such a happy feeling to win my first gold medal at a major championship,” she explains. “For me, it was amazing and it was close (in terms of achievement) to what it would have been winning a gold medal at the track and field World Championships.”
Dita also enjoyed the additional bonus of helping inspire her country to team gold – which she describes as an “amazing” feeling.
She is also still running and last year she completed the Berlin (3:07) and New York City (3:30) marathons. This year she hopes to continue with her quest to complete the full set of six Marathon Majors by running the Boston Marathon. She was planning to contest Tokyo, but the mass race was cancelled due to the outbreak of the coronavirus in Japan.
Yet despite her considerable marathon accomplishments, the 49-year-old former Olympic champion still holds the World Half Marathon Championships with great affection.
“To win my gold medal was a great achievement and it gave me much encouragement to run better in other races,” she explains.
posted Saturday February 29th
by World Athletics