Dunedin runner Shireen Crumpton dedicated her victory in the Gold Coast marathon yesterday to her ill husband, Doug, and their young son, Lachlan.
Crumpton, the first woman home in a record 21,000 field, has represented New Zealand in road relays and competed in the world championship half-marathon and marathon.
Her time of 2 hours 38 minutes 16 seconds was well outside the Olympic Games qualifying standard of 2hr 32min.
The Dunedin nurse was last year forced to give up running for eight months when a pregnancy scan showed one of the twins she was carrying had died.
"The caesarean birth meant that I was not able to train for six weeks after the birth," she told the Otago Daily Times before Sunday's race.
Two months after the birth, her husband was diagnosed with lung cancer.
Crumpton returned to easy running late last year to ease the stress, and her husband resumed chemotherapy treatment in Dunedin last month, after his tumour started to grow again.
Running became the outlet she needed to survive, she told Brisbane's Courier Mail newspaper.
"Running released endorphins and was good for my mood," she said.
The Gold Coast run was her 14th marathon, and her first since she failed to qualify for the 2006 Commonwealth Games.
Crumpton has won eight of her 14 marathons with a best time of 2hr 37min 3sec when finishing 33rd at the world championships in Helsinki in 2005. In that race, she beat Liza Hunter-Galvan, added to the New Zealand Olympic team for the Beijing Olympics this week, by five places and 3min.
Crumpton won her first New Zealand mountain running title in April on the Mt Campbell Range near Motueka, 12 months after the birth of her son.
