The other poster trumpets the 2012 London Olympics.
Call it what you want — the labor and the fruits, the sacrifice and the glory — but for Susan Randall, this is much of her life right now.
And as for what she’s doing:
After awakening in the wee hours, she reports to a local Target store in Beavercreek where she stocks shelves from 3 to 9 a.m., after which she heads to the Beavercreek bike path or maybe the streets of her neighborhood to train, often ending with a 10-kilometer effort, or more.
Following that there’s a quick nap. Then, with husband Mike, now siding the house, she might end up on a ladder with a hammer or in the kitchen preparing something for her budding catering business. She’ll also spend time on the Internet trying to connect with her 19-year-old son John, who just was sent to Kuwait with the U.S. Air Force.
Come mid-afternoon, she goes to the Fairborn High School track for a two-hour second workout. Once back home in the evening, she takes a last look at those two posters and falls into bed, only to repeat the whole routine a few hours later.
The 37-year-old Beavercreek mother is one of the elite race walkers in the United States. She has competed all over the world, including this past March at the European Cup in Lugano, Switzerland.
Two weeks from now she’s entered in the 20K (12.4 mile) National Championship in New York.
Then, following three weeks of altitude training in Colorado Springs, Colo., she’ll go to Eugene, Ore., for the July 1 race walk competition at the U.S. Olympic Trials and her bid to make the London Games.
While she has an outside shot at making the team (she was rated ninth in the nation in early-season rankings), she has had several strong races this year and clocked a career-best 1 hour, 42 minutes, 47 seconds in Switzerland.
But more importantly — and the real story of Susan Randall — is that she has beaten far longer odds than this.
“It’s really an amazing story,” Mike said as he watched his 4-foot-10, 105-pound wife quick step it around the Fairborn track the other evening. “It’s one of those American dream stories. And it’s proof that anybody who is truly determined to do something can do it.”
A little over seven years ago Susan had never even seen a race walker, much less tried it.
And 11 years ago she still was living in China, working 10 hours a day, six days a week at a telecom company. Unmarried and with one son in a country with a one-child-per-family law and, she says, many men not open to the idea of adopting someone else’s child, she didn’t see much hope for having a family life or a future.
A 'self-thinker’
Susan grew up on the outskirts of Guangzhou, a city of 13 million people on the Pearl River in southern China.
“Those early years for her it was tough,” Mike said. “They had no running water so she would have to schlepp water down a hillside every day in buckets. They had to go to the bathroom in a building down the block. Eventually they moved more into the heart of the city and things got better.”
Her dad drove a delivery truck, her mom worked at a beauty parlor and Susan said she was “just a typical Chinese girl.”
“I finished high school and got a job,” she said. “And I’ll say the truth: Chinese men do not want to find a wife that already has a kid, so my mom said, 'You should try to find a Western husband because they will treat you better.’ ”
Over here, Mike Randall, originally from Wisconsin and deep into an Air Force career, was stationed at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. He had traveled all over the world — Korea, Hong Kong, Thailand, Germany — and had thought about marrying a woman from overseas.
“I was doing all kinds of Internet programing for various companies, she was working for China Telecom and we met online,” Mike said. “She invited me to come visit and I did and we had a great time.”
After that initial visit in February 2001, she invited him back five months later.
“I like to joke I went back and she informed me we were getting married,” he laughed. “I was looking for an independent woman, a self-thinker, but also someone who wanted to be part of a family and someone who would like to be taken care of, too. And that seemed to be her. There was something about her. We just clicked.
“So finally we went on a beautiful cruise at night on the Pearl River. With the lights and everything it was very romantic and I had practiced a week to propose perfectly in Chinese. After I finished, she just says 'OK.’ ”
Mike finally brought her back to the U.S. in late September 2001 and they married that November in Beavercreek.
The adjustments were tough at first for Susan, who was trying to learn a new language, new kinds of food to eat and a new culture all while answering to a strange, new name.
When she took an English class in China, instructors gave all the students American names. “They said, 'How about Susan?’ and I said, 'OK,’ ” she shrugged.
And then there was the embrace of married life to a man she barely knew.
I was doing triathlons back then and, in fact, just a week after we married we spent our honeymoon in Florida where I did the Ironman,” Mike laughed. “Watching us go through all that, I figured she had to be wondering, 'What kind of crazy man did I marry?’
But that was when he discovered just what a “self-thinker” his new wife really was.
Although she didn’t swim, she soon was doing duathlons, which are similar to triathlons, except there is running, cycling and then running again.
“She’s smart and adventuresome,” Mike beamed. “She’s quite a woman.”
Learning to 'walk’
The adventure took another turn in 2005 when Susan took her son — who eventually would become a cross country and track athlete at Beavercreek High School and a nationally ranked junior race walker — to a summer practice with the Miami Valley Track Club in Yellow Springs.
As she was watching, she said she saw Tina Peters, the daughter of coach Vince Peters, one of the more successful race-walking coaches in the country, go past “doing something so funny.”
“I wanted to learn what it was and how to do it and when I did, I found out I liked to race walk,” she said.
After just two years of race walking, she finished fifth at the 2007 USA Track and Field Outdoor Championships with a time of 1:49:57 and qualified for the Olympic Trials for the 2008 Games in Beijing.
Although she didn’t make the team, she made enough of a splash that in 2009 she was part of the three-woman U.S. team that won a bronze medal at the Americas Race Walking Championships in El Salvador.
Her personal coach is Andi Drake, the much accomplished British race walker. She just spent six weeks training with him in the U.K., and, now that she’s back here, her husband is in charge of her daily workouts and nutrition.
As Susan continues to whittle her time down at competitions across the country, the venture — with its travel, hotels, food and entrance fees — is a costly one. That’s why she works the Target job.
She has three prominent sponsors: Power Bar, Endurance Sports and Drayer Physical Therapy.
She’s also had help locally from Pat Harris, who has organized a “Walking to London” campaign (information can be found on Susan’s website, susan.mrcg.net) that has featured a number of meet-and-greet fundraisers.
As for her chances at the Trials, where she’ll be joined by Miami Valley School grad and current Furman University athlete Erika Shavers, who qualified at 1:47:46, Susan has a positive outlook:
“You never know until the racing starts and goes all the way to the end,” she said. “I know right now not many people are (in the position) I am. I can dream about it. I can almost reach out and touch it.
“I have trained for four long years, day in and day out. I want to go, but if it not happen, you not breaking your heart.
“You just go harder.”
And you take down the London poster and put up one for the 2016 Games in Rio de Janerio.
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