Utah women dominate marathon

Peer pressure compelled Rebecca Walter to compete in her first marathon since 2003. Her friend and training partner Zusana Tomas has spent the past several months preparing to represent her native Slovaka as a marathon runner next month in Beijing. Running day after day with an Olympic athlete eventually rubbed off on the Salt Lake City resident. "If my friends are training for a marathon, then I guess I'm going to be training for a marathon _ so I might as well run one, right?" Walter said. All of the training paid off for Walter in her return to the marathon circuit. She claimed the top spot in the women's marathon portion of the annual Deseret News Marathon and 10K on Thursday morning. Walter crossed the finish line at Liberty Park in 3 hours 1 minute and 11.2 seconds. Her finishing time put Walter nearly 13 minutes ahead... [read full story]