Former Champion Returns To Dallas Marathon

Andres Espinosa Perez is heading back to the marathon that boosted his career.

A former champion is returning to run the Metro PCS Dallas White Rock Marathon this Sunday. Andres Espinosa Perez of Mexico, the winner of the race in 1988 and 1989, hopes to run fast there.

“I want to race it like I used to,” Perez said through an interpreter. “I’m trying for a good time, even at this age.”

Perez, a former steelworker from Monclova, Mexico, also won the New York City Marathon in 1993 in unseasonably hot temperatures. He ran for Mexico in the 2000 and 2004 Olympics and is the current world-record holder in the masters marathon (2:08:46). He ran that time in Berlin in 2003.

After retiring, Perez decided to focus on raising his four children and running his business, Transport Espinosa Perez.

Perez has recently been running 90 minutes a day for the past eight months to prepare for the marathon. He is not sure how much longer he will continue running. “There’s a point in our lives when our bodies can only take so much, only go so far,” he said. “I’ll still be running up until the point my body will not take me. Dallas is not the end.”

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