We recap the week in running from the Euro cross country champs to the USATF Club Nationals to the high school ranks to Bahrain.
Archived Homepage For December 14, 2021
Archived Homepage For December 14, 2021
Newbury Park Was Great At RunningLane - But How Great?
The day before RunningLane nationals, a high school coach wheeled the notoriously fast John Hunt Park course in Huntsville and measured it at 4935m. But that doesn't tell the whole story.
*MB Is the RunningLane Course 5K? Or Is It Short?
European XC Champs
- Unstoppable Jakob Ingebrigtsen Glides To Gold At Euro XC Champs Turkey's reigning two-time champion Aras Kaya set an unrelenting pace from the start, but Ingbrigsten blew by him with less than 1k and won by 14-seconds. Kaya took silver 5-seconds ahead of Jimmy Gressier, who lead France to the team title.
- Norway’s Karoline Bjerkeli Grovdal Finally Gets Euro XC Gold After Five Previous Podium Finishes Grovdal had won four bronze and one silver in the last five editions of the race, but this time won gold by 10-seconds over Sweden's Meraf Bahta. Four-time defending champion Yasemin Can finished back in 14th. Sweden won the team title.
*Cathal Dennehy: Fionnuala McCormack's Class Endures As Irish Women's Team Are Edged Out Of Medals McCormack finished 9th as the Irish women just missed the team medals in 4th.
- Italy's Nadia Battocletti Wins Her Third Successive European XC Title, This Time In The Women's U23 Race The two-time U20 champ won in a sprint finish to lead Italy to the team gold.
- Denmark's Axel Vang Christensen And GB's Megan Keith Take Unexpected U20 Titles The GB men and the German women won the team titles.
- Great Britain Retain Mixed Relay Title Thanks To Third Leg Heroics From Alex Bell Bell, a Tokyo 2020 800m finalist, started her leg 12 seconds down, but ended up handing off to the anchor with a 4-second lead.
- Ireland's Darragh McElhinney Wins U23 Silver To Help Ireland Take Team Gold At Euro XC Champs GB's Charlie Hicks won the individual race.
*Cathal Dennehy: Silver Star Darragh McElhinney Leads Irish U23s TO "Scandalous" Gold - World Athletics Euro XC Champs Recap
On The Boards
On The Boards
Eastbay XC Girls
Natalie Cook is the undisputed high school national cross country champ as she became the first girl to complete the national double.
Eastbay Boys
Riley Hough made a big move on the downhill to pick up the national high school cross country title in San Diego.
More Weekend Action
- Hansons-Brooks Distance Project Sweeps USATF Club XC Championships Natosha Rogers won the women's race for Hansons while Nike's Frankline Tonui beat out Hansons' Zachery Panning by 3-seconds in the men's race. *Discuss
- Philemon Kiplimo (60:01) And Gotytom Gebreslase (65:36) Win Bahrain Half-Marathon Gebreslase, the Berlin Marathon champ, beat out Olympic 10,000m silver medalist Kalkidan Gezahegne by 11-seconds. Kiplimo won the men's race by less than a second in a tight sprint finish with Collins Koros (60:01).
- Japanese Weekend Highlights: 18-Year-Old Seira Fuwa Runs 30:45.21 At The Kansai Jitsugyodan Time Trials Her time is the second fastest ever by a Japanese woman (fastest ever U20). Elsewhere at the Nittai University Time Trials, four men went under 27:25 with Kenyan Antipas Kibet (27:22.93) beat out Jonathan Ndiku (27:23.06) as Ren Tazawa ran 27:23.44, #2 Japan all-time. Kenya's Naomi Muthoni Kariuki won the women's 5000 in 14:49.94
NCAA News
(link updated) She broke a 40-year-old record (35.86) set by Marlene Ottey in 1981. *Race Video
- Good Read: Deseret News: "Why Now Was The Right Time For BYU's Conner Mantz To Turn Pro" Mantz: “My agent said if I had taken an offer in the summer I would have gotten half of what I am getting now."
- The 2021 Bowerman Award Presentation Is December 17 At 7PM ET Free stream on YouTube.
Olympic Stuff
- Opinion Piece: Alan Abrahamson Calls Biden's Diplomatic Boycott Of Beijing 2022 "Dumb" And "Hypocritical" Abrahamson bashes the Biden, the USOPC and the US in general.
- Skateboarding, Surfing, Sport Climbing In, Boxing, Weightlifting, Modern Pentathlon Out (For Now) For LA 2028 Boxing and weightlifting have been at every Olympics since 1920. Modern pentathlon has been at every Olympics since 1912.
- Beijing 2022 To Use Chartered Flights To Bring In Athletes Due To COVID Travel Issues
Pre-Euro XC News
- Euro XC Champs Preview: Ingebrigtsens And Jimmy Gressier Headline An All-Star Men’s Race In Dublin
- Euro XC Champs Preview: Turkey's Yasemin Can To Challenge For Fifth Successive Senior Women’s Title In Dublin
- Ireland's Ciara Mageean: “Believe me: we go into every race competing for gold.”
- Cathal Dennehy: Fionnuala McCormack Can Inspire An Irish Drive On Home Ground The 37-year-old two-time champ is bouncing back just one week after running a 2:23:58 marathon PB in Valencia.
*Irish Times: Irish Women Chasing Big Wins At Home - Euro Cross Country Champs Stats Preview
- Euro Cross 2021: Who, what and when?
- European Cross Country Championships: How to watch on the BBC
RIP: Famed track promoter Al Franken dies at 96 - Three Recommended Reads
- LA Times Appreciation: Al Franken, innovative and entertaining track and field promoter, made sports fun He was most famous for his southern California indoor meets including the Sunkist Invitational, he attracted the sports biggest stars including Wilma Rudolph, Bob Beamon, Jim Ryun, Prefontaine, Sergey Bubka, Eammon Coghlan, Evelyn Ashford, Gail Devers, JJK, etc.
- Scott Reid: "If track and field, as is often suggested, is a three-ring circus, then Franken was one of its leading ringmasters for parts of four decades." Reid also describes Franken as "one of the most influential figures in American track and field’s golden era from the 1950s through the 1970s."
- Sports Examiner: An under-appreciated legend in his own time: remembering track promoter Al Franken
- MB: Legendary Track Promoter Al Franken - RIP
News That Makes The Cut on A Friday
- Nike sues Adidas for violating its Flyknit patents, asks judge to halt US sales of Adidas Primeknit shoes In 2020, adidas tried to argue the technology Nike was trying to patent should be viewed as unpatentable. could be a problem if they ever do a lawsuit like this regarding the Vaporfly technology.
*MB: Nike: Only us should be allowed to mechanically dope - Josh Kerr and Keely Hodgkinson named British Athletes of Year by British athletics writers If you are wondering why an Olympic gold medallist didn't win the award, it's because Team GB produced zero Olympic track gold medallists.
- Research reveals more than 3 billion people watched the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games
- How to hill train without a hill
- How to stay mobile while working from home: A do-anywhere mobility plan for runners
Distance Links We Found Interesting
A great read as for a long time Trewogy, who was coached remotely by Bill Dellinger, wasn't recognized as the WR holder and Trewogy herself didn't make a big deal about it.
*MB: Great read: 50 Yrs Later: Cheryl Treworgy—Shalane Flanagan’s Mom—Reflects on Being the First Woman to Break 2:50 in the Marathon
- Zátopek - the film - is Czech Republic’s submission for Academy Awards Best Foreign Film TFN reviews the biopic and says it will be out in 2022.
- Nick Willis talks to Doug Binder about his New Year's Eve sub-4 mile attempt If Willis does it, it will be a record 20th year in a row that he's gone sub-4. "The event is a fund-raiser for the Tracksmith Foundation, which seeks to address issues of diversity and inclusivity in the sport with an emphasis on assisting Russell Dinkins' efforts to protect collegiate track teams."
Non Distance News
- Olympic champion Lamont Marcell Jacobs to return to action in Berlin on February 4th
- Published reports from UK say top sprint coach Rana Reider, then 44, had consensual relationship with 18 year old British sprinter in 2014 From a legal standpoint, it will be interesting to see how this is handled as it involves two consenting adults. Yes, SafeSport "presumes a power imbalance for most coach-athlete relationships" and prohibits sexual contact between coaches and athletes if the coach has power over the athlete (in some coach-athlete relationships, the athlete has the power over the coach as they pay the salary), but the reality is this took place largely in the UK in 2014 before the US-based SafeSport even existed. *Discuss
- Great news: Yulimar Rojas says she will do LJ & TJ in Eugene and thinks she can add LJ WR to her CV "It frustrated me not being able to do it in Tokyo, where they put the long jump qualification on the same day as the triple jump final. [My coach Ivan Pedroso] was convinced that I could win both golds."
- Damian Warner is your 2021 Lou Marsh Award winner, given annually to Canada’s best athlete
LRC Podcast
Subscribe today to the best running podcast on the planet.
More Distance News
- MB: RIP Matt Scherer. One of the best rabbits in history has died at 38.
- 9 years ago, he was mauled and nearly killed by chimpanzees and lost his legs, but now he's run a marathon with prosthetics He's also now helping others recover from horrific injuries. *More on attack from ABC.
- Honolulu Marathon organizers and runners are ready to host 14,000 runners this weekend They had 35,000 in 2019.
- Is cannabis performance enhancing? Researchers are doing tests on runners to find out
- Research review: how effective is compression gear, really?
Week That Was
We help make sense of a very busy weekend for you.
Distance News
- World Athletics: After Top Year, Athing Mu Continues to Shoot For The Stars “A lot of times I get asked, what are my next goals? And I think about the world record and all those types of things. I think the 800m is moving in a new direction ...we’re going to make some history in that event over the coming years.”
- Former Marathon WR Holder Paul Tergat Set To Be Re-Elected Unopposed As National Olympic Committee Of Kenya President
- The Guardian: Ethiopian Runner Faces Deportation From The UK Despite State Of Emergency In Ethiopia Officials refused the asylum claim of Seyfu Jamaal after he's been waiting in the UK for the last three years.
Oregon Update
- Oregon University Athletics Programs No Longer Allowed To Monitor Athletes' Weight, Body Fat Percentage Athletes have the option to get tested, but coaches are not permitted to see the results.
Diack Post-Mortem
- Sean Ingle: "Fixer. Spiritual Leader. Corruptor. But what secrets did Lamine Diack take to his grave?" Apparently his son Papa Massata Diack has dropped hints of other scandals besides what we already know.
Random Road Running News
- Video: The Houston Marathon's First Winner Still Loves Running 50-Years Later Dan Green won the first Houston Marathon in 1972 in 2:32:33.
- DallasNews.com: More Than 50 Years After Winning The First Dallas Marathon, Annabelle Corboy Is Still Running The 74-year-old will run the half at the 50th running of the Dallas Marathon; more than 50-years after she won the first race in 4:12:25.
- Runner's World Analyzes Interesting Stats For 2021 Strava Data Runners logged 2.4 billion miles globally; U.S. runners logged 425.1 million. The average run distance was 3.9 miles (4.0 miles for men and 3.4 miles for women).
- NYRR Requiring COVID Vaccines For All Their Races If you already signed up for a 2022 race and aren't vaccinated, you can get a refund.
- The 2022 Berlin Marathon Scheduled For September 25th
Upcoming Indoor Action
- January 29: Athing Mu Vs Ajee Wilson Set For Millrose 800m Jamaican Olympian Natoya Goule-Toppin is also in the race.
- Olympic 100m Champ Lamont Marcell Jacobs Will Return To Action In February At The Berlin Indoor Meet
- January 28: Mondo Duplantis Announced For Karlsruhe Indoor Meet
Your latest American stars share their insights.
American Record Holders
American Record Holders
Keira D'Amato, the new American record holder in the marathon, was joined by Deena Kastor, who held the record for 15 years.
Sisson was the guest on the LetsRun.com Track Talk podcast after she became the first American to go sub 67 in the half marathon on a record-eligible course. Podcast highlights above. Full pod here.
Woody Kincaid joined us after he broke the American record indoors at 5000. He talks above why he left the Bowerman Track Club. Podcast highlights and link to full podcast here.
Coogan's New Balance Boston team had 3 Olympians in 2021 and 2022 could be the biggest year yet for the program with 2 new additions and the TRACK at New Balance coming on March 1st.
Danny Mackey has taken the Brooks Beasts from an unproven club to the Olympic podium in its first decade.
Dathan Ritzenhein is the first of the top pro coaches to sit down and talk about his club heading into the 2022 campaign.
Best of Jon Gault
Best of Jon Gault
Take Your Love of LetsRun to the Next Level
Take Your Love of LetsRun to the Next Level
LetsRun Classics
LetsRun Classics
‒excerpt from an appreciation column by the LA Times' Bill Dwyre on track and field promoter Al Franken, who has died at age 96.