LetsRun.com

LRC: Alan Webb's 2009 Season Appears to Be Over Two years to the day that Alan Webb set a new American record in the mile, LetsRun.com has learned from Webb's agent, Ray Flynn, that Webb's 2009 season is likely finished before it really even got going. No European races for Webb in 2009.

Chicago is Back

Wanjiru to Run Chicago If any of you thought the Bank of America Chicago Marathon was on the decline with Bank of America owning it and the financial mess we're in, think again. They signed up the World's top marathoner Sammy Wanjiru on Tuesday. they already announced Deena Kastor. It is expected Ryan Hall will be running NY in the fall. Duncan Kibet and Haile Gebrselassie will square off in Berlin.
*Message board thread

Recommended Reads 1) After A Disastrous Start To 2009, Christin Wurth Thomas Is Running Better Than Ever. In April, it took some tough love from her coach Lance Harter to set her straight. Check out what he said to her, "Right around April, my coach threatened to retire me because I was a little heavier than I’ve been in the past. It’s what I needed to hear. He said, ‘Would you rather hear it now or wait two months until you’re in season and it’s too late.’ Telling me that I was farther back was a sign that I had to start picking up practices and getting to where I need to be. Everybody kept telling me, ‘You’ve got time. Don’t worry about it.’ I felt like I had nothing but time but that wasn’t the case. Time was starting to run out."
2) 25 Years After The Fall Mary Slaney Reflects On 1984 Olympic Disaster (and her doping suspension) Kudos to Reuters for at least mentioning she was banned for doping.

From "Fat, Unhappy and Fed Up" To One Of The World's 25 Most Fit Men And he's not coached by Lance Harter.

History Lesson/Did You Know?
*1 Year Ago Usain Bolt Lost His Last Race (in Stockholm at 100m to Powell)
*2 Years + 1 Day Webb Set the AR in Mile

Bolt Talks Prior To His Race On Friday In London:
*Bolt: "I would say I'm faster than Tyson Gay and I'm trying to stay that way," Bolt also reveals that he plays Call of Duty: Modern Warfare under a pseudonym for hours a day.
*Bolt On What He Thought About One Newspaper Saying He Was Scared of Tyson Gay And Avoiding Him “Is that what they’re saying? That’s definitely not true. I’ve never been scared of anybody in my life and I’ve never backed down from any challenge put in front of me.”
*Bolt on His Fitness & Preparations For Berlin: "I think I’m probably close, probably 85 percent,"
*4:30 Bolt Video Interview With BBC

News From Britain
*Former Olympic Bronze Medallist Kelly Sotherton Withdraws From World's Heptathlon With Heel Injury
*Tim Benjamin Retires At Age 27 Four years ago, he was 4th in the world but he's now tired of battling injuries

Recommended Read: Taller Athletes Are Going To Dominate Speed Events This study from Duke University basically says we'll see more and more tall athletes winning in track and swimming. We think it makes sense. As training methods improve and are spread all over the world, it was just a matter of time before 6'5" 100m "freaks of nature" came to be.
*More On Size Of Athletes From Canada's National Post
*World's Top Athletes Have Become Taller In The Last Century

Non-Running Related Stuff That Caught Our Eye

• Was Alberto Contador's Climb On Sunday The Best In The History Of The Tour? Science of Sport does it again with an amazing analysis leading us to believe Contador's smackdown of Le Tour was the best climb in Tour history. Science Of Sport's Initial Reaction From Sunday
• The Calorie Delusion: Why Food Labels Are Wrong Food scientists have been giving us terrible advice for a long time. According to new studies, counting calories is basically pointless. The difference between crunchy and mushy food may be more important.
• Best TV Idea We've Seen In A While: Shaq Vs... Big Ben, Michael Phelps and Serena Williams get to kick Diesel's *ss at their sports. It's his way of getting in shape for the NBA season. If only reality tv had been invented when John Kruk was playing.

Men's 100m All Over The Press Thanks To Bolt And Gay

*London 100m Will Feature 7 Runners With Sub-10 PBs That's gotta be a record for a non-World Championships or non-Olympics race.
Recommended Read: What Bolt Brings To A Meet People are willing to pay to see Bolt because he is becoming a one man spectacle unlike any other. Just as we turned on the Paris meet on Friday, Bolt was getting a standing ovation while walking on the track for 100m in his hoodie.
Recommended Read: Tyson Gay and Usain Bolt Talk About Their Rivalry Gay basically says half the battle is convincing himself he can run faster than any man ever has.
*Tyson Gay Adopts "9.5 Mentality" To Beat Bolt
*Jamaica Observer Has Tyson Gay, Asafa Powell Cartoon We're loving the 100m hype. It seems like everyone is pumped to see the World Championships 100m like it's an old-school heavyweight boxing match.
*Is Simeon Williamson Ready To Beat One Of The Big Boys In The 100m? He beat Dwain Chambers in one race but Williamson is a long way off from the top of the food chain.

What Are The Rest Of The Pros Up To?

• Tirunesh Dibaba To Compete In London Grand Prix 5,000m She pulled out of her last race, and this one is slated to be her final tune-up for Worlds.
• Jelimo Is Back With 1:59.59 In Heusden
• Robles Continues Season On Monday In Greece
• Oscar Pistorius Giving Up On Worlds

800 US Women In The News
*Maggie Vessey Comes Up Agonizingly Short (2:00.04) in Ghent. *Ghent Results Vessey was fantastic once again but she's now running out of time to get the A qualifier for Berlin. In other action, former Stanford star Russell Brown was fantastic in the men's 1,500 as he ran 3:37 to win over Will Leer in only his 2nd race of the year.*Video of Brown's Race Here
*Phoebe Wright PRs at 800 But Comes Up Short of A Standard As She Runs 2:00.40 Wright may not try again. Good to see that Chanelle Price also PRd by running 2:01.33
*A Brief Chat With Geena Gall The two-time NCAA champ is thrilled to be going to worlds and moving out to Oregon. She's hoping to someday work for Nike.

It's Official: #1 vs. #2 All-Time Is Happening In Berlin: Duncan Kibet To Challenge Haile Gebrsellasie Fans had long been hoping for a Wanjiru vs. Geb showing at Berlin. Well they'll have to settle for the #1- versus #2-fastest of all time as Wanjiru is going to Chicago.

Getting Ready For This Weekend's Kenyan Trials
*800 Meters To Highlight Kenyan Trials as David Rudisha and World Champ Alfred Kirwa To Clash For 1st Time Ever Rudisha missed last year's trials with injury.
*Pamela Jelimo Said An Injury In December Set Her Back Two Months But She's Feeling Good Now We're glad to see she's confident. That being said, we don't believe her when she said the following about her early season disastrous results. It might be the lie of the year, "To many, I was running badly, but to me it was just a normal training exercise. I took the results positively because I was just coming into competitive action." Apparently, she didn't believe herself as in this article, she admits her early season poor runs were 'very painful.'

News Relating To Worlds
It's Official: Willis Out of World Champs He's up to running an hour a day, 5 times a week, preparing for 5th Avenue Mile
*After Failing In Bid To Move Up To 5k/10k, Ethiopia's Yakob Jarso Qualifies For Worlds in 1st Steeple of Year We're not sure why someone who was 4th in the Olympics would try to change events. He runs for Team Honda in Japan.
*Campbell-Brown Responding Well To Treatment, Should Be Ready For Worlds The 100m world champ skipped a meet in Greece after suffering a cramp but seems to be fine. In the meantime, Jamaican Kerron Stewart has distanced herself from the rest and is on a total roll.

LRC The Week That Was This week in our weekly recap we give praise to Jerry Schumacher's boys and US women's 800 runners but have to heap scorn on Canada for totally screwing Nate Brannen (good news Athletics Canada DOES accept mile conversions. We were wrong) and some on the US men's 800 meter runners. Along the way, we give you a math lesson, remind you that Kenyans are people, too and try to get to the bottom of the Kenyan 10k controversy by actually making calls across the globe. Plus of course we don't forget the incredible action in Paris: Willard's 800m win, Bolt's run in the rain and Bekele over Lagat.

Today: Maggie Vessey 2:00.04 Just short of the "A" standard. *Meet website

Hel-Lo! Lolo Jones Runs World-Leading 12.47 In Greece Where did this come from? Lolo has been getting beat down all over Europe but she caught a good one in Rethymno. She wasn't the only one as this recap points out: Great Meet Recap From Rethymno - Ivory Williams Runs 9.93
*USATF Press Release On Greece Meet

Streaky Athletes

• Blog On Edwin Moses - A Champion To Look Up To 122 meet win streak. Will that streak ever be broken by another elite?
• Olympic Champion Steven Hooker On His Injury Comeback And Usain Bolt Hooker had won 9 meets in a row spanning almost a calendar year before losing last week.

LRC's Heusden Distance Recap *Results *LRC Thread Matt Tegenkamp got his A standard in the 5,000m with a smooth 13:07.97 2nd-place finish that boosted Evan Jager onto the USA Worlds 5,000m squad. Teg is officially back in top form with his fastest time since 2007.
*Tegenkamp Talks About Opening in 13:07.97 with some windy conditions (plus video of race)
*American 5,000m Teams Now Set
*Berlin A & B Standards

Article About The Boilermaker And Distance Running Hall Of Fame In Utica The Boilermaker is one of the most fun road races in the country. This article mentions how the US Distance Running Hall of Fame, located in Utica, is situated under a highway overpass in the seedy section of town. "Not exactly Cooperstown" pretty much sums it up. How do you know your sport isn't very popular? When the hall of fame is under I90 in Utica.

Washington's Kendra Schaaf Breaks Two Canadian Junior Meet Records UW's rising senior broke the 1,500m and ,3000m meet records.

Weekend Results That Perhaps 12 Of You Care About

• Zaragoza Recap And Results American Dwight Phillips runs 10.14 for 5th in the 100m with about a 4m/sec tailwind. Zeitia clears 2.01m in the HJ.
• Results And Recap Of Abuja Meet In Nigeria Africa's top 400m runner of all-time, Congo's Gary Kikaya, runs 45-low.

Oregon's Jordan McNamara Breaks 4 In Eugene All-Comers Meet This kid is having an unbelievable season.

Weekend News From Around The World

• High Jumper Andrei Silnov Will Miss Worlds After Olympic Win His countryman Ivan Ukhov should win in his absence.
• Article On British Miler Lisa Dobriskey
• Kenya's "Standard" Recaps Paris Meet - Concerned About Kenyan Steeple Dominance The Kenyans just had their most successful Olympics ever and won a ton of medals at the World Youth Games.

7 Dopers Suspended By IAAF Reason to celebrate this weekend. Our sport actually punishes cheaters!