Where Your Dreams Become
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LetsRun.com: The Week That Was April 6 - April 12, 2009 If you are a conspiracy theorist thinking Boston is trying to set it up for an American to win this year, then you got what you were looking for last week when four-time Boston Marathon champion Catherine Ndereba revealed that she wanted to run Boston. "I talked with Boston, I wanted to run there, but they said they didn't have space for me." Very interesting. Last time we checked, there is plenty of "space" in a marathon. There may not be plenty of cash unless you are the FLORA London Marathon. We don't want to dampen the Boston excitement too much, so let us hype up the race right now. How about Ryan Hall's brief chat with Runnersworld where he revealed his fitness is "in a totally different place" as to where it was prior to Beijing where he still managed a 10th-place finish in 2:12? Hall is running 8-mile tempo runs 22.5 seconds per mile faster than prior to Beijing. If he runs 22.5 seconds faster than he did in Beijing, well then he'll run 9:49 faster. 12 minus nine is 2:03. Now please don't label us as a crazy, ridiculous American PR hype machine as Hall himself used that type of math in the interview. He did it slightly differently as he came up with the 9 minutes faster figure. Hall tried to figure out how many times 8 miles goes into 26.2 and he rounded and said 3. Since he's running the 8 milers three minutes faster than prior to Beijing, he went on to say, "three times three is nine, nine minus 2:12 is ...well you get the picture." Interesting to see that Korean Ji Young Jun won the Daegu International Marathon over the weekend in 2:08:30. It was the third 2:08 marathon for the Korean and it raised hopes that he somehow might be able to medal at the World Champs. The most interesting thing about Jee Young Jun is that he is the Korean 5k record holder with a 13:49 PB. That equates to only a 2:14 marathon according to the McMillan calculator. And to think that the Korean national record is 2:07:20. The sport lost a legend last week when former mile record holder Arne Andersson passed away at the age of 91. The Swede had a rivalry with his compatriot Gunder Hägg and the two were the "Coe & Ovett" of the WWII era as they traded world records in the mile (Anderson ran 4:01.6 in 1944 and Hägg then took it to 4:01.4). Andersson is credited by many for inspiring Roger Bannister to break 4:00 as Bannister was one of 54,000 that crammed into White City to watch the two Swedes battle the Brit Sydney Wooderson, who was restarting his career after having the world record prior to the War. Speaking of blogs, American Scott Bauhs blogged about having his first LRC quote of the day prior to running the Carlsbad 5k on April 5th by saying he got about 5 text messages '"letting me know that I'm famous." He had a good attitude about his race, where he finished 10th in 13:56. "I said (in the QOD) I hope I don't get annihilated on the course at Carlsbad. Well I think annihilated might actually be a good way to put it." We wonder if the people in charge of the facebook group of people who have been featured in the QOD will let him join. Asics lost a great man last week when it came out that master craftsman Hitoshi Mimura is retiring after 41 years at the company. The guy who hand made shoes for everyone from Olympic gold medallists Naoko Takahashi and Mizuki Noguchi to Ichiro Suzuki won't totally be out of the shoe business, however, as he's setting up his own shop Mimura Shoes that will be mainly staffed by family members. While we mentioned last week in the Week That Was as it technically came out on Monday, The Message Board Thread Of The Week has to be the great one on training started by famed Italian coach Renato Canova, which at last check was 8 pages long and included 156 posts: Duncan Kibet and James Kwambai : the role of Claudio Berardelli, and analysis of something new in training. Canova talks about the ideas he and Claudio Beradelli have shared as they train the top Kenyans in the world. But what we'd really like to do (and maybe we should put this on our To Do List as Item #1) is find out what Canova thinks happened to his protege Moses Mosop at World XC. Mosop dominated the Kenyan Trials by 21 seconds but was only 11th at World XC. This week he crushed the field at a XC meet in Sardinia, Italy that traditionally serves as the season-ender as he beat World XC #6 Matthew Kisorio by 32 seconds. What went wrong in Amman? We'd love to hear Canova's take. Maybe he didn't like the course, which Kim Smith described this week as being more like a "mountain race" than true cross country. Is Chris Devine The Bernie Madoff Of The Running World? The allegations in the lawsuit against Devine by the Allen family are really unbelievable. He's accused of buttering up the "mentally and physically frail" multi-millionaire with gifts of $22,000 worth of slippers and a $250,000 car so the guy would hand over his fortune to Devine and his partner Bruce Buzil. In the meantime, we think former Devine employee and asst. Las Vegas Marathon director Tim Kelly said it best, "Chris is not a good man. That is the reason I resigned. The way he runs his business is downright immoral." More: *Chris Devine Sued In $70 Million Racketeering, Fraud And Embezzlement Lawsuit *More Details On Some Of Lawsuit Against Chris Devine *Salt Lake City Marathon may not go on because Devine hasn't paid its bill to the cops Doping News: Lance Gets In Hot Water, East German Coaches/Cheats Apologize 20+ Years Later Ashenden is a long-time critic of Armstrong. For background on that, click here. More: *German Steroid Victims Dismiss "Whitewash" Apology From Former East German And Current German Track & Field Coaches Former East Germany Coaches Admit To Doping Athletes *German Athletics Federation Currently Employs The Doping Coaches! *Lance Armstrong Issues Statement Denying He Tried To Avoid Doping Test *Lance Says He May Be Banned Sprint News: Recommended Reads: Weekend Results (A Big List Of Results Can Be Found Here)Army-Navy *Men's Results *Women's Results *Army Men Complete Sweep of Titles for 2008-09 *Navy Women Complete N-Star Sweep With Win Quote Of The Day: Day-By-Day Monday: 2:04:27 X 2 as Duncan Kibet Wins Thriller in Rotterdam Tuesday: "I'm really happy, I'm really happy ... I'm happy." Wednesday:"I'm
nothing in the family in terms of running. I need to go home and start
training harder. I think when I came to America, I became soft. I need
a wakeup call." Thursday:"[Going into the season] we
thought, 'Let's go to the mile. You'll be challenged, you'll be bumped,
you'll be pushed, people will try to outkick you.' As it turns out, one [mile] kind of ended up being a time trial, which
is what we were trying to avoid. But I guess when you're gonna run
3:55, there's not a lot of guys who are going to race with you." Friday: "Man, when I saw those results, I wanted to do another long run, even
though I had run 25 miles the day before ... When you see a 2:07
guy take a couple minutes off his PR, it makes you think about what is
possible for you. I think there are a couple of ways to look at guys
stepping up their game. Either be inspired by it or give up. I have
always chosen to be inspired." Saturday: "There ain't going to be no jogging in the final." Sunday: "He
partied last year and look at his results, how can you argue? You saw
him Saturday night, he arrived at the Quad (a club) at 2am and
left at 5am. That's only three hours." Did you miss a 2009 LRC Week That Was? Click here to catch up on the most pressing topics in track and field in our 2009 LRC Week That Was Archives.
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Runner's World &
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