Where Your Dreams Become Reality
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Where Your Dreams Become Reality |
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Alan Webb to Run New Balance Mile Next Weekend in NYC By David Monti (c) 2007 Race Results Weekly, all rights reserved NEW YORK (10-Jan) -- Exactly six years to the day after setting the U.S. indoor high school record for the mile (3:59.86), Alan Webb of Reston, Va., will return to New Balance Track & Field Center at The Armory in New York City for an invitational mile at the 2007 New Balance Games, organizers announced yesterday. This time, a different record will be on the line: the Armory record for the mile of 3:54.98 set by Irishman Mark Carroll at the New Balance Games in 2000. Webb will have the track, and the crowd, on his side. The Armory's 200m banked Mondo track, which has been resurfaced four times, is one of the fastest tracks in the world, helped by the fact that the giant facility in Manhattan's Washington Heights neighborhood has a wooden floor which provides a bit of bounce under the track's rigid metal frame. The fast times which have been run there are testimony to the track's favorable properties, including Marla Runyan's U.S. 5000m indoor record of 15:07.33 run in 2001, and Regina Jacobs's 4:21.79 mile run in 2000. On Jan. 20, Webb, who has since lowered indoor personal best to 3:57.52, will mix it up with a solid international filed assembled by Ian Brooks, whose booming voice over the Armory's public address system has become one of this city's great sports traditions. Welshman James Thie (3:57.71 indoor PB), Englishman Andy Baddeley (3:58.23 indoor), Jason Lunn (3:55.49 indoor), and New Zealander Adrian Blincoe (3:58.19 indoor) should be Webb's chief rivals. Brooks has also recruited a top field of women who will have their own invitational mile, and the last two winners of the Continental Airlines Fifth Avenue Mile, Sara Hall of Big Bear, Calif., and Carmen Douma-Hussar of Ardmore, Pa., lead the field. Hall, the former Sara Bei who ran for Stanford University and is now married to Ryan Hall, has a track personal best of 4:35.02, but running down Fifth Avenue last September she ran a sizzling 4:28-flat. Douma-Hussar holds the Canadian record for the mile indoors (4:28.43) set on the Armory track at the New Balance Games in 2005. Jacobs's 4:21.79 is both the meet and Armory record. The complete fields for the New Balance Games invitational miles are below: MEN - 1. Alan Webb, USA, Nike 2. James Thie, Wales, NYAC 3. Andy Baddeley, England, New Balance 4. Jason Lunn, USA, Nike 5. Adrian Blincoe, New Zealand, New Balance 6. Eliud Njubi, Kenya, Westchester TC 7. Grant Robison, USA, Reebok 8. Shane Stroup, USA, Nike 9. Sam McKenzie, USA, Nike Central Park TC 10. Abiyott Endale, Ethiopia, Westchester TC 11. Alexandr Skvortsov, Russia, Spartanik TC 12. Josh McAdams, USA, New Balance 14. Neville Miller, USA, NYAC 15. Richard Smith, USA, Unattached WOMEN - 21. Carmen Douma-Hussar, Canada, New Balance 22. Sara Hall, USA, Asics 23. Hilary Stellingwerff, Canada, New Balance 24. Amy Mortimer, USA, Reebok 25. Megan Metcalf, Canada, New Balance 26. Katrina Wooton, England, New Balance 27. Mary Cullen, Ireland, Reebok 28. Marina Muncan, Bulgaria, New Balance 29. Aziza Aliyu, Ethiopia, Westchester TC 30. Roisin McGettigan, Ireland, New Balance 31. Keira Carlstrom, USA, Unattached 32. Rebecca Donoghue, USA, New Balance, Boston 33. Nikeya Green , USA, Unattached
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