McMullen, a semi-finalist in the 1500m at the 1996 Atlanta Games, was only 49-years-old. In a sad coincidence, he passed away one day after Bob Parks, the head coach at Eastern Michigan when McMullen was there.

• RIP: Eastern Michigan University Mourns The Loss Of Legendary Coach Bob Parks Who Passed Away Wednesday At Age-90 Parks was at EMU for 34-years and impressively, had athletes he had coached at every Olympic Games from 1968 to 2012.

• GB Distance Runners Dewi Griffiths, Charlotte Arter, Lily Partridge Headline Elite-Only 10,000m In Newport On Saturday
• Tokyo Olympic Marathon Team Member Ayuko Suzuki Withdraws From The March 14th Nagoya Women's Marathon This was going to be her first marathon since 2019, but she pulled out with tendonitis.

One leading shoe executive said, “The [sole thickness] parameters are out of control. They should never have been what they are, but now we have them we are going to work with them."

• Seb Coe: "Why The Debate About Shoe Technology Needs To Be Put In Historical Perspective" Coe defends Eilliot Giles' record run and talks about how his engineer father helped him choose his first shoe sponsor based on what was "biomechanically best" for his feet.
• MB: Pete Julian Post-Race Interview: 'It's Not the Shoes'
• MB: Nike Announces Vaporfly NEXT% 2

On April 24th there will be a Philadelphia-region collegiate only meet and they also plan on hosting a pro meet and a high school meet later on.

• 2021 USATF Under-20 Championships Cancelled Due To COVID Positions for the 2021 Pan Am Championships in Chile will instead be selected based on performance rank order.

She claimed she had rushed to see her sister in the hospital, but turns out she had made up the story and forged hospital documents. The Kenyan was due to be switch allegiance to Bahrain this summer, but now will be banned for three years. *2nd article

• Court Fines Man Who Drove Onto Course During National High School Ekiden $470

• BYU Near Unanimous #1 Ahead Of NAU In Updated Men's NCAA XC Coaches' Poll Arkansas and Stanford are ranked 3-4.
• Arkansas Women Ranked #1 In Latest NCAA XC Coaches' Poll BYU, New Mexico and NC State are ranked 2-4.
• Women's Pre-NCAA Indoor Bowerman Watch List Athing Mu, Joyce Kimeli and Courtney Wayment are the three distance runners on the ten person list.

• Tokyo 2020 To Decide On International Spectators By End Of March The original title of this article said Tokyo 2020 was planning on holding the games "without international spectators" as that's what a Japanese newspaper was reporting.
• Another Poll Says Majority (58%) Of Japanese Public Do Not Want Olympics To Happen This Year Another useless stat because it says "this year" as if another year is an option. The choices are 2021 or not at all so that's the only thing a poll should be asking.
• US Politician Nikki Haley Joins Calls For Boycott Of Beijing 2022 Olympics Over China's Human Rights Record How about we leave politics out of the Olympics?
• Tokyo 2020 Appoints 12 Women To Executive Board In Response To Sexism Controversy

Cooper Teare talks about how he and Cole Hocker laughed at coach Ben Thomas' pre-race split sheet that had 3:49 written down as they were only expecting to run 3:53 high at best.

• List Of Accept Entries For NCAA DI Indoor Champs
• MB: Athing Mu Will not run NCAA indoor 800 She's entered in...
• The Register Guard: Led By Historically Good Men's Distance Team, Oregon Loads Up For NCAA Indoor Champs
• Updated NCAA DI Men’s Cross Country Regional Rankings
• Latest NCAA DI Women’s Cross Country Regional Rankings
• Qualifiers Announced For 2021 NCAA DII Indoor T&F Championships

This will be her first race since giving birth to her son last year and her first race since 2018 according to Tilastopaja.org. Eliud Kipchoge was previously announced for the men.

• MB: Solid 800, 1500 And 5000 Fields With BTC And More Set For Sound Running Invite On Saturday The men's 5000m has Marc Scott, Morgan McDonald, Kieran Tuntivate, Grant Fisher while the women's is lead by Molly Huddle, Emily Sisson, Kellyn Taylor, Weini Kilati. Scott posted that he actually skipped Euro Indoors for this race and he's expecting a "big one." *Meet Home

In our weekly recap, we catch up with Mike Smith and ask him about his team's loss a the Big Sky xc champs, wonder if a team can go from 8th at SECs to #1 at NCAAs, and rave about Yuki Kawauchi and Athing Mu.

"My mind still stays strong, I don’t want the vaccine. ...I don’t want to get into it right now, but I have my reasons." Asafa Powell on the other hand was under the impression he would need to take the vaccine to compete abroad.

MB: Yohan Blake: "I’d rather miss the Olympics than take the vaccine. I am not taking it."

• NY Times Analyzes The Ethics Of Olympic Athletes Skipping The Line For COVID Vaccinations Some don't think it's fair for athletes to get priority while others think having thousands of unvaccinated people from all over the world in Tokyo could be a "superspreader" event.

• Athletics Weekly Men's Track Preview Jakob Ingebrigsten vs Marcin Lewandowski in the 1500m should be a highlight.

• Women's Track Preview Can 18-year-old star Keely Hodgkinson win 800m gold?
• Men's Field Preview Mondo Duplantis vs Renaud Lavillenie in the pole vault.
• Women's Field Preview Ukraine's Yaroslava Mahuchikh has cleared 2.06m this season in the HJ.
• Irish Miler Ciara Mageean Pulls Out Of European Indoor Championships She was expected to be one of Ireland's best medal hopes, but she cited lack of fitness due to setbacks for not wanting to compete.
• HJer Morgan Lake Leads List Of Six Athletes Added To UK Euro Indoor Squad