February 21, 2014 Homepage Archive

Where Your Dreams Become Reality

Archived Homepage For February 21, 2014

Quote Of The Day

“I was told in no uncertain terms by cardiologists, pulmonary specialists, internists, radiologists and ER nurses and doctors that the size, strength and power of my lungs and heart are what saved me …”

“I’ve got a long trail ahead of me in order to recover and get better. Tucked into my thoughts is the memory of being a consistent stop on the morning rounds of the doctors, cardiologists and internists when I was in the hospital. Every one of them wanted to come and talk to the Olympian whose resting and sleeping heart rate hovered between 29 – 38. Some mornings my bed was surrounded by residents, 3rd year medical students and the presiding doctor – all of whom were eager to learn from an aerobic specimen. … I, in turn, wanted them to see what running did for me aside from records, medals and national titles – it saved my life.”

– US Olympian and 3-time World XC champion Lynn Jennings talking about how being a lifelong runner saved her life after she had an acute bilateral pulmonary embolism.

US Distance News / Today’s Recommended Reading

Recommended Read:How Running Saved The Life Of US Olympian And 3-Time World XC Champ Lynn Jennings “I was told in no uncertain terms by cardiologists, pulmonary specialists, internists, radiologists and ER nurses and doctors that the size, strength and power of my lungs and heart are what saved me …”
RR:NY Times: RIP Legendary Masters Runner Toshiko d’Elia, Who Has Passed At Age 84 D’Elia didn’t start running until she was in her 40s but was the first woman over 50 to break 3 hours in the marathon. RW Obituary D’Elia: “I view running as a necessary tool to help get me through life, so I do everything I can to nurture it, take care of it, and appreciate it. I want to hold on to my friend for as long as I live.”
Good Read: The Atlantic: “The Unsung Glory of the Mile Run Alan Webb’s final 1,609.34 meters were a tribute to middle-distance runners everywhere.” Alan Webb’s last mile inspires writer to chronicle some of Webb’s career as well as the aspects that she feels makes the mile great.

UK News

GB Distance Runner Andy Vernon Hoping To Make The 3,000 Final At World Indoor Champs In Poland
UK Sprinter Richard Kilty Benefits From James Dasaolu’s Injury Kilty took Dasaolu’s world indoor team spot in the 60m.
Multi-Event Star Katarina Johnson-Thompson Will Compete In LJ At World Indoors She missed going in the pentathlon as she was sick and didn’t compete in a full event, but was still selected for the UK team in the LJ as she won the British Indoor Champs.
UK’s Former 400H World Champ Dai Greene Trying To Get Back On Top This Summer After Disappointing 2 Years He wants to start by regaining his European Outdoor title and then will represent Wales at the Commonwealth Games.
Russia: Russia Names 37-Strong Team For World Indoor Champs

International Distance News

Paula Radcliffe Talks About Mo Farah’s Marathon Debut And Her Own Career Radcliffe: “They do not know how they are going to cope and react in the last 10K and how their body is going to hold together. Even Mo himself will not know that.”
IAAF Final Day Recap Russian Indoor Champs: Svetlana Karamasheva Comes Back From 800 Bronze To Win 1,500 Gold She won over Natalya Aristarkhova and 800m champ Anna Shchagina. Valentin Smirnov won the men’s race in 3:41.65, missing the Worlds standard (he said he was tired from 300+ mile weeks???), Alla Kulyatina won the women’s 5k (15:30.52), and in the men’s race twins Anatoliy Rybakov and Evgeniy Rybakov went 1-2 in 13:44.21 and 13:44.70.
Elite Field Announced For April 5th Prague Half Marathon Women: 1:07:03 woman Joyce Chepkirui leads, 2-time World XC champ Emily Chebet, Worknesh Debele (1:07:49) , 2011 NYC Marathon champ Firehiwot Dado. Men are led by Atsedu Tsegay (58:47), 2012 New York Half Marathon winner Peter Kirui and 2011 Prague winner Philemon Limo.
Former Half Marathon WR Holder Tegla Loroupe And 2-Time World Champion Catherine Ndereba To Run Alongside Kenyan President’s Wife In First Lady’s Half Marathon

African Bureaucracy At Its Finest

Kenya Govt. Report Alleges Divide Between Athletics Kenya And Olympic Committee Led To Disappointing 2012 Games – Athletics Kenya Head Threatens To Sue Paper For Reporting It
Kenyans Report Says That Nike Handing Out Special Warmup Suits To Medal Winners Negatively Impacted Team Morale In 2012
Report Also Rips Double Medalist Vivian Cheruiyot For Demanding Her Husband Be Accomodated In The Olympic Village Memo to Kenya: She won two medals.
More Administrative News:Swiss Anti-Doping Expert Says Brazilians Face Stiff Task In Trying To Get Anti-Doping Lab Up And Running For 2016 Games Brazil is so bad at anti-doping that the 2014 World Cup drug testing is being sent to Switzerland.

Non-Distance News

Over The Weekend, Kelly Proper Won A Record-Breaking 16th Irish Indoor Title She won both the 200 and LJ. The crazy thing is she’s still only 25 years young.
Jacko Gill Gets New Agent And Coach As He Tries To Make Transition From Junior To Senior Star

NYRR Millrose Games ResultsFull Millrose Coverage *New Photo Gallery

LRCAlan Webb Retires From Track And Field

Webb, the American mile record holder, talks about his career after running one last mile in the place where he first broke 4:00.

LRC Millrose Men's Recap: Bernard Lagat Amazes Yet Again, Will Leer Stuns The Wanamaker Mile Field And A Frenchman Breaks The American Record

The men’s mid-d and distance action was pretty spectacular at the 2014 NYRR Millrose Games. We tell you all about it. Here’s an intro – imagine breaking a 33-year-old American record and finishing 5th.

LRC Women's Recap: Teens Mary Cain And Ajee Wilson Win As Does Kim Conley

Mary Cain won the mile, Ajee' Wilson the 800 and Kim Conley the 3,000.

More Millrose Coverage Here, Click Here For Photo Gallery

The Moment You’ve All Been Waiting For: The Results For Our “Dirty” Or “Clean” Doping Polls

LRCWorld Record Holders “Dirty” Or “Clean” Doping Poll Results Without further ado, we present to you the results of our world record doping poll. LRCThe “Dirty” Or “Clean” Doping Polls: Why Did We Do Them? Many of you get it. You voted and gave us some very interesting demographic data. We think you’ll find the data very interesting. Some of you don’t get it and have said so. Here we address some of your concerns.
*Blogger Reflects On LetsRun’s “Clean Or Dirty Polls” And Says It Has Helped Promote Belief In A Clean Sport He writes, “The most surprising aspect of the data to me was the percentage of voters who thought that athletes were clean. … This data is surprising because I thought that as a community we were more cynical than the numbers show.”
*MB:LetsRun “Clean or Dirty” Poll Discussion Thread
*MB:Wait a minute! Over 40% of letsrun visitors DON’T think El G was doped up?

USA Indoor Champs Schedule/Heat Sheets/Results TV Info (NBCSN 4:30 ET On Sat., 3:30 Sun. Universal Sports 2pm Sun.) Full 2014 USA Indoor Coverage

Potential Controversy In Albuquerque Already?
LRCA Simple, Common-Sense Solution To The Potential 1,500 Controversy At The 2014 USA Indoor Track And Field Championships USATF has released the heat sheets, announcing that there will be two heats of the men’s mile. Somehow, Riley Masters, who has an IAAF Worlds qualifier (3:56.25 last year) and has run 3:58.35 this year, is in the slow heat but Taylor Gilland (3:58.77) and Dan Quigley (3:59.35) are in the fast heat. #FreeRiley
*MB:FreeRiley – LetsRun.com nails it – perfect 1500 solution
*MB:Potential disaster at 2014 USA Indoors? Straight 1500 final and there are 22 women, 18 men already in each race
USATF: US Indoors Preview/Info There will be plenty of live coverage as USATF.tv starts its broadcast Saturday at 2PM ET and NBC starts at 4:30PM ET. When the main coverage moves over to NBC, USATF.tv will continue to broadcast showing the field events.
2012 US Indoor 800 Champ Erica Moore Returns To Albuquerque After 2 Years Of Injury & Illness Moore won a World Indoors bronze in 2012, then disappeared for 2 years as she has dealt with an Achilles injury and mono.
Quotes From Pre-Event Press Conference For US Indoor Champs Includes quotes from Ajee’ Wilson and Jenn Suhr.

In Case You Didn’t Read It Yesterday: The Week That Was
LRC Alan Webb Crowd Surfs, Proof That Life Isn’t Fair, Our Thoughts On The Women’s World Records, And High Praise For Sean McGorty And Elise Cranny This week we give you inside access to Alan Webb‘s retirement party, tell you what we think about Genzebe Dibaba‘s world records (and Florence Kiplagat‘s), give Mary Cain fans reason to dream of a medal at World Indoors, give high praise to Sean McGorty and Elise Cranny and prove that life isn’t fair.

Tokyo – A World Major – Is Sunday

Japan Running News Weekend Preview: Asian XC Champs And Tokyo Marathon The Tokyo Marathon has a great field that includes 2-time World champ Abel Kirui, Tadesse Tola, (2:04:49), 2011 World Junior XC champ Geoffrey Kipsang and more.

East African News

Sorry, Geb, But No Way:Haile Gebrselassie Says We’ll Break The 2-Hour Marathon Barrier In The Next 18-20 Years Geb: “Look at the progress of the record. It will come. It is very easy now to run 60:00 or 59:00 flat for a half marathon.”
*LRC Archive: The Myth Of The Sub-2-Hour Marathon
Emmanuel Mutai Shares His Thoughts As He Prepares To Face The Ridiculous Field At The 2014 London Marathon “I’m going there to run my own race as far as the competition is concerned. When the field is so strong, everybody fears because you don’t know the shape of your opponents but at the end of the day, there must to be a winner.”
Former Marathon WR Holder Patrick Makau Close To Return From Injury His team said he is training and they are debating whether he should run some short tune-up races before going back to full marathons.
Kenyan World Relay Trials Are This Saturday

More US Distance News

Bernard Lagat To Race 2014 Carlsbad 5,000 On March 30th Lagat will go for the American road record of 13:24 set by Marc Davis in 1996.
In Addition To Winning US Jr. XC Champs By 51 Seconds, Elise Cranny Also Competed In The Colorado High School Swimming Championships She competed in one race on Friday before US XC and then left immediately after the race on Saturday to compete in 3 relays for her team, helping them finish 5th in both the 200 freestyle relay and 400 freestyle relay. *Day 1 Swimming Results*Day 2 (Finals)
Eugene Marathon Increases Prize Money And Support To Help US Runners Hit Olympic Trials StandardIan Dobson is the elite athlete coordinator and 2:13 man Craig Leon will pace a group through 30k at 2:15 (OT “A” standard) pace.
Another Study Shows It’s Not Bad For You To Run A Lot Or Race Marathons The study looked at the hearts of runners from the 2012 Boston Marathon.
NASCAR Champ Jimmie Johnson Runs Daytona Beach Half Marathon In 1:28:16

Start Your Day With Some Track History

SpikesMag Takes A Walk Through History: 13 Magic Moments From Past world Indoors Watch some cool videos including Haile Gebrselassie win the 1,500/3,000 double in 1999.
The IAAF Looks Back At The Elite Track History Of The Bahamas As They Get Ready To Host The First World Relay Championships They’ve won 16 gold medals (all sprints and jumps) at global championships since 1995.

SpikesMag Shares The Ten Reasons They Think Renaud Lavillenie Was Able To Break The Pole Vault WR Last Weekend They share some interesting facts about Lavillenie.

Oregon Women Move Back To The Top Of NCAA Polls As Last Week’s Number 1 Texas Moves Down To 5th Arkansas men stay on top.

Best Rabbit Of All Time? Haile G Will Pace London Marathon

Haile Gebrselassie Will Be A Pacemaker For The 2014 London Marathon The plan is for him to take the field through 30k on world record pace (around 1:28). It was also announced that Dubai Marathon champion, 18-year-old Tsegaye Mekonnen (2:04:32) has been added to the field.
Alberto Stretti Interview With Haile Gebrselassie On Rabbitting London Geb: “When we start the race, I will be the one to lead. But don’t forget how old I am!”
Haile G Says Mo Farah Should Forget The Marathon And Stick To The Track
MB Thread

Millrose Photo Gallery

2014 USA Cross-Country Photo Gallery

NCAA Conference Champs Start This Weekend *All NCAA Coverage

RRW: Armory Conference Championships Preview – Big East, MAAC, America East
Big East:*Meet Home/Schedule*Heat Sheets
NAU All-American Matt Mcelroy Commentating Live Stream For NAU Last Chance Meet Friday Starts at 5:30PM ET.
LSU Twilight:*Meet Home*Schedule
ND Alex Wilson:Isaac Wood’s 5 Races To WatchEmma Bates tries to get a 3k time for NCAAs.
Nebraska Tune-Up: *Meet Info*Schedule*Heat Sheets

US Distance / Sponsor News

Nick Symmonds Wrote A Book And Reveals All Including Recreational Drug Use, Issues With USATF/Nike And “Sex On The Circuit” Symmonds: “The primary goal is just telling the story and saying the things publicly that I’ve maybe told people over a beer in the past. … I don’t pull punches, and there are going to be some punches thrown in this book.”
*MB: Symmonds details hookups in book
Kara Goucher Still A Free Agent And Shopping Around For Potential New Sponsor She said it’s down to 5 companies.”I’m becoming less and less concerned with dollar figure and more and more concerned with if they are someone that fits into my belief system.”
Lukas Verzbicas Signs With New Balance His first competition under the new sponsor will be the Clermont Pan American Cup on March 1.
Bernard Lagat Named USATF Athlete Of The Week For Taking Down 33-Year-Old US 2,000m Record Lagat ran 4:54.7.

Lauryn Williams Makes Olympic History In Sochi *LRC Sochi 2014 News Section

Lauryn Williams Makes Olympic History In Sochi By Becoming The First Track Gold Medalist To Medal At The Winter Games She and driver Elana Meyers took home the silver medal behind a team from Canada. Williams becomes just the fourth person in history to win medals at both the Summer and Winter Olympics. The team of former shot putter Aja Evans and Cornell All-American heptathlete Jamie Greubel got the bronze.
*RW Article
USA Today: Lolo Jones Misses Medal But Celebrates With Teammates Jones and her sled partner finished 11th.
Canada’s Gold Medal Winning Bobsled Team Including Former Sprinter Heather Moyse She competed for the University of Waterloo and is still 3rd all-time on their 60m list.
Lauryn Williams Has No Idea Where She Put Her Olympic Medals She has two medals from track, but isn’t sure where they are and says, “I think they’re at my mom’s house.”

1st Day

Tracksters Dominated 1st Day Of Women’s Bobsled

Sled Powered By Lauryn Williams Leads Bobsled After Day 1 And Is Poised For Gold As Former Cornell Heptathlon Star Jamie Greubel Sits In Third
Williams Poised To Make History
Meet The “Blonde Dragon” – Cornell Heptathlon School Record Holder Jamie Greubel She almost made the 2010 Games as a pusher; now she’s a driver.
Greubel’s Sled Is Pushed By Former Illinois Track Star Aja Evans Evans is quite an athlete. Top five in the NCAA shot put, she also ran 7.63 for 60m.
Another Profile Of Former Cornell Heptathlon Star Jamie Greubel
Usain Bolt Says He’s Going To Try Out For 2018 Winter Games (As A Joke, We Think)

Other Olympics / Winter-Related News

Interesting:A Look At Some Of The Worst Winter And Summer Olympians In History Includes a thrower from the very first modern Olympics.
Another Japan Road Race Snowed Out:Fukaya City Half Marathon Cancelled Due To Impossibility Of Clearing Course

Distance News

Ken Goe Profiles Brooks Beasts TC In OregonianBrooks Steps Up To Challenge Nike’s Hold On Northwest’s Elite Running Scene
Recommended Read: Renato Canova Reveals All Of The Key Workouts For Florence Kiplagat During The Last Month, Leading Uo To Her 13.1 WRecord How about 3k (9:20), 2 x 2k (6:07), 5 x 1k (sub-3:00)? Very impressive. Canova adds more insight by discussing the workout on the message board. Canova post #1. Canova post #2.
Day 2 Of Russian Champs: Anna Shchagina Wins 800 In PR Of 2:01.29, Kseniya Ryzhov Improves 400m World Lead To 51.03 Schagina may be the Russian woman to watch this winter as she’s expected to double back in the 1,500. Stepan Poistogov, the husband of Olympic 800m bronze medallist Yekaterina Poistogova, won the men’s 800 in a 1:46.53 PR. *Day 1 Recap
Justice Is Served 12 Years Later: Since Eddy H Admitted To EPO Usage, Dave Olds Was Given Medal For 2002 USA Masters XC Title In Boulder
Daily Relay’s Collegiate Weekend Recap
The Opposite Of Going Pro: Japan’s 2:24:28 Marathoner Remi Nakazato Quits Daihatsu Team To Become Amateur
Looking For Warm Weather/A Vacation? Go To The Bahamas For The Inaugural World Relays Champs May 24-5 – Tickets Now On Sale

USA Indoor Meet Will Take Place This Weekend – Who Has The Worlds Qualifiers? *Full 2014 USA Indoor Coverage

LRCList Of American Athletes With Qualifying Standard For 2014 USA World Indoors In Poland The USA team for World Indoors will be named this weekend as no chasing of qualifiers is allowed. Who has the qualifying time? Who doesn’t? *Entries