The 2015 NYC Marathon Is Sunday

LRCWisdom From Meb Keflezighi And Bob Larsen: How Meb Is Approaching His First Marathon As A Master

LRCNYC Marathon Thursday: A Look Into The Buildups Of Defending Champions Wilson Kipsang And Mary Keitany

LRC2015 TCS NYC Marathon Women's Preview: Defending Champ Mary Keitany Leads A Loaded Field

LRC2015 TCS NYC Marathon Men's Preview: Can Wilson Kipsang Return To The Top Against Boston Champ Lelisa Desisa And World Champs Silver Medalists Yemane Tsegay & Geoffrey Kamworor?

More NYC News

• Road, Track, XC, Geoffrey Kamworor Is A “Man For All Surfaces” Kamworor is a “throwback” to a time when runners weren’t so specialized and excelled often on the dirt, roads and track.
• Recommended Read: Ed Caesar For The New Yorker: “How New York City Made The Modern Marathon” Caesar writes that on Sunday, “Few runners will know that the city whose streets they are about to race through created the marathon as we understand it today.” Fans of this classic LetsRun thread will be thrilled to know it all started with a “marathon on a track.”
• Caroline Rotich’s Coach Says She’s In Better Shape Now Than When She Won Boston Before being coached by Ryan Bolton, Rotich used to make a living racing all the time at second-tier events with less prize money rather than big race/big paydays.
• Videos: Celebrities Receive Bibs Includes former NY Giant Tiki Barber, retired tennis pro James Blake and Dave Obelkevich, who has the longest streak of NYC finishes (39).
• Former Tennis Pro James Blake Running NYC; Discusses Police Brutality Blake was victim of an excessive-force arrest when he was mistakenly identified as a suspect.
• Wheelchair Athlete Tatyana McFadden Returns To NYC As She Shoots For Her Third Consecutive Grand (Boston, London, Chicago, NYC)

Sportsmanship (???)

• Dennis Young Calls For An End To “The Assist” At The End Of Races Recently an Iowa high schooler was DQed for helping a collapsed runner finish and Young agrees he should have been.
• Minnesota’s Kate Bucknam Wins NCAA Sportsmanship Award For Helping A Struggling Baylor Runner Cross The Line At NCAA XC Champs Last Year
  *MB Archive: Collapsing at the 6km XC finish? A new thing? Theatrics or real exhaustion?

Olympic News

• IOC Member Says LA 2024 Bid Start Process With “Clean Slate”
• Los Angeles Mayor Says IOC Members Focusing On Success Of LA 1984 Rather Than Boston Failure
• Another Strike Against Rio: Doha To Replace Rio De Janeiro As Host Of The 2016 ANOC General Assembly Meeting This breaks the tradition going back to 1983 of the Olympic host holding the last General Assembly before the Games.
• Bid Chief Says German Soccer Scandal Has Damaged Hamburg’s 2024 Olympic Hopes
• Thomas Bach Announces That Refugees Will Be Allowed To Compete Under The Olympic Flag At Rio 2016

• Video Of Kenyan Runner Who Tried To Fake His Way To Second Place In Last Weekend’s Nairobi Marathon Hilarious video as the cheat is surrounded at the finish line by angry Kenyans who call him an imposter and mock his running shoes (which are trainers). *2nd Video
  *MB: Cheater at Nairobi marathon finished 2nd
• Heartbreaking Video Of Kenyan Collapsing And Failing To Make It To The FInish Line At The Victoria Marathon 2 Weeks Ago Tisia Kiplangat was leading near the end, but had to DNF with 800m left.
• Haile Gebrselassie’s Sister Passed Away After Fighting Battle With Cancer Geb was supposed to run his last competitive race at the Great Scottish Run in September, but had to miss it to be with his family.

UK Sports Minister Tracey Crouch Says The Government Is Looking Into Possibility Of Making Doping A Criminal Offence We’re all for it.

More Distance News

• Molly Huddle Campaigning For A Female Runner Emoji “Though it’s a lighthearted topic very low on the totem poll of gender equality issues, the request was serious and I would love to see it happen.”
• Arne Gabius After His 2:08:33 German NR: “The second half felt like chewing gum. It seemed to never end. It hurt all right.”
• Columbia XC Photo Essay Check out the day-to-day of an Ivy League cross-country team.
• All-American And Oregon Alum Daniel Winn To Join B.A.A. High Performance Team After graduating this year, Winn won 1,500m silver at the NACAC Championships.

Doping Busts

• LRC 2008 Boston Marathon Runner-Up Abderrahime Bouramdane Of Morocco Is Banned For Doping – Caught By Biological Passport The five-time top 5 placer at a major is banned for two years and all results since April 14, 2011 are nullified.
  *MB: Shocker (sarcasm): Moroccan Abderrahime Bouramdann – 2008 Boston Marathon runner-up – banned for doping
• WADA Dismisses Calls For Doping To Be A Criminal Offense However, they admit it’s an effective deterrent and want governments to go after those who traffic PEDs. We would like to see dopers get jail time; it’s fraud.
• Russian Olympic Hammer Thrower Maria Bespalova Banned For Doping
• Never Too Young To Dope: Chinese Youth Games Athlete Fails Drug Test
• AK Vice President David Okeyo Explains How The Kenyan Anti-Doping System Works And How They’re Trying To Improve Athletes who want to have a “B” sample tested need to pay for the test themselves and often, caught athletes don’t want to give up the doctors/agents who “misled” them.

NCAA / HS

• World Youth Champion Keshun Reed Commits To LSU Reed (PRs of 45.75 and 21.39) finished 3rd in the 400 at World Youth Champs and was on the US’s gold medal-winning 4 x 400.
• NCAA DI Athletes Of The Week Are Grambling’s Hassan Chepkwony And Alabama State’s Paige Rankine Conference season officially started as they each won the Southwestern Athletic Conference Championships.

New York (Marathon) News

• Interesting Read: A Walk Through Meb Keflezighi’s NYC Marathon Career Starting With 2002 Through 2015 Assuming he finishes this year, he’ll be tied with Grete Waitz for the most NYC marathon finishes as a pro.
• Recently-Graduated NY High Schooler Mikey Brannigan Wins 1,500 Paralympic World Title He ran 3:56.50 to beat Iran’s Peyman Nasiri Bazanjani by .03 at the World Championships in Doha, Qatar.
• AP: Fueled By The Running Boom, The NYRR Has Grown Into A Force With Huge Financial Muscle How big and how quickly has the NYRR grown? Well, NYRR events had more than 290,000 finishers in the last 12 months. “That’s the equivalent of staging a Boston Marathon every 5 ½ weeks.”
• Fortunte Q&A With NYRR CEO Michael Capiraso And NYC Marathon Race Director Peter Ciaccia There were almost 51,000 starters in last year’s race, but Ciaccia thinks “logistically, the marathon can get bigger.”
• At 71 Years Old, Florida Woman Connie Brown Holds The Longest NYC Marathon Streak This year will be her 37th run; she has a best time of 3:37:54 from 1982 and “ran” almost 8 hours last year. Dave Obelkevich has the longest streak overall with 38 consecutive finishes.

Sprint Stuff

• Video: Sumo Wrestlers Racing Is The Best Thing Ever These 300+ pound men duke it out over 40 meters.
  *Full Video (Article’s Video Cuts Off)
• Trayvon Bromell Says He’ll Run 2016 Indoors In His First Season As A Pro USA’s medal chances at Portland 2016 just got that much better.
• Nice Tribute To Former US 400H Champ And Record Holder Carl McBain, Who Passed Away At 97 Years Old McBain was ranked #1 in the world in 1940, but never got to go to the Olympics because of WWII. The NR he set that year (51.6) stood for 10 years.

Sprint / Jump News

• German Amputee Long Jumper Markus Rehm Smashes Paralympic Long Jump WR With 8.40m Leap To Win IPC Title
• MB: One footed German Markus Rehm jumps 8.40m – distance that would have won 2012 Olympic gold!!
• Chinese Sprinter Su Bingtian Pleads: “Don’t call me the next Liu Xiang.” “I just want to do my best in sprint events and if one day I find I cannot make any more progress, I will quit.”

Pre-Frankfurt: German Arne Gabius Thinks He’s Got A Good Shot At 27-Year-Old German Record Of 2:08:47 In Frankfurt Sisay Lemma, Bazu Worku and Micah Kogo are all in the men’s race. *Watch Live At 5am ET

LetsRunW – Women’s Distance News

• Q&A About Coming Back From Pregnancy With Defending NYC Marathon Champ Mary Keitany She says it was easier to come back after baby #2 and her win in NYC was her most thrilling ever.
• Q&A With Aussie Milly Clark, Who Shocked Herself By Running 2:29 In Amsterdam She is now #9 in Australia history and her coach was just hoping for a sub-2:35, maybe 2:32.
• Lucy Kabuu (2:19:34 PR) To Headline Women’s-Only Saitama Marathon On November 15th Two-time 5,000 world silver medalist Sylvia Kibet (2:26:16) could challenge in her second marathon.
• National University Women’s Ekiden Championships Preview – Ritsumeikan Set To Make It Five Straight If they win, it will be 9 of the last 12 years.
  *Japan > USA? MB: Brett Larner implies last year’s Mich State women (NCAA champs) might only get 7th or 8th in Japanese championships
• In First Race Since Finishing 5th In 1,500 In Beijing, Laura Muir Will Begin Road To Rio With Scottish Cross-Country Relays This Weekend
• Free Steeple Drills From The UK’s Top Steepler In 2015, Lennie Waite The former Rice steepler shows you how to get ready for the steeple (pics).

How Low Will He Go?

LRCThe Future Of Luke Puskedra: How Difficult Is It To PR After Career Marathon #3?

Caribbean Sprint Stuff

• U.S. Olympic Bobsledder Jazmine Fenlator (The Driver For Lolo Jones) Switches Allegiances To Jamaica Jamaica has never sent a women’s bobsled team to the Olympics, but Fenlator is planning on recruiting Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce as a push athlete.
• In Honor Of Back To The Future Day, BBC Makes Some 30-Years-From-Now Sporting Predictions Will the 100m WR actually be any faster?
• EuroSport Writer Calls Out Usain Bolt’s Sub-19 200 Talk “There is simply nothing to suggest that he can do so. It’s now six years since he ran a personal best at either 100m or 200m … it now seems pretty clear that Bolt’s best days are in the past.”
• Carifta 100/200 Champ Mario Burke Now A Freshman At The University Of Houston The 10.21 man is coached by Carl Lewis and is hoping to make the 2016 Olympic team for Barbados.

The 2015 NYC Marathon Is This Weekend

• Meb Keflezighi After His Marathon Debut In NYC 2002: “This is my first and last marathon. I never want to do a marathon again.” Talking about the mistakes he made, Meb says, “I tell people I got my PhD that day. I know what to do, what not to do, and New York is where I learned my PhD.”
• After A Breakthrough Couple Of Years, US XC Champ Laura Thweatt Is Making Her Marathon Debut In NYC
• Legends Haile Gebrselassie, Tegla Loroupe, Paula Radcliffe And Paul Tergat Selected As NYRR HOF Inductees
• 26 NYC Marathon Facts From Its New Museum Exhibit Some interesting tidbits from the history of the 45-year-old race.
• Brand New TCS New York City Marathon Pavilion To Open For Runners And Fans In Central Park On Monday, October 26 The Visitor Center will be located steps from the finish.

Paralympic News

• Short Profile On NYC Marathon Wheelchair Athlete Josh George, Who Lost His Legs When He Fell Out A 12th Story Window As A 4-Year-Old
• On USATF.tv: USATF Productions Launches New Short Film On Paralympic Sprinter Richard Browne “Tragedy to Triumph: The Richard Browne Story” tells how Browne went from football player to paralympian when he lost his leg in an accident falling through a glass door at a laundromat.
• UK Wheelchair Paralympic Champion David Weir Complains That Worlds Is Too Close To The NYC Marathon