Are Pro Track Fans Ready For A Draft and Team Names and Logos?

• LRC TrackTown Summer Series announces team names and logos – Are you ready for the San Francisco Surge, the Portland Pulse, the Philadelphia Force and New York Empire?
• LRC Watch The TrackTown Summer Series Draft Live On LetsRun.com At 7 PM ET On Friday

Weekly Recap

LRC WTW: Molly Seidel And Erin Finn Are Both MIA, Devin Dixon Arrives, Mark Wetmore Produces An 800 Champ, And A Simple Rule Change Guaranteed To Make Track & Field More Popular This week we tell the NCAA of simple rule change that needs to be made immediately, take a look at the Colorado men’s first 800 champ in 28 years, and more.

• World Leading Jump Performances From Brittney Reese (LJ), Will Claye (TJ) And Yulimar Rojas (TJ) Highlighted The Action At Guadeloupe International Meet Mike Rodgers beat out Andre de Grasse in the 100 (10.08 to 10.10) and there was also a world lead in the 400H from Kori Carter (54.53) and Jenna Prandini won the 100/200 double. LaShawn Merritt won the 400 (44.99) and Ryan Crouser won the shot.
• Georgia Heptathlete Kendell Williams Breaks Record For Most Appearances On Bowerman Watch List

Random Road Running News

• Boston Marathon Race Director Dave McGillvray Among A Group Doing The World Marathon Challenge (7 Marathons In 7 Days On 7 Continents)
• Joan Benoit Samuelson Wants To Be The First Woman Over 60 Years Old To Break 3 Hours In The Marathon The WR in the 60-64 age group is 3:01:30 and Samuelson ran a 55-59 WR of 2:50:33 when she was 55.
  *MB: Happy 60th BDay Joan Benoit Samuelson!! Will she soon become the first 60 yr old woman to break 3 in the marathon?
• 14-Year Old Completes 50th State Marathon To Raise Money For Vision Care For Kids
• Runners Misdirected By Course Marshal At Maine Coast Marathon, Run An Extra Half Mile About one-half to two-thirds of the runners ran the extra distance, some of them missing out on Boston qualifiers because of the mistake.
• Duluth, Minnesota To Hold Road Race In Tribute Of A Popular Neighborhood Cat
• Minneapolis-St. Paul Named The Fittest City In The Nation DC was pushed down to the second fittest city after holding the #1 spot from 2014 to 2016.
• North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis Is Fine After Collapsing During Road Race And Being Taken To Hospital

TrackTown Summer Series Draft 2.0 Is Friday *Watch It Live At 7pm ET

LRC Watch The TrackTown Summer Series Draft Live On LetsRun.com At 7 PM ET On Friday

LRC “GM” Nick Symmonds, Hoping To Make USAs One Final Time, Is In 1:50 Shape Right Now, Ready For Friday’s Tracktown Summer Series Draft This is Symmonds’ final season on the track and he’s hoping to qualify for USAs and see what happens. Meanwhile, as GM of team San Francisco, he’s getting ready for Friday’s Tracktown Summer Series draft, and also getting ready for life after being a pro track runner.

• Citius Mag’s 2017 Tracktown Summer Series Unofficial Mock Draft
• Seven Top Athletes Sign Contract Extensions For 2017 TrackTown Summer Series Emma Coburn, Brenda Martinez, Ben Blankenship, Brittney Reese, Queen Harrison, Phyllis Francis and Erik Kynard have all signed with teams for 2017.

More Upcoming Action

• Today In The Caribbean: LaShawn Merritt, Andre De Grasse, Brittney Reese, Will Claye And Ryan Crouser Lead List Of 25 Rio Olympians At Guadeloupe International Meeting
• Saturday: British 10,000m Runners Hoping To Seal London 2017 Qualification At Highgate Harriers Night Of The 10,000m PRs Top Brits fighting for a Worlds spot include Jo Pavey, former NCAA champ Kate Avery, Andy Vernon and Dewi Griffiths.
  *Last Year’s Winner Ross Millington Says The Atmosphere At The Night Of The 10,000m PRs Was Better Than In Rio Last year’s race was famously run through a beer garden on the backstretch.
• May 28: Tirunesh Dibaba Will Defend Her Title At The Great Manchester Run 10K
• May 27: US Champ English Gardner And Olympic LJ Champ Tianna Bartoleetta Lead Pre Classic 100m Field Veronica Campbell-Brown and Trinidad and Tobago’s Michelle-Lee Ahye are also in the race.
• May 27: Five Major Championship Medalists Lead Heptathlon Field For Hypo Multi Meet In Gotzis GB’s Katarina Johnson-Thompson will be hoping to get back to the level which saw her win the meet in a lifetime best of 6,682 points back in 2014.
• May 28: Defending Champions Nick Goolab And Sarah McDonald Return To The Westminster Mile Seb Coe is running the “Olympians Mile” along with other former UK sporting greats.
• June 4: Noah Lyles And Four Olympic Champions Announced For Boston “Street Meet”
• June 15: Dafne Schippers Announced For Oslo Bislett Games 200m

MB: Johnny Gregorek Wins Swarthmore 1,500 In 3:36.61 Over Jordy Willamsz (3:36.87) Robby Andrews was 6th (3:38.42) but how about the Ivy League with 3 guys under 3:40, led by Yale’s James Randon at 3:37.93. *Video *Full Meet Results

IAAF Publishes Qualifying Standards For 2018 World Indoors The standards didn’t change by much from 2016 World Indoors except the women’s 3,000, which got significantly faster from 9:00 indoors/8:36 outdoors to 8:50 indoors and 8:28 outdoors.

PA Sports Writer Bashes High School Track And Field; Gets Ripped Apart By Track Community, Including Ato Boldon In reaction to the writer calling track “as intense and high pressure as frisbee golf,” Ato Boldon wrote in the comments section, “Mike Gross, kindly return whatever sum you were paid to write this.”

On The Roads

• USATF: Dathan Ritzenhein Finishes Strong To Win Hometown Race At USATF 25K Champs Ritz beat out defending champ Christo Landry by 13 seconds while Aliphine Tuliamuk was the repeat champ on the women’s side, coming in ahead of Neely Spence Gracey.
  *MB: Ritz Is Back! Wins USATF 25K Champs At Fifth Third River Bank Run
• Ethiopians Leul Gebresilase (29:28) And Azemra Gebru (33:59) Win Okpekpe 10K In Nigeria
• Bekelech Daba Breaks Latvian All-Comers Record With 2:31:22 Victory At Riga Marathon Zimbabwe’s Joseph Kyengo Munywoki won the men’s race in 2:12:14 but the big story was that Valerijs Zolnerovics set a new Latvian NR of 2:14:23.
• Ben Blankenship (4:01) And Emily Lipari (4:34) Win Medtronic TC 1 Mile Road Race
  *MB: Blankenship SMOKES Nick Willis in Road Mile
• June 3: Brianne Nelson Will Return To Defend Her Crown At The Freihofer’s Run For Woman 5K In Albany, NY She’ll face a deep American field that includes Aliphine Tuliamuk, Ashley Higginson, Amy Van Alstine and Maegan Krifchin.

NCAA Conference Week *All NCAA Results

• SEC: *Results
• IAAF: Texas A&M’s Fred Kerley Flies To 44.09 At SEC Champs, Moving Himself To 17th On The World All-Time List
• Arkansas Women Capture 10th Straight SEC Crown Arkansas got a win in the 1,500 from Nikki Hiltz in 4:17.94, who beat out NCAA indoor 5,000 champ Karissa Schweizer. Schweizer also ran and won the 5,000 as Jazmine Fray took the 800 (2:02.00).
• Texas A&M Men Win SEC Team Title Over Arkansas By 13 Points Texas A&M’s Devin Dixon won the 800 in 1:45.71 over Florida’s Andres Arroyo and Ole Miss’ Craig Engels. Engels got a win in the 1,500 as his teammate MJ Erb won the 5,000 (13:47).
• Tennessee Star Christian Coleman Completes Sprint Double, Running One Race With An Untied Shoe Coleman ran 9.97 with one shoe untied to win a close race with LSU’s Nethaneel Mitchell-Blake (9.99).
• Texas A&M’s Lindon Victor Breaks The Collegiate Decathlon Record Again Victor broke Trey Hardee‘s 11-year-old record back in March and then one-upped himself at SECs with 8,539 points.
  *MB: Wow: Fred Kerley walks across the line in 44.09 in his prelim at SECs!!

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  PAC-12: *Results

• Oregon Men & Women Sweep For 9th Straight Year It’s 11 wins in a row for the men.
• Sprint Star – Yes, Sprint Star – Kyree King Leads Duck Men To Title King swept the 100 (10.09w) and 200 (20.27w) as Oregon won both short sprints for the first time since 1959. Cheserek only ran the 10k and that was the only mid-d or distance event the Ducks won.
• Oregon Women Sprint To PAC-12 Track Crown, Led By Deajah Stevens One year after Hannah Cunliffe won the 100 and 200, Stevens did it in 11.05 and 22.09 – the 22.09 was a world lead.
• Goe: “Rarely have (the Ducks) looked as impressive from start to finish as they did on the sunny afternoon before 6,778.”
• 1,500s: MB: Is Dani Jones the next Jenny B? She won the 1,500 and 5,000.
• Stanford’s Grant Fisher Won The Men’s 1,500
• Hayward Field Renovations Are Being Delayed Not Due To Money Concerns But Simply Because They Want To Get The Design Perfect The money has been raised. “It’s a very clear goal, that we want this to be the best track and field venue in the United States and maybe even the world. It’s caused a lot more pause on our designs to make sure we connect the history of the East Grandstand to the rest of the renovation, the West Grandstand, to capture it all.”
• Edward Cheserek Comfortably Wins PAC-12 10K To Help Oregon Men Take The Team Score Lead Oregon is in the lead by 13 points with rivals USC in 4th (34.5 points).
• Oregon And USC Women In Position To Battle It Out For PAC-12 Title On Final Day They are both tied for 5th place with 24 points; Colorado is currently in the lead (CU went 1-2 in the 10K with Erin Clark getting the win).
• Arizona’s Bailey Roth Takes Home  Steeple Title In 8:39
• The Oregonian: “Nasty Conditions Don’t Slow The Ducks On Day 1”
• Oregon Is Hosting PAC-12s – Men’s Team Is Only Favored By 5, Women By 13 The meet will be broadcast live on Sunday on PAC-12.com.
• Register-Guard: Oregon Will Have Home Field Advantage As They Try To Sweep The PAC-12 Meet For The 9th Consecutive Year
  

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  Big 10: *Results 

• Penn State Men Win Their First Big 10 Title
• Purdue Women Win First Title Since 1999
• Minnesota’s Madeline Strandemo Took Steeple Title In 9:51 Illinois’ Dylan Lafond won the men’s race in 8:40.
• Wisconsin’s Malachy Schrobilgen Won Men’s 10,000 Title Michigan’s Gina Sereno won the women’s 10K.

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  ACC: *Results

• Virginia Tech Men Beat Virginia By 1 Point; Virginia Tech Women Win By 6 Over FSU Notre Dame freshman Anna Rohrer won the 10,000 in 33:22 by over a minute.
• Virginia Men Hold Dominant Lead After ACC Day 2

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  Big 12: *Live Results

• Kansas State Women Win 1st Title In 15 Years, Texas Men Win
• Texas Men And Kansas State Women Leading After Big 12 Day Two Kansas State has a solid 16-point lead while the men’s competition is close with Texas Tech 1.5 points behind in second.
  
• Haley Crouser First Woman In Texas History To Win Big 12 Javelin Title

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  Big East: Results

• Marquette Women Are Back-To-Back Big East Champs Distance results were highlighted by Providence’s Brianna Ilarda winning the steeple in 9:56.
• The DePaul Men Win Big East Team Title

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  Conference USA: *Live Results
  *El Paso Times: “How Did UTEP Land World Class Runner Emmanuel Korir?” Stud freshman Korir has lit the NCAA on fire this season, running 44.67 and scaring the 800 record with 1:43.77.

• IC4A/ECAC: LIU Brooklyn Men, Cornell Women Win
• Big Sky: Sac State Women, NAU Men Win Results here.
• MAC: Akron Men And Women Sweep MAC Champs

Sprint Stuff

• Trivia Related To English Gardner 1) She’s The 7th-Fastest 100m Woman In History But Has Never Medaled Individually, 2) She Grew Up In The Same Town As Carl Lewis – Willingboro, New Jersey
• Jamaica’s 4 X 400 Olympic Silver Medalist Christine Day Gives Her Tips For Sport And Life Day’s dating advice is, “Keep it in the dating zone and don’t rush things because that is when it can get messed up.”
• Moving To Cali? Michael Johnson’s House On Sale For $3.2 Million
• Sanya Richards Ross Backs WR Reset But Notes That Not All Post-2005 Times Will Be Clean Richards-Ross would inherit the 400m WR from East Germany’s Marita Koch (47.60 in 1985) as her 48.70 PR is the best post-2005 time.

TrackTown The Movie Is Now Out In Theaters In The US

Alexi Pappas’ Film TrackTown Opens May 12 In Boston, Chicago, Columbus, Corvallis, Eugene, Portland, San Fan, Seattle, LA And NYC If you don’t live there, you can also watch it on itunes. If you thought it came out last June (like we did), that was just the premiere.

• Tracktown Gets LA Times Review: “A funny, sweet movie that explores the struggles of a serious athlete without alienating those whose sneakers are gathering dust in the closet.”
• Tracktown Gets NY Times Review: “Fact and fiction blend nicely in ‘Tracktown,’ the modest, appealing feature.”