Non LRC 2018 USA Coverage

• Colleen Quigley Says That Even Though 3K Steeple Is Her Race, She Prefers The Mile Over A Flat 3K “I think [3000m] is so stinking hard without hurdles; it’s so fast.”
• New Mexico native Curtis Beach isn’t competing due to injuries but he’s changed course & plans to give heptathlon another shot once healthy In 2016, he said he was done with the multis but now says he’d like to give the Hep but not the decathlon another shot. But for 2018, he’s training for the 800.
• Erica Bougard Defends Her Pentathlon Title On Day One OF USATF Indoor Champs In the heptathlon, Devon Williams and 2015 national champ Jeremy Taiwo are in a close battle for first.
  *AP Recap Bougard was 45 points off the AR and said that she wanted to hit high marks in her first four events “so when I got to the 800, I wouldn’t have to be all out.”
• Register-Guard‘s Oregon-Centric Preview *USATF Preview
• DyeStat’s 10 Storylines To Follow At USATF Indoor Champs The 60H should be great races as the men have the past three national champs in Aries Merritt, Jarret Eaton and Aleec Harris, and Keni Harrison leads the women after tying the AR with 7.72 earlier this season.
• USATF Awards Elite Athlete Development Grants To 65 Athletes

Distance News

• Recommended Read: SPIKES Profiles Czech Middle Distance Runner Jakub Holusa, Who Has Become Known For His Blistering Kick Holusa kicked from 6th to 2nd in the last meters of the 1,500 at 2016 Portland World Indoors, but looking back thinks he should have beaten Matt Centrowitz for gold. “If I had been close to Centrowitz, I believe to this day I could have beaten him. With 150 to go I started my finish and it was so, so, so late …”
• Spikes Does A Nice Feature On Kemoy Campbell: Jamaica’s Trail-Blazing Distance Runner
• Commonwealth Games 5,000 Champ Mercy Cherono Is Pregnant

Upcoming Road / XC Action

• Sunday: Morocco’s World Steeple Silver Medalist Soufiane El Bakkali The Favorite At Almond Blossom XC In Portugal He faces former world indoor 1,500 silver medalist Daniel Kipchirchir Komen. 2016 winner and home favorite Carla Salomé Rocha leads the women’s race.
• March 4: Defending Champ And 2:06 Man Ezekiel Chebii Returns To Lead Field For Lake Biwa Marathon He faces a field with seven sub-2:10 men and New Zealand’s Jake Robertson (60:01 half PR) making his marathon debut.
• April 8: MB: 2018 Rotterdam Men’s Elite Field Released – Race features 7 sub 2:07 guys
• April 22: Mary Keitany More Confident About Marathon WR Attempt After RAK Half Performance “The marathon world record is something that I have been working towards for several years and I feel I am now in the position where I can really attack the time of 2:15:25 set by Paula Radcliffe.”

TrackTown Construction Delay USA

LRC   NCAA TF Committee Reopens Bid Process For 2019 & 2020 NCAA Outdoor Championships That Had Previously Been Awarded To University Of Oregon The 2019 and 2020 NCAA outdoor meets were supposed to be at Hayward Field, but citing the “timing around pending construction,” the NCAA T&F committee decided to reopen the bid process.

More From Oregon: The Oregonian‘s Ken Goe Offers Another Perspective On The Vin Lananna USATF Conflict Of Interest Issue Goe writes that the USATF board never wanted Lananna, preferring Jackie Joyner Kersee and Lananna’s election (Kersee withdrew from consideration) was a “repudiation of the way the board had been doing business.”

More Non-Distance News

• Despite A Modest Start To His Season, Yohan Blake Says 2018 Is His Year To Take Over The 100m From Usain Bolt On Saturday in Jamaica, Blake ran 10.32 to finish 4th while Zharnel Hughes won in 10.18.
• Interesting History Lesson: A List Of Team USA’s Biggest Olympic Scandals Track and field gets four spots on this top ten list.
• GB’s Third Fastest 100m Sprinter Of All-Time Joel Fearon Will Be Competing In The 2018 Winter Games In The Bobsled Fearon was actually already an Olympic bobsledder when he had his breakthrough 9.96 in 2016.
• Christophe Lemaitre Runs European-Leading 200 With 20.53 In France

NCAA Updates

• Texas Tech Passes Florida To Move To #1 In The NCAA Rankings Georgia stayed #3 while Southern California jumped from 15th to 4th.
• Some Big Shifts In Women’s NCAA Rankings As Arkansas Stays #1 And Southern California And Kentucky Jumped From 4th And 5th To 2nd And 3rd Georgia and Oregon dropped down to 4th and 5th.
• Grant Fisher And Ednah Kurgat Are XC Scholar Athletes Of The Year Fisher is the first back-to-back winner of the award since Chris Derrick won it in 2010 and 2011.
• The Portland Men And The New Mexico Women Are NCAA All-Academic Cross-Country Teams Of The Year To win the award you have to be the top finishing team with a GPA of at least 3.0.
• Florida’s Grant Holloway And New Hampshire’s Elinor Purrier Are NCAA Athletes Of The Week Holloway broke Omar McLeod‘s 60H NCAA record as well as split 45.12 on Florida’s 4 x 400 while Purrier ran the second-fastest collegiate indoor mile with 4:26.55.
• Event-By-Event Top-10 NCAA Marks From The Weekend

Running Science

• CNN: Research Finds That Smiling Can Improve Your Running By Decreasing Perceived Effort The study found that runners used 2.8% less energy when smiling compared to frowning.
• RW: Are Veiny Arms And Legs Really A Sign You’re Super Fit? While it’s not a direct indicator of fitness, having veins that “pop” is more likely in fit athletes because they are leaner with less body fat and more muscle mass.