February 17, 2018 | LetsRun.com

Until 2018 USA Indoors Schedule / Results Entries TV & Streaming Prediction Contest

MB: Official 2018 USA Indoor Day 1 Discussion Thread

Enter by 4:53 pm ET LRC$20,018 Running Warehouse USA Indoor Prediction Contest Pick the top 3 in the 800, 1,500, 3k and 2 sprint events and you’ll win $20,018. Finish in the top 3 and you’ll get the Hoka One One Fly shoe of your choice.

LRC 3K Previews: It’s Bowerman TC Vs. WCAP, Featuring World Medalists Paul Chelimo & Ryan Hill; Shelby Houlihan Should Dominate In the women’s race, we assume Houlihan is going to win and wonder who gets 2nd – Coburn, Mackey, Hall or someone else? For the men’s race, we pause and remind ourselves what an amazing two years it has been for Paul Chelimo. Does Ryan Hill – the reigning Worlds silver medalist at 3k – even make the US team against Chelmo and his WCAP buddies?
*MB: 2018 USA 3ks: Does Ryan Hill stand a chance against the WCAP studs? Can Emma Coburn make a team on the flat?

LRC 1,500 Previews: Craig Engels Tries To Make His First U.S. Team; Can Anyone Prevent A Bowerman TC Sweep In Women’s Race? There will be plenty of drama in the metric mile.
*MB: Make your picks for the 1500 at USAs: BB, Engels, Kidder or WCAP? Quigley, Houlihan, Grace, McGee, Osika or Schneider?

LRC 800 Previews: Ajee Wilson Should Dominate, But Brazier Vs. Windle Vs. Murphy Vs. Sowinski Is Must-See TV The men’s 800 at 2018 USA should be AMAZING. It features 2 of the 3 fastest Americans indoors in history, plus the reigning Worlds bronze medalist and an Olympic medalist.
*RRW: Drew Windle Running For Respect, National Team Spot Windle wants to prove that making the Worlds team last year “wasn’t just a fluke” and thinks the altitude and rounds will give him an edge in Albuquerque.
*MB: The 800 at 2018 USA Indoors Should be AMAZING. Who you got? Pick 2 of the following: Brazier, Windle, Murphy, Sowinski

Kenyan Commonwealth Games Trials

World 1500 Champ Elijah Manangoi And Olympic 800 Bronze Medalist Margaret Nyairera Beaten To Runner-Up Finishes At Commonwealth Games Trials World silver medalist Timothy Cheruiyot ran 3:34.01 to beat out Manangoi by a second and world champs finalist Emily Cherotich ran 1:59.04 to beat out Nyairera. Other winners included World under-18 silver medalist Edward Zakayo in the men’s 5000 (13:28) and world junior champ Celliphine Chepsol in the women’s steeple (9:40).
World Junior Champ Rogers Kwemoi Wins A Close 10,000 In 28:46 Pre-race favorite Olympic silver medalist Paul Tanui DNFed with injury.
Steeplechaser Beatrice Chepkoech Upstages The Milers To Win Women’s 1500 In 4:05.5 Over Winnie Chebet
World 5000 Champ Hellen Obiri The Only Athlete Given A CWG Wild Card Entry It was supposed to be first three across the line, but Athletics Kenya made an exception for Obiri.
2015 World Youth 2000 Steeple Silver Medalist Sandra Chebet Wins Women’s 10,000 Chebet ran 32:41 to beat out Kenyan XC champ Stacy Ndiwa by .4 while Olympic and World 4th placer Alice Aprot was a DNF.
Jonathan Kitilit Wins 800 In 1:44.2 After Both David Rudisha And World 800 Bronze Medalist Kipyegon Bett Missed The Trials With Injury
2015 World Champ Nicholas Bett And His Brother Harun Koech Finish 1-2 In 400H
Africa Bronze Medallist Abraham Kibiwott Beats World Junior Champ Amos Kirui In Steeplechase
Decathlon/Heptathlon Recap

Week That Was

LRC WTW: More Praise For The Japanese, Some Love For Caster Semenya, A Big Track Meet Gets Cancelled, RIP Jonathan Grey, Ken Young Semenya’s got a new coach, the Japanese have a super cool way to broadcast marathons, and the sport lost two of its own.

One Story We Missed From The Weekend: LRC Meet Switzerland’s Julien Wanders – The 21-Year-Old Who Just Ran A 60:09 Half Marathon NR Last Weekend Wanders, who is following in the Robertsons’ footsteps and living in Kenya, ran a massive 1:34 PR to get 2nd in Barcelona.

Book Review

LRC Book Review: “Endure” By Alex Hutchinson – A Fitting Successor To “The Sports Gene” As The Next Great Sports Science Book Treat yourself to your own Valentine’s Day gift by buying Alex Hutchinson‘s new book Endure, which we give our highest rating – 5 stars out of 5. Purchase here.

Pole Vault Updates

18-Year-Old Emmanouil Karalis Clears World Indoor U20 Record Of 5.78m At Greek Indoor Champs Mondo Duplantis has jumped higher (5.83m), but his mark wasn’t record eligible because of the pegs used. Meanwhile in France, Renaud Lavillenie and Brazil’s Olympic champ Thiago Braz tied for the win each clearing a world leading 5.90m.
Tuesday: Katerina Stefanidi Completes Three-Meet Sweep In France, Extending Her Winning Streak To 18 Stefanidi cleared 4.83m to keep her winning streak going.
Pre Classic Will Have Pole Vault Rivals Katerina Stefanidi And Sandi Morris Head-to-head, Stefanídi has a career 17-9 edge over Morris, including the Olympics and Worlds.

Sprint Stuff

Norway’s Karsten Warholm Runs 300 Hurdles World Best With 34.26 In Finland Warholm already had the world indoor record, but this mark is was faster than the outdoor record as well.
*MB: Karsten Warholm – 300H World Best!
The UK Media Laments That Justin Gatlin Can’t Be Stopped From Competing At The New Eight-Team World Cup Meet This Summer We don’t know why it was worth writing an article to explain you can’t just keep an athlete out of a championship event.
IAAF Inside Athletics Video Interview With Christian Coleman

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.

Mid-Week Results: 94 Sub-15:00 *Copernicus Cup Results

Thursday: Laura Weightman And Sam Stabler Win Armagh Road Race In Northern Ireland Weightman beat Jess Judd by 4 seconds to win the 3K in 8:59 while Stabler won the 5K in 13:59. Runner-up was Charlie Hulson in 14:00 with US’s Jordan Mann 3rd (14:01) as impressively, the top 94 broke 15 minutes. *2nd Article *Results
Thursday: IAAF Recap: World Leads From Piotr Lisek’s In The Pole Vault (5.91m) And Konrad Bukowiecki’s In The Shot Put (22.00m) As Well As Mariya Lasitskene’s 2.0m (HJ) Highlight Copernicus Cup In the women’s 1,500, Morocco’s Rababe Arafi got an upset win over world 5,000 champ Hellen Obiri (3rd), Ethiopia’s Taresa Tolosa (3:37.41) beat out Poland’s Marcin Lewandowski in the men’s 1,500 and Adam Kszczot ran 1:46.75 to win his fourth-straight race of 2018.
Tuesday: Adam Kszczot Runs 1:47.12 To Win 800 In Lievin, France Over European Leader Alvaro de Arriba By .02 World 800m champ Pierre-Ambroise Bosse won the 1,000 in 2:20.01, missing his attempt at the French NR of 2:17.01.

NCAA: Oregon Wants 2020 NCAA Champs Back At Hayward

Vin Lananna Says The University Of Oregon Will Re-Bid For The 2020 NCAA Outdoor Championships After The NCAA Re-Opened The Bidding Process Lannana said that Hayward Field will take a one-year renovation hiatus in 2019, but be able to host meets in the 2020 outdoor season.
*Register-Guard Article Lananna: “We plan to bid for 2020. It doesn’t mean that we’ll get it, it just means that we’ll go through the process again.”
MB: Mario Sategna OUT as University of Texas Track and Field Coach
*AP: Texas fires track coach Mario Sategna after 5 years

Mid-Distance News

Mile World Record Holder Hicham El Guerrouj Tells Edward Cheserek To Focus On The 1,500/Mile El G tweeted, “Congratulations to Edward @KingCheserek. extraordinary performance. I advice you to focus only on the 1500m&mile.”
Former South African Federation Board Member Says That Caster Semenya Never Signed Informed Consent For Sex Testing Back In 2009 Im a hearing over SASCOC mismanagement, ex-board member Laraine Lane says Semenya didn’t even know what she was being tested for.
Three World Leads Go Down In France From Ayanleh Souleiman (3:35.39), Selemon Barega (7:36.64) And Habitam Alemu (1:59.69)
David Rudisha And Asbel Kiprop Opt Out Of Commonwealth Games They both want to instead focus on training for the summer track season.
Alan Webb Says He “Viewed The Finish Line As A Magnet” This quote comes from a recent 90-minute podcast with Webb.
Laura Muir Clocked A Solo 4:05.37 To Win At Scottish University Champs

RIP David Torrence

LRC David Torrence’s Death Ruled An Accidental Drowning, But For His Family Questions Remain Because Of Death Threats While the medical examiner’s report and the Scottsdale PD ruled Torrence’s death an accidental drowning, David’s mother, Bianca Torrence, is frustrated because she feels investigators didn’t seriously consider another possible cause of death: murder. Bianca said that multiple people told her that David had received death threats in 2016 and said she does not believe that Scottsdale PD has taken the information about the death threats seriously.
*MB: David Torrence’s Death Ruled An Accidental Drowning, But For His Family Questions Remain Because Of Death Threats