The 2018 TCS NYC Marathon Is Sunday

Men’s Preview: LRC Who Is Going To Win The 2018 NYC Marathon? Geoffrey Kamworor Defends As 2:04 Men Tamirat Tola & Shura Kitata Chase First WMM Victory Only twice in the history of New York has an Ethiopan man won in New York, that’s likely to change on Sunday unless Kenya’s Geoffrey Kamworor can defend his title.

LRC U.S. Men’s Preview: 43-Yr Old Bernard Lagat Debuts, & Who Will Step Up With Galen Rupp On The Shelf? Last year a 40-year old man took top US honors in NY. Might a 43-year old running the first marathon of his life do it in 2018? That would be crazy.
*MB: And the top American man in New York City will be? Read this and then give us your picks

LRC Still Chasing The Dream: Six Years After Moving To Flagstaff, Unsponsored Marathoner Nick Hilton Is (Still) Trying To Get The Most Out Of Himself Not everyone who chases the dream and moves to Flagstaff, AZ is a highly sponsored pro. Meet the unsponsored Nick Hilton, who is still chasing the dream as he nears his 30th birthday.

• Good Read: Runner’s World: Where Are the Sub-2:10 U.S. Marathoners? Besides Galen Rupp, not American has gone sub-2:10 since Meb Keflezighi did in 2014. However, that could change this weekend in NYC where the field has eight Americans with PBs 2:13 or faster.
• Good Read: The NY Times: NAZ Elite – Where Training For The NYC Marathon Is A Reality Show

Our Weekly Recap – The Week That Was

LRC World Records In Half Marathon And Masters Marathon + Oregon Pulls Upset At PAC-12s And Cas Loxom Retires All haile the Ole Miss men who won their first SEC xc title and the Oregon women who upset the #1 ranked team in the land to win Pac 12s after losing their coach and 2 All-Americans. Plus a reason why Galen Rupp fans shouldn’t fear his caree is over.

Japanese News

• December 2: Ten Sub-2:10 Japanese Men Lead Field For Fukuoka Marathon The field includes Yuki Kawauchi, half-marathon national record holder Yuta Shitara(2:06:11 PB), 2015 World Champion Ghirmay Ghebreslassie, 2011 World silver medalist Vincent Kipruto and GB’s Callum Hawkins.
• Meijo University Wins Second-Straight National University Women’s Ekiden The team ran 2:05:26 to win by 34-seconds.
• In Case You Missed This: NY Times: “Yuki Kawauchi Is Distance Running’s Elite Oddball” This pre-Chicago article has some cool tidbits about Kawauchi like his racing in a panda costume and ritual of getting a post-race hamburger where ever he travels around the world.
• Chugoku Denryoku Takes Two Minutes Off Course Record To Beat Mazda At Hiroshima Corporate Ekiden

NCAA Conference Championships Weekend *Live Results *All Conference Results/Coverage

ACCs LRC 2018 ACC XC Recap: #15 Notre Dame Men End #10 Syracuse’s 5-Year Reign; #12 NC State Women Edge #18 Notre Dame By 1 Point The Syracuse had won ACCs every year since joining the conference in 2013 but went down today in Boston. Virginia Tech’s Peter Seufer and Louisville’s Dorcas Wasike got the individual wins.
*LRC 2018 ACC XC Champs: Sean Carlson And Notre Dame Men Celebrate
*More Post-Race Interviews: V Tech’s Peter Seufer, Louisville’s Dorcas Wasike And NC State’s Laurie Henes React After Winning Titles We also have post-race reaction from Wake Forest frosh Zach Facioni, who was 2nd.
*MB: Cool story from ACCs – Coaches daughter Elly Henes delivers mom Laurie an ACC title

Big 12s MB: Iowa State Uses A Pacemaker At Big 12s, Only Finished With Five Men But They Sweep Men’s And Women’s XC Titles On their home course, Iowa State was the big winner as they took home the 2 team and 2 individual crowns.

Mountain West MB: Led By A 1-2-3 Finish, #2 New Mexico Edges #3 Boise State (33-35). #8 Boiste State Men (50) WIn Over #16 Air Force (63), #17 Colorado State (76) And #13 Wyoming (80).
The question really that remains though is simple – “Are the UNM women strong enough at #5 to win it all?” Their #5 was 28 seconds back of #4 today.

PAC-12s MB: #4 Oregon Women Destroy #1 Colorado And #6 Stanford – #4 Stanford Men Handle #7 UW, #8 Colorado And #11 Oregon Dani Jones and Grant Fisher were the individual champs.

SECs MB: Ole Miss Wins It First SEC Men’s XC Title! Arkansas Women Win 6th Straight The Ryan van Hoy show continued at the SEC meet today. With two freshman at #6 and #7, Ole Miss edged Arkansas for the SEC title – their first-ever SEC XC men’s title. In the women’s action, #5 Arkansas DESTROYED everyone for their 6th-straight title. Gilbert Boit and Jessica Pascoe were the individual champs.

Big Ten  Wisconsin Men Win Big Ten XC Title Taking Three Of The Top-4 Spots Morgan McDonald was the individual winner. *Live Results
*Michigan Women Capture Their Third Consecutive Big Ten Women’s XC Crown Wisconsin’s Alicia Monson got the individual win.

Big East Georgetown Men, Villanova Women Repeat At Big East XC

Ivy League Princeton Men Successfully Defend Their Ivy League XC Title Princeton beat out Harvard by 31 points and put their top 4 runners in the top 6 spots. The individual title went to Harvard Kieran Tuntivate. *Results
*Columbia Women Claim Their Second-Straight Heps XC Title Columbia beat Dartmouth comfortably by 34 points. Yale’s Andra Masterson won the individual title.

European End-Of-Year Awards

• Kevin Mayer And Dina Asher-Smith Named European Athletes Of The Year Mayer set the decathlon WR while Asher-Smith won three golds at the European Championships. Armand Duplantis and Jakob Ingebrigtsen were jointly awarded the men’s Rising Star.
• Now Retired Greg Rutherford Wins Lifetime Achievement Award At European Athletics Golden Tracks Awards Ceremony Rutherford is among a short list of people who have held the Olympic, World, Commonwealth and European titles all at the same time.
• Ukraine’s Nataliya Pryshchepa Won The Fair Play Award After She Assisted A Fallen Runner During The 800m Heats At Euro Champs

2018 In Review

• Nominees Announced For IAAF Male World Athlete Of The Year The ten athletes include distance runners Eliud Kipchoge, Timothy Cheruiyot, Emmanuel Korir as well as US sprinters Christian Coleman and Noah Lyles.
• Nominees Announced For IAAF Female World Athlete Of The Year There are ten nominees including Sifan Hassan, steeple WR holder Beatrice Chepkoech and Caster Semenya.
• Pics? Best Photographs Of 2018 To Be Recognized At IAAF Athletics Awards In December Did you snap any good track photos in 2018? There is a separate contest for best photo by a fan.
  *Judges Announced For IAAF Photograph Of The Year Award Former USA long jumper Dwight Phillips is one of the judges.
• IAAF 2018 In Review: Middle And Long Distances Highlights included eight men going sub-13 in the Brussels 5,000 and Emmanuel Korir‘s 1:42.05 was the sixth-fastest 800m of all-time.
• IAAF 2018 In Review: Hurdles And Steeplechase Beatrice Chepkoech ran 8:44.32 to break the steeple WR while Sydney McLaughlin was only .41 off the WR when she ran 52.75 in the 400H.
• IAAF 2018 In Review: Sprints USA’s Christian Coleman and Noah Lyles highlighted the short sprints.
• 2018 In Review: Combined Events And Relays Some athletes use the “off year” for some down time. France’s Kevin Mayer used it to break Ashton Eaton‘s decathlon world record.
• IAAF 2018 In Review: Jumps Russian Mariya Lasitskene has cleared 2.00m or better 32 times in the last two years, but the rest of the world combined has only gone over it seven.
• IAAF 2018 In Review: Throws It was a good year for the men’s shot with a record 21 competitions where someone threw over 22m.
• IAAF 2018 In Review: Racewalks Yup, it’s still a thing.

More Post-Weekend News

• Includes Videos: Japanese Woman Crawls 200m To Keep Her Team From Getting Disqualified From The National Ekiden Championships Rei Iida crawled on the pavement with bloody knees until she handed off to her teammate in the exchange zone. And she wasn’t the only one who struggled as Harumi Okamoto became so disoriented on the course that she turned around multiple times before reaching the turn-around cone and almost ran into an upcoming motorcycle before she finally collapsed in the grass on the side of the road.
• Good Read: CBC: Cam Levins Obliterates Canadian Record In Marathon Debut Levins says he wants to go to another Olympics and it’s too early to say if he’ll be going in the marathon. *Canadian Running Magazine Article
• Good Read: When Your Heroes Overstay Their Welcome – Is It Time For Kenenisa Bekele To Retire? An interesting look at the difficult question of how do you know it’s time to hang ’em up and the contrast between going out on top or staying around long past your prime.
• MB: Cam Levins asks if it’s safe for him to go back on LetsRun.com again…
• BBTM: Cam Levins Is Now On An Exclusive List Of Men Who Have Gone Sub-4 And Sub-2:10 Only 25 men in history have broken the barriers in both events.
• Terrible Air Pollution Was A Concern At The Delhi Half Marathon Again For the second year in a row, medical and environmental organizations were calling for the race to be postponed because of Delhi’s notoriously bad pollution at this time of the year.

50 Years Ago – Bob Beamon Shocked The World

LRC Feature A Leap For The Ages: Bob Beamon’s 29-Foot Long Jump Turns 50 A half century later, there’s still only one way to describe the men’s long jump at the 1968 Olympics: Beamonesque. We take an in-depth look at one of the greatest singular accomplishments in sports history. Beamon improved the WR by 6.59% – that’s the equivalent of someone in 2018 lowering the marathon WR to 1:53:28 or the 100-meter record to 8.95.
*MB: 50 years ago, Bob Beamon made history. Where does his performance rank on list of greatest singular sports performances? 

LRC Why Is The Long Jump World Record So Hard To Break? Mike Powell‘s WR has stood for 27 years and the #2 mark from Bob Beamon celebrates its 50th anniversary today. What explains their longevity? Are the best athletes in the NFL? Are the runways too soft? Is there a mental block?

• BBC Video Looking Back On Bob Beamon’s WR The 3-minute video includes some cool old footage.
• IAAF: The Perfect Jump – Bob Beamon’s 8.90m Celebrates Its 50th Anniversary The IAAF pays tribute to Beamon’s historic jump which broke the WR by a “staggering 55 centimeters.”
• Mark Cullen’s Updated Story Of The 2014 Dedication Of The 1968 Olympic Trials Site/Training Center