February 18, 2019 | LetsRun.com

2019 Muller Birmingham Indoor GP *Results / Discussion

LRC Samuel Tefera Breaks Hicham El Guerrouj’s 1,500 Indoor WR – Runs 3:31.04! Yomif Kejelcha unknowingly ended up being the perfect rabbit as Tefera ran the equivalent of a 3:47.97 mile.
*Laura Muir Runs 4:18.75 Indoor Mile In Birmingham – #3 All-Time

Message Board Talk

Meet Preview: LRC 1,500m World Record Alert: Yomif Kejelcha Could Take Down El Guerrouj’s Record In Birmingham
*More: IAAF Preview Of Meet
*Salazar On Kejelcha’s Attempt At Millrose: “I think I ran him too hard in a workout two days before …”

Irish News

Controversy Erupts Over “Disgraceful” Act In 400m Final Of Irish Indoor Championships (includes video) Olympian Thomas Barr was knocked off to the side by competitor Andrew Mellon going into the last lap and DNF’d. Mellon however claims he wasn’t at fault because another runner knocked him into Barr.
Ciara Mageean Breaks National 1500m Record With 4:06.76 To Highlight Athlone IT International Grand Prix Mark English won the 800m in 1:46.92 to beat out visiting international guest Erik Sowinski (1:47.64).
Mark English (800) And Ciara Mageean (3000) Get Easy Wins At Irish National Champs Cillín Greene (77.19) ended up the winner in the controversial 400m while Phil Healy (52.81) came through as the favorite in the women’s race.

Road / XC News

Sunday: Julien Wanders And Sifan Hassan Headline The Herculis 5k In Monaco 59:13 half marathoner Wanders will face 2:05:48 man Sondre Nordstad Moen while Hassan is up against GB’s Laura Weightman.
Topi Raitanen (13:54) And Steph Twell (8:59) Win Armagh 5k/3k 113 men went sub-15 while 49 women went sub-10.
Moges Tiumay And Dera Dida Win Janmeda XC Championshiips Which Served As Ethiopian Trials For World XC Champs The relatively unknown Tiumay got a big upset over 12:43 man Selemon Barega, who finished 2 seconds back. Two-time World XC team member Dida beat out world U20 XC champ Letesenbet Gidey.
Sunday: Belay Afesa (2:07:10), Samuel Kiplimo Kosgei (2:06:53) And Slew Of Other Sub-2:10 Men Lead Field For The Seville Marathon Ethiopia’s Hiwot Gebrekidan (67:36 half) leads the women’s race with Guteni Shone (2:23:32).
Apriil 28: World Half Marathon Record Holder Joyciline Jepkosgei Making Her Marathon Debut At The Hamburg Marathon She says she’d like to run around 2:22 in her debut. Former double world champion Abel Kirui leads the men’s field and claims he’s targeting Eliud Kipchoge‘s 2:05:30 CR.

Doping News

Dwain Chambers Barred From Competing At Birmingham Grand Prix Due To Doping Past Our problem is that UK Athletics applies this rule very selectively. They have refused to invite Justin Gatlin and now Dwain Chambers, but others with previous drug bans get a pass. For example, Michael Rodgers is competing in Birmingham.
North Korea Declared Non-Compliant By WADA On Eve Of IOC Meeting With North And South Korea WADA said that they had not met a four-month deadline to “correct non-conformities.”

Week That Was

LRC WTW: Thank You Alberto And NOP, Grant Fisher Is The Best, Ritz’s Fountain Of Youth, Alicia Monson Breaks Through Week That Was is here.

Recent European News

Jemma Reekie Took Inspiration From Her Training Partner Laura Muir To Win British Indoor Champs 1,500m “I’ve never wanted anything more. I really wanted to be in Glasgow. Laura is the best in the world and every day I am challenging her. I’m learning so much from her.”
France’s Pascal Martinot-Lagarde Wins 60H At Home With 7.57 Poland’s Marcin Lewandowski won the 800m in 1:47.90.
Switzerland’s Euro 400H Champ Lea Sprunger Breaks National 300m Record With 36.72 At Meeting Elite de Metz
European Athletics: Six Swedish Records Fall In The Space Of A Week And half of them were distance records.
Prague’s Euro Indoor Champ Anzhelika Sidorova Cleared A World-Leading 4.91m At The Madrid Indoor Meeting
Ukraine Names Team Of 33 For European Indoor Champs In Glascot March 1-3

Road / XC Results: Two WRs Go Down In Monaco

Ethiopians Ayana Tsedat (2:06:36) And Guteni Shone (2:24:29) Win Seville Marathon The men’s race was super tight as Tsedat beat Belay Asefa by 3-seconds with the next three places all finishing within the next 10-seconds. Fourth place went to rabbit Okubai Tsegay who stayed in the race to set an Eritrean national record of 2:06:46.
Julien Wanders And Sifan Hassan Both Break World Records At Herculis 5k In Monaco Wanders ran 13:29 to just sneak inside the old record by one second while Sondre Moen finished 8 seconds back. Hassan ran 14:44, beating the previous record of 14:48 and dominating the race by 45 seconds.
*Note: The fastest road 5ks ever run are actually by Sammy Kipketer (12:59.5 at Carlsbad 5000 in 2000) and Joyciline Jepkosgei (14:32 for the first half of her 10k WR in 2017), but the IAAF only started recognizing the 5k road record in 2017.
Kenya’s Barnabas Kiptum (2:09:20) And Belarus’ Volha Mazuronak (2:26:13) Break Course Records To Win Hong Kong Marathon
Kenyan Ezekiel Cheboitibin Breaks 38-Year-Old Course Record At Ome 30k In Japan Japan’s Kaori Yoshida won the women’s race.
Team USA Sweeps The Senior Titles At NACAC XC Champs Team USA’s Abbabiya Simbassa and Breanna Sieracki got the individual wins, but in the junior races the Canadians dominated.

Other Indoor Action

This Weekend’s Meets – Full Results Some conferences are holding their meets while others are looking for NCAA qualifiers, particularly in the DMR.

MB: NOTRE MF DAME DROPS A 9:26.10 – #2 all time in NCAA Yared Nuguse outkicked NCAA 1,500 champ Oliver Hoare of Wisconsin.
MB: Sam Parsons and Amos Bartelsmeyer go 1-2 at German 3,000m National Champs With many Kenyan-born runners now running for the US, many US-born runners are running for European countries.

Lananna Filing Grievance Against USATF Board

Times Of San Diego: Vin Lananna To File Grievance Over His Removal As USATF President Lanana was supposed to have a meeting with the USATF board last month, but when it was postponed he had no choice because USATF has a one year deadline to file a grievance. When Lananna asked interim USATF president Michael Conley to extend the deadline, he refused.

The Abu Dhabi Marathon Was Short – 42k Instead Of 42.195

LRC After Re-Measuring The Course, Here’s Definitive Proof That The 2018 Abu Dhabi Marathon Was Short Marathon experts Helmut Winter and Sean Hartnett have gone all the way to Abu Dhabi to remeasure the course and have found the 34th kilometer was between 195.8 and 199.6 meters too short. Our best theory is the locals wanted access to the local fish market so someone moved the cones up.
*MB: Vindication: 2 experts just remeasured the Abu Dhabi Marathon course and found it to be a little less than 200 meters short! Rojo is feeling good about himself after immediately questioning the validity of the marks.

Post Millrose Podcast

LRC Millrose Recap Podcast: Mile World Record Survives, European Guy Runs 59:13, Praise For NOP, Houlihan Not Running World Cross, Qualifying System For Worlds Needs To Change, Special Appearance By John Kellogg, Does The LRC Crew Need Sensitivity Training? We talk about all of the above, plus a pro’s family talking about posting on LRC at Millrose, and even go into the audio archive to have Kyle Merber and Robby Andrews read mean posts about them from the forums.

Encouraging Kemoy Campbell News

LRC Great News: Kemoy Campbell Is “Breathing On His Own,” “Smiling” And “100% Coherent” But Has No Memory Of Collapse At Millrose Games Jonathan Gault brings you the latest on Kemoy Campbell after communicating with his former coach Mark Coogan. *Discuss

News From The IAAF

Interesting Look Back On The Origin Of Cross-Country Running Which Started As A School “Hunt Club” In 1819 Random fact: Charles Darwin actually attended this school as a child.
Stanford Officially Selected As Site Of 2019 Prefontaine Classic With the construction on Hayward Field, the meet had to be moved for this year’s Pre Classic. There were reports of this last month, but it wasn’t official.
World First Biomechanics Research On Indoor Track Released In Birmingham The IAAF released analysis from performances of 161 athletes across 13 events.
Olympic And World Pole Vault Champ Katerina Stefanidi Says Biomechanics Reports Provide Useful Coaching Insights Something really interesting Stefanidi said was that she usually knows “the second she takes off” whether she’ll make the bar or not.
Doha 2019 Unveil Mascot For World Champs It’s a falcon named Falah.
CAS Dismisses Karim Ibrahim’s Appeal Against IAAF Decision To Remove Him From IAAF Council CAS found that “there was nothing unfair about the process” and that Ibrahim had “failed to meet his disclosure obligations.”

Kemoy Campbell News

Kemoy Campbell Issues Statement Full Of Gratitude And Posts Video Of Him Walking. Says he was little dizzy. Sorry ladies, he’s taken.
Outside Publishes Article On “Crisis Of Runners’ Healthcare” As independent contractors, most runners don’t get health insurance from their sponsors as it can cost more than $20k for a family in the US.

Caster Semenya Controversy Back In The News

IAAF Insists It Accepts Caster Semenya’s “Legal Sex Without Question” Despite Report Lawyers Will Argue She Is “Biological Male” The the IAAF has clarified its position in a statement, saying that it “is not classifying any DSD [differences of sexual development] athlete as male.” They just want athletes like Semenya to lower their testosterone levels so they aren’t at male levels.
*BBC Article *Full IAAF Statement

$mart Or Foolish?

MB: Sammy Watson Turns Pro Watson accomplished it all as an amateur – winning a World Youth, World Junior and NCAA title but this is a risky sign for any shoe company as she was slower at 18 than 17 and just ran 2:06 in her first 800 as a 19-year-old.

Today’s Dose Of Random

MB: 40 y/o Anthony Famiglietti runs a 3:59 mile with his dog Fam shared a video on his YouTube page. If you haven’t seen this type of thing before you should check it out. The dog is on a bungee which actually helps pull the runner faster.
MB: MarathonInvestigation.com Got SHUT DOWN! The site’s founder posted on Facebook that he was fighting a “DMCA take down notice” and that his web host took his site down. He says he is in the process of switching servers.
MSN News: Running Club Chases Down Theft Suspect In Philadelphia The Annenberg (Lunchtime) Running Group aided police in chasing down a thief who had swiped a laptop computer and cellphone from a University of Pennsylvania building.