Worth A Listen/Read

LRC What’s It Like To Pace A World Record In The 1,500? Jordan Williamsz Tells Us The Aussie and former Villanova star tells us what its like to pace a world record, race in Europe, and travel the globe. And we even solve the mystery of the “z” at the end of his name.

LRC Samuel Tefera 1,500m Bizarre World Indoor Record Podcast: Guest Jordan Williamsz joins us for a first hand account of the WR + Lance Armstrong was one of 2 drug cheats at the Austin Marathon, a dog goes sub-4 in the mile, road 5k record, the Laura Muir shoe controversy, and USA Indoor Preview. We even have live commentary of Ingebrigtsen‘s win over Tefera in Germany and explain the mystery surrounding the “z” in Jordan Williamsz name.

Will The Mile WR Go Down Next Week? MB: Yomif Kejelcha Is Making A Mile World Record Attempt At BU On March 3 The race will follow the IC4A/ECAC meet. We assume they won’t be inviting Samuel Tefera to this one.

More Semenya News

• Athletics Weekly: Caster Semenay And IAAF Case Continues To Divid Opinion Athletes to voice their opinion included Paula Radcliffe who said the effects of elevated testosterone “can’t be ignored” and tennis great Billie Jean King who called the IAAF testosterone rules “barbaric, dangerous, and discriminatory”.
• The Guardian’s Sean Ingle: “Court Has Caster Semenya’s Career In Its Hands = And Decision Could Affect All Of Sport” Story includes a quote from the IAAF’s lawyer Jonathan Taylorwho explained how they fear if they lose the CAS case it could open the door for transgender athletes to compete as women, meaning “women with normal female testosterone levels will not have any chance to win.”
• Independent: Caster Semenya’s Lawyers Claim IAAF Testosterone Limit Is “Flawed And Hurtful” Allowing her to compete untreated is hurtful to all female athletes who weren’t born intersex.
• AP: Sports’ Future In Balance With Semenya-IAAF Showdown

Doping Admin News

• IAAF Approves The Application Of 21 Russians To Compete As Neutral Athletes
• Dominican Republic’s Former Long Distance Swimmer Marcos Diaz Launches Campaign For WADA Presidency There are currently four candidates running to succeed Craig Reedie. A final choice will be made at a WADA meeting in May.
• Nigeria Reinstated By WADA After It Had Being Declared Non-Compliant In November

More Distance Stuff

• Eliud Kipchoge Wins Laureus Exceptional Achievement Award This award is actually a “discretionary award” that has only been handed out three times previously in the history of the event (one of them was to Michael Phelps). Kipchoge was also a finalist for the World Sportsman of the Year award, which went to tennis champion Novak Djokovic.
• Noah Droddy (28:32) And Kellyn Taylor (32:13) Come Away With The Wins At The Pacific Pursuit 10k Taylor beat out her NAZ Elite teammate Stephanie Bruce (32:15) in what was set up as an early season opportunity for athletes to hit USATF qualifying standards. *Discuss
• Podcast: Carrie Tollefson Catches Up With Emily Infeld Discussing Her Recent Injury And Surgery
• Olympic And World Steeplechase Champ Conseslus Kipruto Leads Coast Region Team For Kenyan National XC Champs This Weekend

Post-Weekend NCAA News

• No Changes To The Top Seven Men’s Teams As Texas Tech, Texas A&M And Florida Top Updated NCAA Rankings
• Arkansas And Southern California Top Updated Women’s NCAA Rankings As Oregon Moves Up To 3rd
• Event-By-Event Top-10 Marks From The Collegiate Weekend There were some fast mile times at the UW Last Chance Meet where seven men went sub-4, led by Arizona’s Carlos Villarreal, who won in 3:57.27 over Oregon’s Charlie Hunter (3:57.74) and James West (3:57.75). UW’s Katie Rainsberger had the fastest collegiate mile with 4:35.15 for 4th place as China’s Xu Shuangashuang won the race in 4:33.53 over Eleanor Fulton (4:33.91).
  *Arizona Article *Full UW Results
• BYU Men And Colorado Women Are 2018 Scholar XC Teams Of The Year
• Wisconsin’s Morgan McDonald And Oregon’s Jessica Hull Are 2018’s DI Scholar XC Athletes Of The Year

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 5,000 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.