Bored? Buy A Book – We Enjoyed This One

LRC Book Review: A 46-Year-Old Spends A Summer Training Like A Pro In Flagstaff In “Running the Dream” Matt Fitzgerald joined Ben Rosario‘s HOKA NAZ Elite team for three months in the summer of 2017 as he chased a personal best at the Chicago Marathon. From workouts on Lake Mary Road to strength sessions to a visit to John Ball, he lived the full professional experience.  “[The book] newfound appreciation for one of the privileges of life as a professional runner. Not the chance to travel the world racing in cool locations or the freedom to nap copiously, but the ability to dedicate all of one’s energies to becoming the best one can be – and the opportunity to make memories doing it alongside friends and teammates.” Five out of five stars. Purchase here.

International News

• Addy Ruiter, Coach Of Joshua Cheptegei, Has Voluntarily Stayed In Uganda During Covid-19 As His Athletes Wanted Him There A good read. He’s reduced the training sessions from 12 to 8 per week and was getting yelled at by locals as outsiders are blamed for Corona so he now wears a national team jacket to stop the “Corona” cat-calls.
• Picture Of Mo Farah Running In A Park Is Named As One Of Washington Post’s 14 Best Photos In The World From Last Week
• Lawrence Cherono Gives Food To 50 Kids, Says He Misses Training With Others During Covid-19
• How Ireland’s Top Marathoners Are Faring During Covid-19: Olympic Qualifier Stephen Scullion Has Been Barred From Returning To His Training Base In The US
• City Of Toronto Closes 57 km. Of Streets So Runners And Cyclists Can Use Them

Distance News

• 9 Years After His Death, Toni Reavis Remembers The Great Sammy Wanjiru, Who Revolutionized The Marathon But Died At 24 “In many ways that Beijing Olympic Marathon marked the beginning of a new era in the sport. Four-time Boston and New York City Marathon champion of old Bill Rodgers once famously said, ‘The marathon can humble you.’ While still true for the vast majority of competitors, through Sammy’s assault in Beijing, the marathon itself was brought to its knees. No longer a willful slog to the outer limits of human endurance, the epic distance was instead transformed into just another test of speed by Sammy’s youthful temerity.”
• Tommy And Eoin Hughes’ Father-And-Son Combo Marathon WR Is Ratified By Guinness The 59-year-old dad ran 2:27:52 while his 34-year-old son ran 2:31:20.
  *Scientific Researcher Publishes Paper On Hughes Father-Son Marathoners In Journal of Applied Physiology They found the dad is better at running in discomfort.
• Toni Reavis Fights Back, Pens 1,500-Word Essay Decrying NY Times ” Jogging Has Always Excluded Black People” Article As BULLSHIT Yes, blacks don’t run distance as much as whites in the US, but it’s not a grand conspiracy.
• Jenny Simpson Is Enjoying Her New Dog Truman During Covid-19 Hiatus But Still Dreaming Big: “I’m not giving up on medals, not by a long shot.” (TFN Sub) You can follow the dog on instagram @ thehairytrumanshow,
• Geoffrey Kamworor Bought A Treadmill To Train On As He Feared The Government Might Ban Everyone From Going Outside

Sprint News

• Yohan Blake Admits He’s Not On Speaking Terms With Old Coach Glen Mills But Wants That To Change “To be honest, right now, we don’t speak, but that is going to solve soon. Coach Mills is a really good person. He is a great coach; he took me from 10.11 to the second-fastest man in the world (9.69),” said Blake.
• 19.81/43.94 Man Akeem Bloomfield Is Itching To Compete Again

Administrative News

• IOC Announces $800m Funding Package To Cover Cost Of Postponed Olympics
• World Athletics publishes the criteria it will use to hand out the $500,000 it’s going to give to struggling athletes They want to give it to Tokyo Olympians who are struggling to get by. Anyone who is top 6 in the world or made more than $6,000 in DL prize money last year is ineligible, presumably because they make a decent amount.
• Interesting: British Hammer Thrower Banned For 4 Years After Missing 1, Not 3, Tests He missed a test which wouldn’t have been a problem but he told the testers he’d gone fishing when in reality he went to his parents house. That lie resulted in the ban.
• Kenya’s Anti-Doping Chief Talks About The Progress They’ve Made Over The Last 4 Years A good read as it provides lots of stats in terms of how much testing they are doing.
• Top AK Official Allegedly Asks For Doping To Be Considered A Treasonable Offense And yes, just like in many other countries, treason is punishable by death.
  *MB: Kenyan paper: Athletics Kenya official asks for doping to be declared a treasonable offense – which requires the death penalty
• Sonia O’Sullivan: How Long Before A Woman Runs A Sub-Four Minute Mile?
  *MB: True or false: Sonia O’Sullivan: Based on numbers a 4 minute mile for men is equivalent to a 4:14 1,500 for women (4:34 mile)

US News Of Note

LRC Q&A: Nick Willis On Signing With Tracksmith, Skateboarding, & Why The Olympic Standard Freeze Helps Him Nick reveals that he only got his new contract after successfully acing his first job interview in more than 20 years. “[My last job interview was when I was] 15, applying for a job as a dishwasher and salad and food prep person at a restaurant, like TGI Fridays. … It’s not a traditional nine-to-five. It’s project-based and they’ll give myself flexibility to also focus on my training. But I want to prove myself. I want to show that I’m worthy of this…It’s fun starting at the bottom again.”

• Kate Grace Is Still Trying To Find Her Groove With Jerry Schumacher Despite Being In The BTC for 2+ Years (TFN Sub Required) “I think it just takes time with a new coach. Right? … I think in the past when I changed groups, it was a smaller group and so maybe it was a quicker transition so that I felt like I was getting individualized training. And I think with Jerry, we’ve just continued to, I don’t know, get to know each other better each year and I feel like we finally are having good conversations about exactly what kind of training I need and what’s going to be good for me,” said Grace, who is currently nursing an Achilles injury and not running.
• Colorado’s Dani Jones Is Using Some Advice Coach Wetmore Gave Her To Survive Covid-19 “(He told me to not) be afraid and to trust in the athlete and the person that I am.  Courage is not the absence of fear, but grace under fire. That’s what I’m trying to live by right now, and I think that’s what a lot of people are trying to live by.”
• RRW: How Various People Are Performing Runing-Related Jobs From Home During Coronavirus Crisis Many people like agent Brendan Reilly, coach Greg McMillan and jewelry designer Erica Sara were already working from home.
• A Look At How The 2nd-Fastest 800 Runner In NCAA History Is Handling The Pandemic – Nia Akins The title of the article says that Akins’ NCAA career is over but the article doesn’t talk about her going pro or anything like that.
• Zach Bitter Will Try To Break The 100-Mile Treadmill WR This Weekend The record is 3:17 marathon pace for nearly 4 marathons in a row. The article also talks about how Pablo Espinosa set the 30-day treadmill WR earlier this year by averaging 44+miles a day.
• TFN’s The Pre Chronicles Continues:
  *Part 1: The High School Years
  *Part 2: The Frosh Year At Oregon
  *Part 3: Soph Year at Oregon

News From Europe

It’s My Life, Not A Soap Opera, Bemoans French Athlete Claude-Boxberger Well, when your mother’s partner says he doped you with EPO while you were sleeping and you say he once raped you and it comes out your dating the national team’s much older doctor who had complained you were being drug tested too much, it’s hard not to note the similarities between your life and a soap opera.
*Sweden Won’t Bar Athletes From Training In Ethiopia Or Kenya But They Will Put Them Under Extra Scrutiny As They Don’t Think The Drug Testing In Those Two Countries Is Advanced Enough

Yet Another LRC Exclusive

LRC Q&A: Anti-Doping Expert Sergei Iljukov Discusses Doping In Kenya & Russia, What World Athletics Is Doing Right – And How The Global Anti-Doping System Can Still Improve Iljukov recently conducted a study that indirectly suggested the effects of doping were between 2.0% and 3.4% in distance events and points out that 68% of the Russian 1,500 women that ran an elite time at the Russian champs were eventually banned.

The American GOATs Answered Your Questions Right Here On LetsRun.com

MB: Got a question for our American GOATs Jim Ryun & Deena Kastor? Deena Kastor and Jim Ryun have been answering them this week on LRC.