Tired Of Staring At A Screen? Listen To This

LRC Podcast: Brynn Brown, The Return Of The Major Marathons, Everyone Is An All-American, Bus-Only NCAA XC And Track & Field’s Grand Slams In this week’s pod, we propose a simple plan that should result in the major big-city marathons returning to action this fall. We also talk about Brynn Brown‘s amazing 9:39 3,200-meter run, get you ready for this weekend’s high school sub-4 mile attempt, and rip the NCAA coaches for declaring every one who qualified for NCAAs at the DIII level an All-American. Along the way, we talk about Ben Rosario‘s idea to create 4 Grand Slams for track and field and wonder how the NCAA XC season will look if teams only travel by bus.

Important Administrative News

• London Marathon Director Hugh Brasher Publishes Letter To Race Entrants He says they initially were very confident the race would take place but now admits it “is now far from certain” the race will be held. *Full Letter
  *MB: Let’s don’t overcomplicate this. The easy way to get back to big city marathons is this…… Test everyone before the race.
• Olympic bronze medallist Clayton Murphy is leading the charge to save men’s xc at Akron and feels like “holding a pitchfork and a torch outside the university” “It’s become, what can I do as an alum, to save a program that spring-boarded me to where I am today? It started off as COVID-19 related budget cuts, and now (the administration) is hiding behind the Title IX issue.”said Murphy, who is moving to Cleveland this week to train with his old Akron coach, Lee LaBadie
• IOC head Thomas Bach says the Olympics won’t be postponed beyond 2021 – they’d simply be canceled ” I have some understanding for (Japan’s position) because you cannot forever employ 3,000, or 5,000, people in an organizing committee.”
• Some Japanese college teams have resumed training to get ready for the Ekidens

The Latest Distance News Of Note

• Leo Daschbach Is Pumped To Be At This Saturday’s US HS Sub-4 Attempt After Running 1:49 And 4:03 Alone In Practice The meet will be held at an undisclosed track in Sacramento, Calif. and at an unnamed time to deter spectators. *Details
• Sweat Science: Scientific Researchers Examine Why Marathon WRs Have Gotten So Fast Recently And Wonder Where We’re Headed The track records have largely stagnated over the last 20 years but not the marathon. This recap of an article in the Journal of Applied Physiology is a good read for anyone interested in exercise physiology.  Yes, shoes are discussed but so is brain oxygen, synchronized strides and much more.
• Did You Know That In Addition To Being 2nd Man Under 2:10 In The Marathon (And A Boston Champ) And Running Every Day For 52+ Years, Ron Hill Also Invented Split Shorts, Was The First To Put Reflective Tape On Clothing, Invented The Mesh Singlet And Was The First To Use Gore-Tex In A Jacket?
• Huffington Post Column By A Trail Runner: I Was Set To Become An Elite Athlete This Year. Instead I Got A Job At A Grocery Store
• Kilian Jornet Joins Eliud Kipchoge, Joyciline Jepkosgei And Geoffrey Kamworor As An Endorser Of Maurten Sports Drink

You Have One Month To Get In Shape To Earn Some Money

RRW A Virtual Race With Prize Money – Welcome To The Brooklyn Mile, Where The Prize Money Is Age Graded And Based On VDOT Scores You run any time between June 19-21. Anyone recording a VDOT score of 8, 9 or 10 will get paid. 100% of the $15 entry fee goes to prize money (20%) or charity (80%).

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

• Usain Bolt Is The Father Of A Baby Girl Bolt’s Mother Wanted A Grandson But Is Happy To Be A Grandmother
• 2020 Dublin Marathon Scheduled For October 25th Is Canceled Entries for this year’s race are valid for 2021.
• 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

• Nice Profile Of LSU’s Terrance Laird – The NCAA And World #1 Indoors In The 200 This Year He’d only spent 2+ months at LSU and was thriving as compared to a miserable start at Penn State. His LSU coach raves about his work ethic. “T Money is a grinder man. He reminds me of the work ethic we’re seeing from Michael Jordan in the Last Dance documentary.”

• 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

He Will Be Missed

LRC Dathan Ritzenhein Hangs ‘Em Up: We Pick Our 5 Favorite Moments From His Career Between a 12:56 American record in Zurich, bronze at World Half and World Jr. XC, two dominant Foot Locker wins, and an NCAA XC title over Ryan Hall, there were plenty of highlights during Ritz’s lengthy career.
*MB: Breaking: Dathan Ritzenhein Retires at 37

• Mlive.com: Ritz: ‘I’ve been blessed with an amazing, long career’ Ritz has few regrets and now will turn to coaching which he describes as a “passion.” He’ll still run and was headed out for a 12-mile trail run. *Ritz’s Career In Photos
• Toni Reavis Says Goodbye To Ritz