Interesting Reads

• Japanese Coaching Legend Yoshiyuki Aoba Is Coming Out Of Retirement At Age 77, 20 Years After Last Coaching, To Coach At His Alma Mater, Nihon University And he’s going to live in the dorms with the athletes.
  *MB: Wait, what? Do the Japanese college coaches really live in the dorms with their athletes?
• Proposed Potential New NCAA XC Regional System Leaks, Insanity Of Plan Instantly Becomes Apparent We hope that a plan that has teams from NY in the Southeast regional (all teams from the same conference must be in the same region) is never going to get passed in this post-Covid-19 time of reduced budgets. Apparently the Big 10 has unanimously voted against it.
• 2020 UTMB May Have Been Canceled, But 2019 UTMB Champion Pau Capell Says He’s Running The Course Anyway
• 37-Year-Old Marathoner O’Neil Williams Is Training In Kenya With A 2:19 PR But Still Thinks He Can Run 2:11:30 To Make Olympics
• Column By White Man: Covid-19 “Lockdown” Is Disproportionately Affecting How Women Experience The Sport We Love “I specifically explore how lockdown has stripped away some of the ‘coping strategies’ female runners use to ‘deal’ with the discrimination they face every time they lace up their trainers.”
• Are You A Pro? Depressed Because You Have No Track Races To Train For? Train For This: Bathurst 2021 World Cross Celebrates 300 Days To Go Bathurst is in Australia in case you didn’t know. Who wouldn’t want a free trip to Australia in March?

Podcasts That Might Interest You

• Who Is The G.O.A.T. Of Canadian Mid-D Running? The Canadian Running Magazine podcast debates whether it’s Kevin Sullivan, Melissa Bishop-Nriagu, Mohammed Ahmed or Gabriela DeBues-Stafford.
• Mary Cain Appears On Dana Giordano’s Podcast To Talk About Her New Job With Tracksmith
• Video: Tracksmith’s Matt Taylor Talks To Flotrack

News From Outside The US

• Interesting Read After Retiring At 28, Ciarán Ó Lionáird Is Making A Comeback At Age 32 2,800 words on the comeback on the man who shockingly ran 3:34 and made the 1,500 WC final in 2011 despite not scoring in the 5,000 or 10,000 at NCAAs that year. Bored during Covid-19, but not having run more than 30 minutes since Burning Man 2017, he moved to Flagstaff and started training with Stephen Haas‘ group on April 1 and is shocked by his progress. He’s posting lots of updates since he imagines some may be skeptical since he took 4 years off.
  *MB: Ciarán O’Lionaird Comeback
• This Is Normally Great Manchester Run weekend – A Look Back At The Previous 17 Winners Most are total studs like Tergat, Bekele, Geb and Farah but the list also includes Dathan Ritzenhein.
• Kipchoge Runs 16km In Lewa Wildlife Conservancy To Promote The Lewa Safari Virtual Marathon “I urge everybody to participate and just run where they are. We are all part of the human family and we must keep strong, stay fit,” said Kipchoge. Sign up here.
• Mondo Duplantis Has Been Playing A Lot Of Golf During Covid-19 But Is Ready To Get Back At It
• Great Britain’s Niamh Emerson – World U20 Hep Champ – Is Aiming For Big Things Once Pandemic Ends She missed last year’s Worlds due to injury.
• In Her Own Words, Jessica Ennis-Hill Reflects On Her Achievements From her first memories to the best coaching advice she’s ever received.

Speaking Of HS Studs, These Guys Were Pretty Good In HS

The Ultimate Video Conference
LRC The Big 3, Reunited: Alan Webb, Ryan Hall & Dathan Ritzenhein Discuss Their Greatest Performances, Biggest Lessons, & Much More Alan Webb, Dathan Ritzenhein and Ryan Hall had never sat down and talked about their careers until this week. Find out why Ritz had Webb’s face on his dartboard as a high schooler, how Webb was able to beat Ritzenhein in their famous 10k showdown in 2006, which performances each believes was the best from their careers, their biggest lessons from the sport, their views on new shoe technology, Webb and Ritz’s thoughts on their time with the Nike Oregon Project and Alberto Salazar‘s ban, and much more.

There Was No Olympics For The US 40 Years Ago Either

• Interesting Read: Was The 1980 TJ Rigged So That A Soviet Athlete Would Win? 40 years later, many feel that Australian Ian Campbell or Brazilian Joao de Oliveira should have been the winner as they were given fouls on 9 of 12 jumps. The USSR’s flag bearer was the 3-time Olympic TJ champ Viktor Saneyev.
• George Plimpton’s Epic Recap Of The Moscow Games He said lots of people thought the Soviets were fixing things but he didn’t seem to be convinced.

Marathon News

• MB: Olympic Channel gives Des Linden some tests and reveals she has a 19% body percentage – Was that a key reason why she won Boston in 2018?
• Jared Ward Reveals That An X-Ray After The Marathon Trials Showed He Was Competing Injured – He Had Bruised The Ball Of His Foot As a result, he barely ran for six weeks after the Trials and is only now getting back into it. “I’ve been working out at about 50 percent in my basement, and spending the majority of that time biking, lifting, and doing old-man exercises.”
• Looking For A Marathon? A Company Has Created A Certified OYO (On Your Own) Course That Has Timing Mats, Free Photos And Counts As A NYC Qualifier The course that can be run whenever you want is in Salt Lake City.

And 1.5k News Shannon Osika Is Thriving As A Pro Under Mike McGuire With Little Fanfare US 1,500 running is so good that her 4:01 last year received little notice. Not bad for someone who had a 4:12 college PR. Both her mom and dad ran in the 1988 Olympic Trials.

Throwback Thursday #7

LRC I Was Bored, So I Watched the 2008 NCAA Cross-Country Championships A look back at Galen Rupp‘s first NCAA title (and an examination of his strange fashion choices) and the Oregon men’s last team title, a historically loaded Oregon team, and why the Washington women were like the 1985 Chicago Bears.
*MB: What’s the most loaded NCAA men’s xc team in history? Was 2008 Oregon with Rupp, Puskedra, Biwott, Centro and Wheating?

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.

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.