May 31, 2020 | LetsRun.com

October London Marathon In Doubt

London Marathon Organizers Admit Rescheduled October Race Is In Doubt Race director Hugh Brasher: “We know that you would like certainty. We understand and acknowledge that you want to know if you should start serious training or restart your fundraising campaign. … But this is a world where things are changing so rapidly on a day-to-day basis and that is now far from certain.”

GB News

Mo Farah Remembers How He Took The Subway With His Two Olympic Gold Medals In His Pocket The Day After “Super Saturday” At London 2012 Farah said he wanted to see his family the next day so left the Olympic Village and hoped on a normal train with a hoodie. He said one guy kept looking at him and gave him a thumbs up.
GB’s Katarina Johnson-Thompson Says Euro Champs Cancellation Was Harder To Deal With Than Olympic Postponement “With the Olympics … had weeks to expect that. But the thing I struggled with the most was the Europeans getting cancelled in Paris. Not even postponed, but outright cancelled. That was tough for me because then I didn’t have any sort of focus to train for.”

The Latest Distance News

Andy Young Thinks Olympic Delay Will Help His Two Stars In Laura Muir And Jemma Reekie Muir didn’t have much of a base as she had an Achilles issue at the end of last year and Reekie is so young an extra year can only help.
HSer EJ Holland Writes About Helping To Create The Quarantine Clasico Where Leo Daschbach Broke 4 Holland ended up getting hurt but he and Matt Stangio deserve major props for worrying about the sport, not just themselves like so many pros.
Penn Relays Mile Record Holder Tori Starcher Of West Virginia Is Ready To Start Her College Career At Stanford After Initially Comitting To Notre Dame She ran 4:38 at Penn last year but missed XC with a stress fracture.
Kipchoge, Bekele, Cheptegei, Kamworor Are Going To Team Up To Run A Virtual Marathon Together On June 6th Each will run a 10.5 km leg and the public can form their own 4-person teams.
8:42 Steepler Stephen Jones To Finish Eligibility At Colorado As Grad Transfer
Timothy Cheruiyot Talks About His Friendship/Rivalry With Training Partner Elijah Manangoi
A Look At The Super-Successful Kibet Sisters All five were pretty good at running, led by Sylvia, who won 2 WC silvers and an Olympic bronze.

For The First Time Ever

LRC 2020 Boston Marathon Canceled; Will Be Staged Instead As Virtual Race Through 123 years and two world wars, the Boston Marathon had always been staged as an in-person event. That streak ends in 2020, another victim of the coronavirus pandemic. *MB: BOSTON MARATHON CANCELED

The Stawell Gift, Australia’s Oldest And Richest Handicap Footrace, Has Been Canceled For The First Time Since 1945 Because Of The COVID-19 Pandemic
Toni Reavis: Many Races And Running Organizations, Including Ironman And Running USA, Have Banded Together To Beg The Govt. For A Bailout “Without specifically targeted help from the federal government,” said the Endurance Sports Coalition, “the endurance sports may not survive the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Kenyan News

MB: Breaking: David Rudisha has surgery after breaking ankle in Kenya. Expected to be out 3 months.

Kip Keino Is Thrilled The World Athletics Continental Tour Meet I Nairobi Will Be Named After Him – “It’s a great feeling to be honoured when someone is still alive.”
Kip Keino Classic Likely To Be Held At Nyayo National Stadium Assuming It Gets A New Mondo Track If not, it will be held at the Moi Stadium in Kisumu.
Hellen Obiri Thinks When She Ran 14:18 That She Might Have Been Able To Run 14:12 Why stop there? The WR is 14:11.15.

Distance News

UMich Prof: The Qualifying Times For Older Runners For The Major Marathons Make No Sense “NYC’s qualifying times suggest that the performances of women are more affected by age than men, but the Boston qualifying times suggest the opposite.” A recent study by Jason Hall shows that men slow 1.1% every year they age whereas women only sloe 0.9%.
Former World Champ And Villanova Great Sonia O’Sullivan Is Thrilled She Never Had To Deal With A Pandemic As An Athlete As She Thrived On Racing “I definitely raced a lot better than I ever trained.”
New Hayward Field looks Almost Finished (Video)
California State Champ Corie Smith Won’t Get To Finish Her HS Career The Way She Envisioned, But She’s Getting Ready To Run For Arkansas Instead For the 1st time since 1945, the CA state meet has been axed.
Yet Another Study Proved The Obvious Benefits Of Exercise A study of the early quarantine days showed that those who were ” physically active during those early weeks of sheltering at home were less depressed and more mentally resilient than other people whose activity levels declined.”

Random Links That Passed Our Vetting Process

Everyone Gets An Award: Coaches Name Everyone Who Qualified For NCAAs Indoors As All-Americans The coaches can pad their resumes as 671 people were named All-American. What a joke.
Did You Know That 2021 Will Mark The 100th Anniversary Of The Very First NCAA Championship In Any Sport? – The NCAA Track And Field Champs
WADA Vows To Conduct Additional Targeted Testing To Plug Gaps Caused By COVID-19
Nike Is The Most Admired Brand In All Of Kenya Adidas and Samsung are two and three.
Canadian Running Magazine Takes A Look At Jogging Strollers For Dogs Rojo has one. His dog loves this one.
September 26th’s Nairobi’s Continental Gold Tour Event To Be Named “Kip Keino Classic”
Appalachian State Cuts Men’s Indoor Track

Optimism In Regards To Covid-19

July’s Hokuren Distance Challenge Will Go On With Modification From July 4-18 There will be no 10,000, for example, as they feel that’s too long for people to be near each other and the meet’s size may be reduced so they’ll focus on the elites.
Impossible Games On June 11th Will Feature Team Ingebrigtsen Vs. Team Cheruiyot At 2k We’re not exactly sure how this is going to work as the Kenyan team will be running at nearly 6,000 feet of altitude.
Japan’s Prime Minister Abe Lifts COVID-19 State Of Emergency
Japan Reschedules June’s National Track Champs For October 1-3
Athletics Australia Publishes Guidelines To Assist All Track Athletes In The Safe Return To Athletics Activity During The COVID-19 Pandemic

Anniversary Time

Remembering Arthur Wint On The 100th Year Of His Birth Wint was the first Jamaican Olympic gold medalist, winning the 400 meters at the 1948 Summer Olympics in London.
Jamaican Prime Minister Hails Dr. Wint For HIs “Far-Reaching Impact” In addition to his Olympic gold at 400, he won silver in at 800, was an Air Force pilot, surgeon and more.
85 Years Ago, Jesse Owens Enjoyed The “Greatest 45 Minutes Ever In Sports” As He Set 4 WRs In 45 Minutes
On This Day 24 Years Ago, Jan Zelezny Added Nearly Three Meters To The Javelin World Record No one else has come within 4 meters of it since. *Video

NCAA Coronavirus News

AP: Number Of Eliminated College Sports Programs Nearing 100 97 programs have been cut in at least part due to the economic impact of the coronavirus. Only 19 of the teams were DI.
NCAA Releases Plans Allowing Football And Basketball Players To Return To Campuses Next Week

Sprint Stuff

Usain Bolt Says He Will Never Become One Who Complains About Everything When Asked About A Carl Lewis Tweet Bolt was asked about Lewis’ tweet which was questioning the sustainability of the sport.
RIP: USA’s 1956 Triple Olympic Champion Bobby Morrow Passes Away At Age 84 Morrow won gold in the 100, 200 and 4 x 100m and set 11 world records during his career.
South African Sprinter Akani Simbine “Hungry” For A 100m Medal After Just Missing Out (5th, 5th And 4th) At The Last Three Global Championships

Non-Distance News

Seb Coe Does Video Conference To Say He’s Pumped About Monday’s Back On Track Event In The Czech Republic The event will “bring together professional athletes, including two-time Olympic javelin champion and world record holder Barbora Spotakova, alongside kids at 173 venues across the Czech Republic.”
Now That She’s Been Training In A Park With Deer, Sprint Star Dina Asher-Smith Finally Understands How Distance Runners Can Run Many Miles Every Day “The sprinters always joke that we don’t understand how the longer‑distance people go on those long runs. When the scenery is so pretty I was starting to understand it. Running in a park among deer is definitely not what I would normally be doing.”
Katarina Johnson-Thompson Has Been Training At Home In Liverpool, Not At Her Normal Place In France During Covid-19 Quarantine
22 Questions Q&A With US 200 Champ Dezerea Bryant

US News Of Note

US Education Department Rules That Connecticut’s Policy Allowing Transgender Girls To Compete In Girls Sports Without Treatment Violates The Civil Rights Of Girls Who Have Always Identified As Female The CT authorities, however, aren’t backing down citing state law. Will they lose federal funding as a result?
*MB: Women’s sports may be saved!! Connecticut’s policy of allowing transgender women to compete w/o treatment found to violate Title IX

Cool Story: The Day After NCAA Indoors Was Canceled, Many Of The Top DIII Athletes Went To A Local Track And Ran A 5,000 The NCAA DIII XC champs Patrick Watson of Stevenson University and Parley Hannan of Ithaca won the races in 14:20 and 16:49. *Race Video

Throwback Thursday #8

LRC I Was Bored, So I Watched Alan Webb Run 3:53 As A High Schooler At The 2001 Prefontaine Classic In honor of the race’s 19-year anniversary, Jonathan Gault revisits the day when Webb broke Jim Ryun‘s 36-year-old US high school mile record and took a Hayward Field victory lap with Hicham El Guerrouj.

Administrative News

Interesting Q&A With New UK Athletics Head Joanna Coates, Who Explains How Her Not Being A Track And Field Person Is Going To Help Her Do Her Job “I think you can look at it with a really fair pair of eyes, because you don’t have the emotion, you can be very critical of things. But don’t get me wrong, you do then fall in love with it!”
Australian Medical Director Says The World Needs To Prepare For Tokyo 2021 As If Vaccine Won’t Exist
WADA & Quebec To Fund Anti-Doping Project Piloting Artificial Intelligence To The Tune Of $850,000 AI will be used to try to figure out who is doping.

How Some Pros Are Training During Quarantine

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

Fast US HS Action

LRC Leo Daschbach Breaks 4:00 In Mile; Supreme 56.81 Last Lap Allows Him To Become 11th US Boy To Do So Daschbach is only the 4th US high schooler to break 4:00 in the mile in a HS-only race. How did he celebrate? By vomiting all over the track. *Video Of Race
*MB: LEO DASCHBACH JOINS THE HS SUB 4 CLUB – 56.84 last lap gets him 3:59.54!! The first half was slow but he had plenty in the tank.
*Pre-Race 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

MB: HSer Jace Aschbrenner runs 8:44.93 for 3,200 in time trial Pretty darn impressive. He is Nico Young‘s teammate and was 18th at NXN.

145 Years Of History, Gone In An Instant – Brown Has Cut Its Men’s XC/Track Program

Brown XC And Track Athletes Sound Off On The Decision To Ax Their 145-Year-Old Program A good read. They have plenty of reason to be upset as the transfer window has closed and incoming freshmen have already been locked down.
Athletics Illustrated: Brown University President Christina Hull Paxon Spews Boilerplate Rhetoric At The Expense Of Athletics “The benefits of running the low-cost, high-return sport of athletics far outweigh the meager savings supposedly brought by adjusting numbers on a spreadsheet to satisfy the bean counters.”
MB: Rojo: The more I think about the way the Brown sports decision went down, the more OUTRAGED I become
MB: Brown University, Despite Its $4.2 Billion Endowment, Cuts Men’s XC, Indoor and Outdoor Track Effectively Immediately
Sign The Save Brown T&F Petition

Listen To Our Podcast While You Work Out This Weekend

More LRC Content: Podcast: Leo Daschbach Sub-4 In A Real Race, Pro Runner Wedding Bells, London Marathon In Doubt, LRC’s Poker Win Wejo reveals how his six-figure online poker win helped fund LRC in the early days.

An Event Worth Looking Forward To

LRC Sara Hall Among Pros Who Will Take Shot At Treadmill World Records On June 6 In Chaski Challenge Inspired by the success of last month’s Quarantine Backyard Ultra, a handful of elite runners will attempt to break treadmill world records across five distances next week. “We are 100% sure that we are going to break these records in this race,” says meet director Tyler Andrews, who will be aiming for the marathon/50k records. “We want to have actual, really good athletes just totally destroy them and set them way out of reach.”