June 01, 2020 Homepage Archive

Where Your Dreams Become Reality

Archived Homepage For June 01, 2020

Quote Of The Day

“I’ve been told by some that ‘the train has left the station’ – at this point, this is going to happen, and the only thing you can do now is hope to mitigate what it looks like or how much of an impact it’s gonna have. Others have told me no, it hasn’t left the station, but it’s definitely boarding up, and if coaches or conferences or institutions have a strong feeling about it, one way or the other, they need to be active, quickly and emphatically, to get their opinions heard.”

“We are the NCAA. To say the NCAA wants this – there’s more than 10,000 people in the NCAA, and they don’t all want this. There is a small subset of people within the NCAA that want this. But the vast majority do not think this is a good idea.”

“If we act now, we can stop it. We can reverse it. But it can’t just be a letter from Dave Smith. There’s gotta be some weight behind this.”

– Oklahoma State cross-country coach Dave Smith talking to LetRun.com about whether changes to the NCAA qualification process for cross-country will be happening. The most recent proposal would rebrand regionals as the official first round of the NCAA championships, and force teams to qualify for them. This would allow more teams to say they made it to NCAAs – around 20%, in line with other Division I sports – although the number of teams actually competing at regionals would drop from 515 to 160. The NCAA committee charged with developing the new regional concept contains representatives from 11 schools. Only two of those schools, Kansas and Ohio State, have ever sent a team to the NCAA Cross-Country Championships.

MB: NCAA Cross Qualifying Changes?

Will NCAA XC Change Its Qualifying System?

LRC What We Know About The Potential Changes To The NCAA Cross-Country Regional System Change may be coming to the NCAA XC qualification system, but the crazy thing is, NCAA coaches have no idea who is driving this change, beyond a faceless NCAA working group. The NCAA committee charged with developing the new regional concept contains representatives from 11 schools. Only two of those schools, Kansas and Ohio State, have ever sent a team to the NCAA Cross-Country Championships.
*MB: NCAA Cross Qualifying Changes?

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

Sprint / Field News

Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce Says She Isn’t Ready To Retire Yet She said that she isn’t ruling out going through 2022. She shares some other interesting thoughts like her favorite Kenyan athlete is Ezekiel Kemboi because of his dancing.
World LJ Champ Malaika Mihambo To Be Coached By Carl Lewis And Leroy Burrell If travel restrictions allow it, she plans to move from Germany to Houston in August.
Karsten Warholm Eyeing 300m Hurdles WR At The Impossible Games Next Week The 18-year-old record is 34.48 and Warholm has run 34.26 indoors.
Olympic Shot Put Champ Michelle Carter To Join Dad In Texas Sports HOF Her father Michael Carter won shot put Olympic silver in 1984.

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

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

MoreLRC 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.”

Mid-D News Of Note

DyeStat.com Does A Video Chat With 3 Of The Top US HS Girls 800 Talents In Athing Mu (2:01.17), Juliette Whittaker (2:03.01 PR) And Roisin Willis (2:03.05 PR)
Donavan Brazier Says He Was Super Confident Before Olympic Postponement And Out To Prove That 2019 Was No Fluke “I am a little frustrated. I just wanted to prove to myself that 2019 Worlds wasn’t a fluke, that I am this great racer, that I am a medal contender every year and I should have a big target on my back,” he says. “I was really confident about the Olympics this year, but 2021 will be just as special.”
Centro, Watch Out: Elijah Manangoi And Timothy Cheruiyot Are Back Training Together And Manangoi says he’s more motivated due to missing Worlds last year with injury.
Bernard Ouma Is Thrilled To Be Back Coaching After Taking His 1,500 Studs Through Their 1st Track Workout “We were having a feeling like we were in a cage then suddenly we have been let loose. It is a happy feeling to be on the track after a long time being indoors with minimal activities,” said Ouma, who called the upcoming clash against the Ingebrigtsens as a “fun race with no monetary attachment to it.”
Shelby Houlihan Says Of Course She Thought She’d Medal When She Ran 3:54 At Worlds Last Year “If I’m in 3:54 shape, there’s no way I don’t medal. You know, statistically or historically, in races that should medal.”
*MB: LOL: Shelby Houlihan: The pandemic hasn’t changed that much for me as I’m a member of the BTC and we never race anyways
A Recap Of The Odd World Records Nick Symmonds Went For Since Retirement He successfully broke WRs for the fastest 400 in crocs and mile while dribbling a basketball but came up short in running a mile after eating 4 Big Macs.
2013 800 World Champ Eunice Sum Is Still Dreaming Of Her First Olympic Medal At Age 32
The BeerMileWorldClassic Will Be Run (Virtually) This Summer With $8k In Prize Money

Previous Distance News

Shannon Rowbury Has A Choice To Make As She Goes For A 4th Olympics – 1,500 Or 5,000? (TFN Sub Required) She doesn’t just want to make a 4th Olympics; she wants to be a contender but admits she has to train differently now that she’s a) 35 and b) a mom.
Scientific Paper Says What You’ve Always Been Taught Is Wrong – When You’re Trying To Recover, Put Your Hands On Your Knees, Not Behind Your Head A study showed that by bending over, your heart rate fell 20 bpm more than if you put your hands behind your head.
Runner’s World: “Can we all just agree to stop using “Jogger” as an insult?”
British Athletics Announces New Talent Hubs Sponsored By The London Marathon The running hubs are designed to provide athletes aged 16-21 with a “seamless experience through the performance pathway” and will be based at the University of Birmingham and Leeds Beckett University.

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?

Field/Sprint News

Austria Limits Sporting Events To A Max Of 10 People, But That Was More Than Enough For Discus Thrower Lukas Weisshaidinger, Who Threw 68.63 They held two competitions on the same day but his best throw came in the first.
Commonwealth Games Organizers Are Realistic That Dina Asher-Smith May Not Want To Triple At CGs Just Weeks After 2022 Worlds We don’t see why she wouldn’t do at least one individual event and a relay.

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