June 05, 2020 Homepage Archive

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Archived Homepage For June 05, 2020

Well Worth 10 Minutes Of Your Life

Dear white people,
For days you’ve asked me what you can do to help. I’ve finally found an answer.
Let your guard down and listen. pic.twitter.com/74SVv8XOqp
— Emmanuel Acho (@thEMANacho) June 2, 2020

– Former NFL player Emmanuel Acho. Acho was a track guy in HS, winning private school state titles at St. Mark’s School of Texas, the alma mater of John Kellogg, Rojo and Wejo, in the shot put (57′) and discus (177′).

The World’s Best 400m Runner Gets Popped

LRC 2019 World 400m Champion Salwa Eid Naser Is Busted For Missing Three Drug Tests – Her Agent Says He Had No Idea She Was Popped Until LetsRun.com Told Him Eid Naser, who last year ran the fastest 400m time since 1985, is the latest athlete represented by Juan Pineda to be suspended for a doping violation following in the footsteps of Abraham Kiptum, Robel Fsiha and Sadik Mikhou.

MB: Bahrain’s world 400m champion Salwa Eid Naser (48.14 pb) suspended for whereabouts failures

From The Archives
2020: MB: Juan Pineda – one athlete dead at 22, one athlete busted for doping, both within 48 hours
2019: MB: On what kind of stuff is Salwa Eid Naser?
2019: MB: Juan Pineda group: Kiptum again with sub 60
2018: MB: Juan Pineda “handler” in Spain- Is Jama Aden really still coaching his athletes?

Brown Is Getting Heat For Cutting One Of Its Most Diverse Teams Supposedly In The Name Of Diversity

Brown University, If You Were Actually Serious About Racial Justice, You Would Not Be Cutting The Men’s Track Team Russell Dinkins, the 800 leg of the Princeton DMR team that won NCAAs in 2013, rips Brown after discovering that Brown’s track and field team has more black men on its roster than Brown’s lacrosse, baseball, hockey, and crew teams combined!
*Check out Savebrowntrack.org
*Video:Brown athletes describe how they were blindsided & devastated by the news, alums offer support
*MB: Brown University, with a $4.2 billion endowment, cancels men’s track and field and men’s cross country
*MB: The more I think about the way the Brown sports decision went down, the more OUTRAGED I become

Administrative News Of Note

Jamaica Opens Stadiums To Allow Pros To Train In Groups Once Again Meanwhile, the millionaires in the NBA and MLB can’t figure out how to get back to action.
NCAA Responds To Lawsuit Filed By High Jumpers Who Were Allegedly Sexually Abused 20 Years Ago By Coach John Rembao And Says Their Lawsuit Is Legally Flawed “This case is not about whether the NCAA opposes sexual abuse and works to support its member institutions in eradicating it – it does. This case is about what the NCAA’s legal duty is to take action with respect to sexual abuse on campuses nationwide and, more specifically, what the NCAA’s legal responsibility is for the alleged sexual abuse (all outside California) by one track coach twenty years ago. The NCAA respectfully submits the Complaint is flawed as a matter of law and that all claims against the NCAA and its Board be dismissed and/or stricken.”

These Reads From The US Are Definitely Interesting

“The Fastest Nice Christian Boy In The World”: Nearly 7,000 Words On 1956 Triple Olympic Champion Bobby Morrow, Who Claimed He Wished He’d Never Been A Track Star This 1984 feature on Morrow, who died on Saturday, from Texas Monthly is very interesting.
*A Look Back At Nearly Every Single Race In Bobby Morrow’s Career
Leo Daschbach Reveals What A Typical Week Of Training Looks Like And What His Final Workouts Were Before Breaking 4:00
*MB: Secrets of Leo Daschbah’s sub-4 training revealed. How would you rate these workouts?
2016 World Junior 1,500 Bronze Medalist Christina Aragon Reflects On Her Career During Covid-19: “I feel like I am where I should be at this point.” The former Montana legend, who ran 2:04 and 4:08 and was valedictorian as a prep, is hoping to help the Stanford women to an NCAA XC title this fall.
Toni Reavis Writes About Race Relations In The US
Michael Wardian Runs To The 4 Boundary Stones Of Washington, DC (59.9 Miles) In 8 hrs, 35 Minutes
Stephen Pifer Looks Back On His Career That Saw Him Win The Triple Crown (XC, 1,600, 3,200) In Illinois In HS Before Starring At Colorado “(My HS coach) said ‘the harder you work, the luckier you get’ and that’s something I’ve always used as a mantra in life,” said Pifer, who now works for Mizuno.

Get Healthy

Are You Struggling With Plantar Fasciitis? Read This. 5,600 Words On How To Treat It

Administrative News

USATF Releases Return To Training And Event Hosting Guidance *Return To Training Guidance *Event Hosting
Scottish Athletics Head Is Confident He And UK Athletics Can Finally Work Together And Build Up The Sport “Scottish Athletics chair Ian Beattie believes the recently-published blueprint to reform UK Athletics (UKA) can lift it out of the doldrums and put the whole sport back on track.”

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.

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.

Train Smarter & Be Your Best

LRCLetsRun.com High School and College Summer Training Program Is Baaack!If you want to set yourself up for success not only this fall but in the future, join our summer training program! Not only will you get a training plan for the summer, but you’ll interact with the LRC team and understand the principles for a lifetime of success in running.

LRC Exclusives

LRC Cross-Country In The Age Of COVID-19: What The 2020 NCAA XC Season Will Look Like … If There Is One Will there be a 2020 NCAA XC season? Jonathan Gault spoke to NCAA coaches, medical experts, and members of the NCAA’s coronavirus advisory panel to figure out if a cross-country season is feasible and what it might look like. And there is good news. “I think it is very feasible that there will be a cross-country season,” says Dr. Amesh Adalja, senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security and a member of the NCAA’s coronavirus advisory panel.

LRC I Was Bored, So I Watched Joan Benoit Samuelson Win The 1984 Olympic Marathon After a runner that was “considerably heavier than the other marathoners” took an early lead, Benoit won the inaugural women’s Olympic marathon thanks to a daring early breakaway, clocking the #3 time ever (at the time) and demolishing a field of studs (Grete Waitz, Ingrid Kristiansen, Rosa Mota) to cement her status as a legend.
*MB: How hot was it really during the 1984 Olympic women’s marathon? The NY Times report on the race says it got up to “near 90” but the weather data doesn’t show that.

LRC’s Weekly Podcast 2020 Boston Marathon Cancelled, Brown Track And Field Cancelled + Guest Tyler Andrews Goes For Treadmill World Record At Chaski Challenge And HSer Joe Fast Joins The Show Listen to the best track and field running podcast on the planet and learn about the guy who may dominate the NCAA men’s 800 for years to come.

Distance News

9-Time All-American, 4-Time PAC-12 Champ Nicole Freitag (Née Blood) Is Loving Being A Distance Coach At UVA At Age 32 After her pro career didn’t amount to much as a runner, she struggled finding a new passion but loves being at UVA. “Coach Vin wants to build a nationally competitive track and field and cross-country program. We’ve got a ways to go.”
Kipchoge Says He Was At “Peak Fitness” Prior To London Being Postponed And That He “Took two weeks to be sad, and then I went back to training. This is life.”

The Latest News That We Found Interesting

World Athletics Headquarters Have Opened; They Immediately Release 4-Year Strategic Plan As Well As 2021 Olympic Qualifying Procedures “Our head office may have been closed for 11 weeks but we have not been idle,” said Seb Coe. As for the Olympics, nothing changes except the qualifying window has been extended into next year.
*Olympic Qualifying Procedures
*WA Unveils 4-Year Strategic Plan
*World Athletics’s New Strategic Plan Includes Support Campaign After Research Shows 88 Per Cent Exercise Boom In Lockdown
Q&A With Atlanta Track Club Head And 1997 WC Bronze Medalist Rich Kenah Kenah has doubled the ATC budget in six years but unlike Max Siegel, he’s not pulling in 7 figures a year.
New Book Is Published On Whether Genetics Explains Certain Groups’ Dominance In Certain Sports – How To Argue With A Sport-Loving Racist People of East African descent seem to dominate distance and people of West Africans seem to dominate the sprints. Is that genetic?
Alexa Efraimson Runs 4:27 1,600 Time Trial She had missed the full indoor season.

World Athletics Headquarters Have Opened; They Immediately Release 4-Year Strategic Plan As Well As 2021 Olympic Qualifying Procedures “Our head office may have been closed for 11 weeks but we have not been idle,” said Seb Coe. As for the Olympics, nothing changes except the qualifying window has been extended into next year. *Olympic Qualifying Procedures *WA Unveils 4-Year Strategic Plan *World Athletics’s New Strategic Plan Includes Support Campaign After Research Shows 88 Per Cent Exercise Boom In Lockdown
Q&A With Atlanta Track Club Head And 1997 WC Bronze Medalist Rich Kenah Kenah has doubled the ATC budget in six years but unlike Max Siegel, he’s not pulling in 7 figures a year.
New Book Is Published On Whether Genetics Explains Certain Groups’ Dominance In Certain Sports – How To Argue With A Sport-Loving Racist People of East African descent seem to dominate distance and people of West Africans seem to dominate the sprints. Is that genetic?
Alexa Efraimson Runs 4:27 1,600 Time Trial She had missed the full indoor season.

World Athletics Headquarters Have Opened; They Immediately Release 4-Year Strategic Plan As Well As 2021 Olympic Qualifying Procedures “Our head office may have been closed for 11 weeks but we have not been idle,” said Seb Coe. As for the Olympics, nothing changes except the qualifying window has been extended into next year. *Olympic Qualifying Procedures *WA Unveils 4-Year Strategic Plan *World Athletics’s New Strategic Plan Includes Support Campaign After Research Shows 88 Per Cent Exercise Boom In Lockdown
Q&A With Atlanta Track Club Head And 1997 WC Bronze Medalist Rich Kenah Kenah has doubled the ATC budget in six years but unlike Max Siegel, he’s not pulling in 7 figures a year.
New Book Is Published On Whether Genetics Explains Certain Groups’ Dominance In Certain Sports – How To Argue With A Sport-Loving Racist People of East African descent seem to dominate distance and people of West Africans seem to dominate the sprints. Is that genetic?
Alexa Efraimson Runs 4:27 1,600 Time Trial She had missed the full indoor season.

Athletes Speak Out After George Floyd’s Murder

Marielle Hall On Her Upbringing And Life Right Now As A Black Distance Runner Hall says that some of her high school friends said people only asked her out “because they were curious about what a ‘black girl would be like.'” She chose to attend the University of Texas because it was a more diverse, inclusive environment.
Gwen Berry Demands The USOPC Send Her A Written Public Apology For Putting Her On Probation For Her Awards Stand Protest At Pan-Ams Last Year “I want an apology letter … mailed … just like you and the IOC (International Olympic Committee) MAILED ME WHEN YOU PUT ME ON PROBATION. Stop playing with me.”
American Hammer Throw Record Holder Gwen Berry Says She Doesn’t Regret Her Protest At The Pan Am Games Last Year Even Though It Cost Her $50k “I just felt something. I don’t know what it was. When I was up there, I just felt something come over me. I can’t describe it,” Berry told CBC Sports from Houston. “It was like a spirit. I felt different. It was indescribable but I’ll never forget it or regret it.” *Discuss
Welsh Sprinter Sam Gordon Says Racism Is A Daily Issue In The UK
World Athletics And Many Track Stars Tweet Out Support For #BlackLivesMatter
Former GB Olympian And Harvard Sprinter Chris Lamber Pens “A letter to my white friends.” “We don’t inherit our oppression from our parents, we inherit it from your silence.”
Noah Lyles And Other US Pros Post On Social Media After George Floyd’s Death Jasmine Todd: “We put the three letters … U S A … on our chest SO PROUDLY … for a country that doesn’t even like or respect US because of OUR skin. A country that statistically sets blacks up for failure. A country that kills us because of our skin color …”
Michael Johnson Changes His Opinion And Says Prominent Athletes Need To Speak Out After George Floyd’s Death “If you have a platform you owe it to those people, you owe it to those whose lives have been lost, you owe it to our ancestors who fought through the civil rights movement back in the sixties. You owe it to all of them. If you have this position, like I did, you have a prominent position and you’ve benefited from the hard work of all of those people to have what you have, you owe it to all of them to not be silent.”

Bizarre

US Pole Vaulter Cole Walsh Handed 3-Month Ban For Eating A Chocolate Bar With THC In It Can we stop wasting resources on testing for recreational drugs that don’t help performance?
Ultrarunner Alyssa Amos Clark Has Broken The Women’s Word Record For Most Consecutive Marathons She’s completed a marathon on her treadmill for 64 straight days and is aiming for 75. The world record was 60. The men’s record is 607. Yes, 607.

Free Training Tips

Interesting Reads From Outside The US

4 Years Ago, Brett Larner Predicted Japanese Marathoners Would Start Running Really Fast Soon And He Was Right, But Was It Because They Were Developed In College Or Was It Simply The New Shoes?
Interesting Idea: Since No One Is Competing In Track, Kenyan Journalist Proposes WADA Starts Testing Random Kenyans On Street To Make Sure ABP Works In Kenya Is it possible the ABP misses unique aspects of Kenyan physiology? Or might the local food supply be tainted with drugs?

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.

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.”

Field Event / Sprint News

Amazing: Californians Built An Entire Pole Vault-Only Facility In Six Weeks During Covid-19 And It’s Hosting A Meet This Weekend The 1st Vaulter Magazine Vaulter Club Big Red Barn Meet is Saturday.
Former Jamaican LJ Record Holder James Beckford Says He Was “Very, Very, Very Happy” To See Tajay Gayle Break His NR “I was like yes, there it is, world champion. I was excited. I was very, very, very happy to see my record broken, absolutely. I was very happy,” said the 45-year-old Beckford, who has won several world masters LJ titles in recent years.
June 4, 1998 – UCLA Men’s 4 X 400 Team Became The 1st NCAA Team To Break 3:00 The team was studly as it contained two Olympic gold medalists and a bronze medalist.
Doper Amantle Montsho Was Planning On Medaling This Year In 400, But May Quit Sport Instead As She’ll Be 38 In 2021

Administrative News

Japanese Government Considering Scaling Back Of The Opening And Closing Ceremonies There also may be a reduction in the number of spectators at the Games if Covid-19 is still a problem. “Athletes may also have restrictions on the number of times they can leave the Athletes’ Village, with testing mandatory for athletes, staff and spectators.”
Paris 2024 Often Scaling Back The number of beds required in the Olympic and Paralympic Village had been reduced from over 17,000 down to 14,000.
Bolder Boulder Cancels 2020 Race After Initially Postponing It From Memorial Day To Labor Day
Investigation Reveals That International Weightlifting Federation Hid 40 Positive Tests Fom WADA And $10.4 Million Dollars Is Missing The head of the organization, who has now resigned, would routinely accept hundreds of thousands of dollars for doping ‘fines’ for positives test – in cash.
*BBC: “Corrupt At Highest Level”

The Latest Distance News

Alberto Salazar’s And Jeffrey Brown’s CAS Appeal Will Be Heard November 8-16
Timothy Cheruiyot Talks Up Super-Fast Time For Next Week’s 2,000m Race
*MB: Really? Timothy Cheruiyot says he’s hoping someone on his team can break 2000 WR of 4:44 in Impossible Games
Recommended Read Abdi Nageeye, Dutch Record Holder In Half And Full (60:24/2:06:17), Has Many Fascinating Observations To Share He shares the best advice his training partner Eliud Kipchoge has given him, reveals why doping isn’t going away anytime soon in Kenya or Ethiopia and talks about how people in the Netherlands are a bit spoiled. “It’s one of the best countries in the world, yet you see so many people complaining, and you think, come on, half the world are struggling.”
Eilish McColgan: “There are people cheating and that is just the way our sport is.” – AW
Neil Gourley: Getting Snubbed For 2018 Euros Led To Him Making Worlds Final In 2019 11th in the world is pretty good for someone who was just 7th at NCAAs for Va. Tech in 2018.
A Quarantine Conversation With Sir Mo Farah, Who Has Been Doing A Ton Of Treadmill Running

Track Is Back, Baby

17,000 Athletes, Including Barbora Spotakova, Competed In Track Meets In The Czech Repulbic On Monday As The “Back On The Track” Series Began 17,000 athletes competed across 173 locations, with televised events in Pilsen and Kolin as well as Kladno.
*Spotakova Won Javelin At 63.69 *Video

A Throws Meet Took Place In Estonia On Monday Adam Kelly of USA topped the field with 69.12 in the hammer.
Colleen Quigley DESTROYED 7 Other Professional Women In ESPN’s Peloton All-Star Ride She also easily beat all the men if you are looking at w/kg. Of course, wouldn’t you expect her to destroy the likes of Rory McIlroy and Allyson Felix in an endurance challenge?

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?

US Mid-D

Mary Cain Says She Was Treated “Like A Product, Not A Person” At NOP She also says she didn’t want to be seen as the “weak athlete” at NOP as she was worried Nike wouldn’t want to invest in her.
MB: JOHNNY GREGOREK runs 4:06.25 blue jeans mile WR to raise money for mental illness in honor of his later brother Patrick

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

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.”