January 06, 2021 Homepage Archive

Where Your Dreams Become Reality

Archived Homepage For January 06, 2021

Quote Of The Day

“I had a conversation with Trevor, my husband, and I said, ‘look at her or her, she’s someone who I beat. Maybe the next week, they might beat me but someone’s going to get a medal here. And it might as well be me.’ I really believed that I could but I didn’t probably vocalise that to anybody else. Before I left my room, I half-scared myself to death. I went into the bathroom, looking at myself, and said, ‘the next time you look at yourself in the mirror back in this room, I hope you really like yourself.’ It sounds awful … the pressure I put myself under. But I thought, ‘I hope you do yourself justice.'”

– GB’s Jenny Meadows looking back at when she won 800m bronze at the 2009 Berlin World Championships.

A New Year Means New Sponsorship Deals

LRC Ryan Hill Joins HOKA ONE ONE NAZ Elite Jonathan Gault breaks the news that Hill, the 2015 US 5k champ, is leaving Bowerman TC and is headed to Flagstaff, where he’ll chase his first Olympic berth.
*MB: Ryan Hill leaves BTC

Sponsorship MB Chatter

What Pro runners have not had their contracts renewed?
Kyle Merber makes official retirement announcement “I’m not done running, I’m just done getting paid for it.”
Why Would Saucony Drop Molly Seidel?
Ben True to Reebok Boston!?!?!

Looking Ahead: Winter 2021

MB:Jim Walmsley, Camille Herron, Tons of others to chase 100km WR in Project Carbon X 2 On Jan. 23rd
NCAA March Madness Will Be Played Entirely In Indiana All 67 games will be played in or near Indianapolis.
Welsh Indoor And Cross-Country Championships Cancelled Due To COVID-19 Due to a combination of limits on event size and athletes inability to train due to lockdown restrictions.
Renaud Lavillenie Maps Out His Plans For The 2021 Indoor Season Lavillenie is planning on a full indoor season with 9 meets on his schedule including the European Indoor Champs in March.
The Armory Ready To Host Air Force/Hispanic Games On January 9-10

More Olympic Related Stuff

IOC Member Dick Pound Claims Prioritizing Athletes For COVID Vaccine Is “Most Realistic Way” Of Staging Tokyo 2020 Pound didn’t think there would be a public outcry if 300 or 400 athletes skipped to the front of the vaccine queue.
If Joshua Cheptegei Wins The 5,000/10,000 Double In Tokyo, It’ll Be The Fourth Games In A Row Where This Happened Kenenisa Bekele did it in 2009 and Mo Farah did in 2012 and 2016.
The Telegraph:GB Olympic Selection Headache Looming As New Lockdown Threatens To Further Impact On Athletes’ Qualifying Hopes The lack of major events will make it hard for athletes in many sports to qualify for Tokyo.
Kenya Expecting To Take A Record 100+ Athletes To Tokyo 2020 Olympics
U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Museum Voted Best New Attraction For 2020 By USA Today
Ukraine May Bid For 2030 Or 2032 Olympic Games

Tokyo Updates

Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga To Decide If Tokyo Enters A State Of Emergency On Thursday
Tokyo Governor Koike Asks Japanese Government To Declare Coronavirus State Of Emergency Tokyo reported more than 1,000 daily cases for the first time last week, and a new, faster-spreading variant of the virus has been detected in Japan.
Japanese Prime Minister Vows Olympics Will Go Ahead In 2021
Tokyo 2020 Train “Ethical Hackers” To Counter Potential Cyber Attacks

Sprint Stuff

Usain Bolt’s 9.58 A Decade On – The Science Behind The World’s Fastest Man Biomechanics expert Dr. Peter Weyand says it is a misconception that Bolt was a slow starter. In Bolt’s WR race, only Dwain Chambers was ahead of him after the first few strides.
Allyson Felix Plans On Having More Children After The Tokyo Olympics
Grenada Sprinter Bralon Taplin Gets Second Doping Ban For Whereabouts Failures Taplin was already banned for 4-years in 2019 and once his suspension ends in 2023, his next ban will go three years until 2026.
Tough Guidelines As Track And Field Set To Restart In Jamaica

Goodbye, 2020

LRC LetsRun.com’s Best Articles Of 2020: How To Turn Pro, Farewell To Coogan’s, Solinsky’s 26:59 Revisited And More We sifted through the hundreds of articles we published in 2020 to find the very best stories of the year. From a guide on how to turn professional, to a diatribe on the Vaporflys, to a a remembrance of Haile G‘s 12:44, to the inside scoop on Chris Solinsky‘s AR at 2010 Payton Jordan, check out the work we were proudest of in 2020.

LRC The 2020 LetsRun.com Awards Are Here: Best Runner, Best Comeback, Biggest Disappointment, Most Inspirational & More 2020 was full of highs and lows – just ask Sara Hall. We hand out awards for a year unlike any other.
*MB: The 2020 LetsRun.com Awards Are Out – Best Runner, Best Comeback, Biggest Disappointment, Most Inspirational & More

LRC The Best LetsRun.com Track Talk Podcast Episodes Of 2020: Jim Ryun, Deena Kastor, The Big 3 Reunited, & More Though 2020 featured fewer races than normal, we had plenty to talk about as we cranked out 68 episodes of the LetsRun.com Track Talk Podcast as we landed some incredible guests, including an Olympic gold medalist, a Boston Marathon champion, a world record holder, and one of the most popular authors on the planet. A look at eight of our best episodes of 2020.

Give The Gift Of LetsRun.com This Holiday Season

Men’s Distance News

Recommended Read:Inspired By Pacing And Training With Stars, Nicholas Kimeli Looks To Become One Of The Greats Kimeli talks about pacing Joshua Cheptegei to his 10,000m WR, running 12:51.78 and 26:56.97 PRs in a uncertain year and how his first love was volleyball.
Athletics Weekly Looks Back At 20 Of Jim Ryun’s Greatest Races And Asks If He Was “The World’s Deadliest Ever Finisher?”
WA Profile: After Steady Rise, Marathon Ace Birhanu Legese Sets Sights On Olympic Glory

Women’s Distance News

Colleen Quigley Makes Personal/Athletic Reflections On 2020 And Goals For 2021 Quigley talks about wanting to continue reading two books a month, working out from home and living with her previously long-distance boyfriend after they had spent 10 out of 11 years in different cities.
GB Jenny Meadows Writes About Her “Greatest Race,” When She Won World 800m Bronze At Berlin 2009 “Before I left my room, I half-scared myself to death. I went into the bathroom, looking at myself, and said, ‘the next time you look at yourself in the mirror back in this room, I hope you really like yourself.'”
Watch Gabe Grunewald Train Reality TV Star Chip Gaines To Run A Marathon In “The Courage to Run” Documentary You can watch it on Discovery+ (free trial available.)
Former NXN Champ Brie Oakley Talks About Overcoming Injury, Mental Health, And “Racing Without Limits”

2020 -> 2021 News

The Telegraph‘s Track And Field Health Check For 2021: Which Stars War Waning, Who Is On The Rise And What Is The Sport’s Looming Crisis? Ben Bloom writes, “There is a large section of the sport that now believes numbers are becoming meaningless and the main reason is the continued development of shoe technology.”
World Athletics’ Mountain Running 2020 Review
Long Jumper Maryna Bekh-Romanchuk And Hammer Thrower Myhaylo Kokhan Have Been Voted Ukrainian Athletes Of The Year For 2020

Sad News – Track And Field Obituaries

Bob Mapplestone, The First British Runner To Go Sub-4 Indoors, Passes At Age 74
*Dyestat Article
Jamaica’s Former Big 10 LJ Champ And 1960 Olympic Finalist Paul Foreman Dies At Age 81
Car Accident Claims Life Of Utah High School Runner Jackson Keate
Former All-American High Jumper Bob Walters Dies At Age 93 He had the highest jump in the world in both 1949 and 1950.
UK’s 1964 Olympic Racewalking Silver Medalist Paul Nihill Dies From COVID-19 At Age 81
MB:One of the best runners in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Osman Junuzovic, passed away at age 27 Unofficially, the cause of death was sudden heart failure.

Coe Defends Super Shoes

Seb Coe Shrugs Off Concerns That Nike Track Spikes Give Unfair Advantage Coe said he was “pretty calm” about the game-changing spikes and did not want to “stifle innovation.” He added that he thinks it’s a good thing for shoe companies to try to outdo each other.
Coe: “I don’t think we’ve reached that point where world records are being handed out like confetti. World records do matter.” However, Coe admits that they were “relatively late” getting in on monitoring the new shoe technology.

More New Year Stuff

GB Athlete New Year Resolutions And 2021 Targets Thank you to British champions Jess Judd (5,000m) and Keely Hodgkinson (800m) for actually giving a straight answer to the resolution question.
NAZ Elite 2020 Review: From Aliphine Tuliamuk’s OT Win To The Marathon Project
USATF 2020 Review: Despite Difficult Year, Team USATF Shined Bright
DyeStat’s 2020 Memoriam – Paying Respects To Prominent Members Of The Track Community Who Died This Year
Athletics Weekly’s 2020 Quiz

New Year’s Eve And New Year’s Action

Paul Chelimo Doesn’t Come Close To American Record In Spain He was third in 28:14 as Daniel Ebenyo won on 27:41. Yulemzerf Yehualaw Densa (31:17) crushed Ruth Chepngetich (31:50) to win women’s title.
Genzebe Dibaba Comes Up Short In 5k WR Attempt As She Runs 15:00 In Barcelona She went out hard (5:52 for 2k) but faded and failed to get the 14:44 record.
Hellen Obiri Fails To Get 29:43 WR As She Wins In 30:53 After Falling 2 Minutes Into The Race
World 5,000 Silver Medalist Margaret Kipkemboi Wins Italy’s Bolzano 10k In 30:43 Dorcas Jepchirchir was 2nd as 8:59 steeplechaser Norah Tanui was third in 30:46.
19-Year-Old Ugandan Oscar Chelimo Wins Bolzano Men’s 5k In 13:18 Unheralded Belgian Robin Hendrix just missed the European 5k road record in 2nd in 13:19 as Muktar Edris was just 6th in 13:24.

Post-Hakone Ekiden News

Second Stage Course Record Breaker Vincent Yegon Named Hakone Ekiden MVP He ran 1:05:49 for the 23.1km section (that’s 60:07 half marathon pace).
Hakone Ekiden Broadcast Breaks Records With 41.8% Peak Viewership Rating And Audience Of 65 Million The increase in viewership is likely thanks to people being encouraged not to watch the race in person due to coronavirus.

Doping News

Japan Ends 2020 And Starts 2021 With Ekiden Action

Recommended Read:Komazawa Pulls Off Last-Second Come-From-Behind 2021 Hakone Ekiden Win After an “out-of-nowhere” day 1 win, underdog Soka University started the final day with a 2:14 lead and were poised to make history with a 3:19 lead going into the final 23km leg. But Komazawa caught up with 2km to go to pull off the first anchor stage comeback at Hakone in 20 years.
*Soka University Wins First-Ever Hakone Ekiden Day One Title

Fujitsu Wins Its 1st New Year Ekiden Title Since 2009 Olympic marathon Trials winner Shogo Nakamura gave Fujitsu the lead on the 4th leg and they never gave it back. Some new course records were set on legs 2 and 3. How about 21:53 for 8.3 km and 37:39 for 13.6?

2020 Podcasts Are In The Books

LRC Final Podcast of The Year: 2020 Track And Field Trivia, Year In Review See if you can do better than Rojo and Wejo in our 2020 track and field trivia contest.

LRC Remembering Rafer Johnson: Meb Keflezighi, Bob Larsen, Angel Martinez Share Their Memories The world lost an incredible man with the death of Olympic decathlon champ Rafer Johnson. We had 3 distance runners share their memories of this titan.