Will There Be Any Action This Winter?

LRC Good News: There Will Be A 2021 Indoor Track Season But It Will Look Much Different Than Normal There will be a 2021 indoor season, but college meets will be more exclusive than ever, and USA Indoors is very much up in the air. Thankfully Paul Doyle has stepped up and created the  four-meet American Track League that will air on ESPN as he doens’t know of a single college meet that will accept unattached athletes.
*MB: New ESPN Indoor Track Series

Big News From Kenya

Athletics Kenya senior vice president says “definitely” there will be changes made to Kenyan Olympic Marathon team based on current fitness Let’s hope they aren’t dumb enough to dump Kipchoge.

Peres Chepchirchir – LetsRun.com’s runner of the year – says she hopes she’s named to the Kenyan Olympic team The problem is her is that before Covid-19 Kenya named a pretty darn good team of Brigid Kosgei, Ruth Chepngetich, and Vivian Cheruiyot. “My new year wish is to see if Athletics Kenya can consider my performance and make an amendment on the 2020 Tokyo Olympics marathon team by including me in the squad,” said Chepchirchir.

Jamaican Sprint Stuff

• Usain Bolt Releases New Song “Living The Dream” Bolt doesn’t actually sing the song himself, but features in the music video.
• Briana Williams’ Coach Ato Boldon Reiterates That The 18-Year-Old Is A Pro Now And Won’t Be Defending Her World Under-20 Titles
  *Ato Boldon Says Briana Williams Should Never Have Gone To Race In December Bahamas Meet The meet was poorly organized and ended up being cancelled at the last minute after they had already traveled there.

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.