Official 2026 NCAA Indoors Championships Day 2 thread

without a doubt ncaa indoor is the best place to learn race craft. No brainer really . Beamish , Kerr, Hocker, nuguse, Fischer would not be the athletes they are without serving there apprenticeship in this system .. no brainer really .

Were you also aware that the BYU and NAU athletes are positively drowning in oxygen down in Fayetteville?

Overlooked in the mayhem is how well Sahlman ran the 3K. He's had tactical issues in the past but this time he got it right and was definitely fit and ready. It was unfortunate how the race ended but he didn't give up and kept pressing hard to the finish.

Nice job, and even that pic is slightly deceptive in that it looks like his left leg is going to land into lane one, I watched this 5 more times...sober..lol and his left leg did not go into land one at anytime.

Colin isn't being overlooked. There's a thread on him.

https://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=14090571

It's a subtle thing but to me it didn't quite look like Marco fully cleared Habtom before cutting it. It was dicey. Since it was into a turn where you can defend cutting in to follow the curvature of the track, so it exists in some borderline situation. Recall Jake Wightman somewhat cutting off Jakob in 2022 in the 1500. This was closer than that and while you can argue that Langon's "cutting in" is a function of leaning into the turn, if you pass someone like this maybe the expectation is you don't angle in so much. I don't think Samuel would've been DQed at all had he not messed up Sahlman's stride. And for NAU the foul was on Samuel (if anyone), so I can understand why Marco was left off the hook here. He's going to push the boundaries on what can and can't be done. This wasn't as egregious as pushing Colton Sands/impeding him, but he wasn't blameless IMO.

My opinion is langon did not step into lane1 only because as he leaned that way he contacted samuel. Suppose samuel had not aggressively moved up between sahlman and langon and finished second or third would you say langon should be dqd for impeding him?

What i also find unfortunate is that had samuel not overtaken sahlman there would have been no protest or dq and langon would be 4th. Instead because samuel did ovetake him he gets dqd and langon gets 3rd.

Be never cut in

he was in lane two clearly the pic shows it

Samuel rather than drop back and circle and pass tries to go right between Langon who is established in lane two and Sahlman already running g his line in 1

Again, you’re a hater , you already made a snippy post third hand on Sands parents chat..anyone who reviewed this carefully clearly come to the conclusion that Samuel fouled

Removed

What you’re missing Samuel was running on the middle of lane 1 intentionally and Langon went by him in lane 2 but more like the middle. Not where you want to be on the turn but necessary for the pass. So Marco leaned into the edge of lane 1/2 and Sahlmans shoulder (prime position). I don’t think he was entitled to that space really. If he’d been going slightly faster perhaps, but he didn’t pass decisively like Sahlman did on Samuel.

I will post in this thread as well - where it belongs
I eventually got back home last night and was able to watch
replay in slo mo and with many pauses and I am amending my opinion.
First, it looks to me like Langon started his left shoulder lean well ahead of
the turn (about 7:27.2 of race) as he tried to get an edge on Samuel.
Langon seems to be running differently here even on the straightaway than
before this. At this point Samuel was behind and outside of Sahlman
toward the outside of lane 1 while Langon was mid lane 2. This starts the
battle between the 2 of them and they stayed shoulder to shoulder as they enter
the turn. At 7:29.5 we see the side shot showing this. Around 7:30
Samuel seems to push Sahlman and we see Sahlman lose his balance. Then
Samuel shifts out, seems to impede Langon who loses speed and Samuel enters
lane 2. So Samuel clearly deserves dq as he seems to have impeded 2
runners. I still think Langon's shoulder lean (into lane 1) was to try to
block Samuel and not his natural form for the turn. Perhaps this is
allowed, but he does seem to like to use his shoulder like that. So I now
place less blame on Langon for this. He ran aggressively but I guess
within the rules (I guess you can lean shoulder like that). I read where
the dq was not from NAU coaches protest but from official review, and that then
NM protested (for Langon impeding Samuel) but was denied. So I guess
Samuel would still have been dqd even if he had not overtaken Sahlman contrary
to my post last night.