I’m good with this, noon start lets me get in a run and maybe brunch before settling down with a beer and snacks. Starting at 8 or even 6 would not fit my Sunday routine. Only thing better would be an evening start. Benji Durden wouldn’t worry about a noon start.
They should allow entries for XC All Americans in each division.
That would be great with deeper fields in their college uniforms.
Somebody get on that!
Its in the middle of track season. Even an athlete training through indoor is going to be cautioned against entering. Guys who've already graduated hopped in CIM or a fast half to qualify at that point. Maybe they could let guys qualify from usatf club xc nats or usatf xc nats.
And why men and women are going to race nearly at the same time?! They could easily do 8am and 9:30am vs 12:10 and 12:20.
It's all about Max "Kickback" Seigel selling the broadcast rights. NBC or whomever wants the smallest possible window and to be able to shove as many ads into the overlap of men and women.
He's drained millions from USATF, right out in the open, all public, lots of million-dollar tax shenanigans but no prison time somehow.
This is just one year of many, imagine how many developing athletes this could have helped, how much higher the top 10 payouts for USATF races could have been:
Once again, the 18-minute 5Kers rush right past facts to pillory a figurehead who has zero impact on their lives. Olympic Trials are the property of USOPC, the rights to which are packaged and sold by USOPC and merely staged in coordination with NBC by USATF with funds distributed to them from USOPC.
I’m good with this, noon start lets me get in a run and maybe brunch before settling down with a beer and snacks. Starting at 8 or even 6 would not fit my Sunday routine. Only thing better would be an evening start. Benji Durden wouldn’t worry about a noon start.
Well, it's on Saturday not Sunday so...
Even better news for me and my Saturday routine, awesome!
Y'all are such whiny babies. Average high temps is around 74. And that happens later in the day. Obviously you don't know Florida weather and just go based off what you see on TV. This is why Americans suck when it comes to the longer distances, do more crying than training. Orlando in February is actually perfect, the mornings can get down into the 30s and 40s, highs in the late afternoon in the low 70s. If someone can only run decent times in "perfect" weather then they're not a true runner. Many other countries run in similar and/or hotter weather with no issues. Atleast they're giving it a chance to be seen by thousands of people on tv.
I actually am watching the 2016 Trials right now out of boredom and it was mid 70s by the middle/end of the race. So the Orlando timing is a little unprecedented, but the temperature I guess isn’t.
They should allow entries for XC All Americans in each division.
That would be great with deeper fields in their college uniforms.
Somebody get on that!
Who let the hobby jogger in that wants a participation trophy
It's about developing/discovering the next generation of US marathoning talent.
I'm sure there will be plenty of coaches who would want their athletes racing for a chance to make the Olympic Team. Anyone that's racing a marathon probably isn't big racing indoors.
Telling your recruits and AD we have a bunch of OT marathon qualifiers. You don't think Mark or Mike could get one of their people on the Olympic Team?
Who let the hobby jogger in that wants a participation trophy
It's about developing/discovering the next generation of US marathoning talent.
I'm sure there will be plenty of coaches who would want their athletes racing for a chance to make the Olympic Team. Anyone that's racing a marathon probably isn't big racing indoors.
Telling your recruits and AD we have a bunch of OT marathon qualifiers. You don't think Mark or Mike could get one of their people on the Olympic Team?
I actually am watching the 2016 Trials right now out of boredom and it was mid 70s by the middle/end of the race. So the Orlando timing is a little unprecedented, but the temperature I guess isn’t.
2016 ended like this because of the heat, and yes those are Vaporfly prototypes Shalane and Amy wore that no-one else had.
Shalane would never have finished without them, she was destroyed because of the temperatures.
Kara Goucher had to race without any advantage in 2016 Skechers, which were about as bad as you might imagine back then, EVA compared to PEBA+plate vaporflys.
Shalane ran 2:29:19 Kara ran 2:30:24, you decide after running in super-shoes.
(now makes me wonder what new shenanigans Nike will try in six months)
I actually am watching the 2016 Trials right now out of boredom and it was mid 70s by the middle/end of the race. So the Orlando timing is a little unprecedented, but the temperature I guess isn’t.
Given the window chosen for holding the OT marathons, there aren’t a lot of places with low probability of snowy/icy weather that also have low probability of warm and humid conditions. Taking that further to the narrow set of locales willing to meet the other requirements to bid and you’ll understand it’s Pollyanna-ish to ever expect anything ideal. It’s a marathon that will be good enough to select a team that’s as good as any other given the current state of the talent pool and development investment. The team selected from the LA trials generated a medal and the team selected from the Atlanta trials generated a medal, that’s as good as it gets from the system we have.
Man, this is 2000 Pittsburgh ALL OVER AGAIN. Has anyone gone back and watched that disaster recently? Probably not, since a hard course and stifling heat caused the single worst performance in US Olympic marathoning history: Sending only ONE MARATHONER to Sydney.
This Florida trials race at noon is as stupid as the old AAU used to be. In fact, we can draw a direct line from the disaster that was 2000 to trying to make a better choice for 2004 (wich doesn't exist on video because NBC national refused to let the local Houston affliiate even air the race! So much for "changing the time to get better media coverage), which led to the triumph of 2008 (national televised races in media capitals of the USA: Boston and NYC).
And now we're back here. History shouldn't have to repeat itself, and yet it does. If anyone is paying attention at USATF, climate change is heating everything up, so on a closed asphalt loop course in Florida, the likelihood of the temp being at the high end is now incredibly high, and I was in LA first hand to see how the athletes fared that day. This is such complete bullsh!t by USATF its hard to know where to begin.
They think a lack of media coverage is a problem? how about only sending one marathoner again to the games? How about announcers having to spend half the broadcast explaining to teh audience that, actually, "no one knows who is actually going or how many" even after they finish. Way to make an entire sporting event irrelevant DURING THE EVENT. That will make a ton of new fans along the way, won't it USATF?
We could get lucky, cool weather that day, solid races and some times that let us send three marathoners to the games. But the odds are more that this will be a disaster than a good event.
