Friday at 2024 World XC: How to Navigate the “Hay Maze”, Weini Kelati Is Fearless, Jacob Kiplimo Is Ready
The top athletes and your intrepid correspondent experimented with methods for hurdling the hay bales in Belgrade
By Jonathan Gault
BELGRADE, Serbia — After a low-key first day in Serbia, things felt a lot more championship-like here on Friday. The top athletes have hit the course, the fabled East Kilbride AC super fans have arrived, and I even took to the course myself for some partipatory journalism in the “Hay Maze” section (I expect this video to win a Pulitzer, a Peabody, or perhaps both).
With the 2024 World Athletics Cross Country Championship less than 24 hours away, here are five things I learned from the course on Friday.
1) Weini Kelati is not afraid of anybody
Kelati enters World XC in the form of her life after running a 66:25 American record in the half marathon in January and a 30:33 pb for 10,000 meters on March 16 in California. Kelati has focused on recovering since then, doing only one light workout between The TEN and World XC.
Kelati said that it would be great for her to get in the top 15 or even top 10 — the latter feat is something no American woman has managed since Shalane Flanagan in 2011. But Kelati is feeling very confident ahead of the race, in part because she is running more volume in workouts. Though Kelati felt some initial trepidation in bumping her mileage in 2024, she is now wondering why she did not do it sooner.
“When you’ve never done it, it’s just like, oh my god, I don’t know if I can handle it,” Kelati said. “But once [I] did, it was like, oh my goodness, I should have known that I could do this a long time ago. It gives me confidence to do the longer stuff, I feel like I’m more confident in the longer races right now.”
Kelati will face some incredible talents in the women’s race, which is led by 14:05 5k performer Beatrice Chebet and sub-29:00 10k women Agnes Ngetich and Emmaculate Anyango of Kenya. But she said she is not afraid of any of them.
“If it’s a good day, why not, you could beat one of them,” Kelati said. “I have no fear lining up to the race.”
Beating one of Chebet, Ngetich, and Chebet might require an off day from them in addition to a good day for Kelati, but as we saw in the 3,000 at World Indoors where Elle St. Pierre stunned Gudaf Tsegay, even the best athletes can have an off day every once in a while.
2) Jacob Kiplimo says he was “not even in good shape” in 2023 when he won World XC
Kiplimo was asked a few times in the press conference at Belgrade’s City Hall about how his fitness compares to 2023, when he dominated on the last lap at World XC and won by nine seconds. He went on to run 12:41 on the track in June but a hamstring ruled him out of Worlds on the track as well as the World Half. Kiplimo has put the injury behind him and is in good shape but did not say whether that was better than 2023.
What Kiplimo did say was that his shape in 2023 was not as good as it was two years earlier, when he earned Olympic bronze in the 10,000 and set a half marathon world record of 57:31.
“I was not even in good shape for last year…not like 2021,” Kiplimo said.
Kiplimo has won world titles in cross country and in the half marathon but never a senior global title on the track. He clearly has a very bright future in the marathon when he gets there, but Kiplimo said he is in no rush and will decide after the Olympics whether it is something he wants to pursue now or in a few years.
“I need to be Olympic champion, to win a gold in Paris,” Kiplimo said. “My target is to run in Paris. Then after Paris, I will think about [it].”
3) Anthony Rotich surprised himself by running 27:08 for 10,000m despite low-mileage approach
Rotich, the runner-up at USA XC, has been all-in on World XC this winter. He signed up for The TEN in California two weeks ago and ran an incredible 27:08 in his 10,000 debut (#9 all-time by an American) but Rotich said World XC was the focus. He has not run any workouts since The TEN to ensure he is properly recovered for Saturday.
Rotich only missed the Olympic standard by eight seconds, but said the steeplechase remains the focus for him this summer at the Olympic Trials.
“I surprised myself on the time that I ran,” Rotich said. “I just realized that the 10k was a little bit easier than what I thought.”
Rotich was a very low-mileage athlete in college at UTEP, where he won four NCAA titles despite running just 30-40 miles per week. He said that once he moved to Colorado Springs to join the American Distance Project team in 2019, he felt he had to run high mileage because that is what the rest of the group was doing. But Rotich could not stay healthy doing that and dealt with a groin injury for three years.
Rotich finally realized that if he wanted to stay healthy and string together consistent training, he would have to run fewer miles. So he has dropped his mileage in recent years, which has allowed him to be more consistent in his training. That consistency has been reflected in his results, where he has run pbs of 8:13, 13:17, and 27:08 in the last year.
“If I can do between 50-60 miles [per week], that’s okay with me,” Rotich said. “Even 27:08, my mileage is less than 70. Most people don’t believe [me], but it’s actually that.”
4) Some of the big guns have yet to show their cards
Kiplimo, Karoline Bjerkeli Grovdal, Chebet, and Elzan Bibic at City Hall in Belgrade
Reigning women’s champion Beatrice Chebet and 5k/10k world record holder Joshua Cheptegei will be among the favorites for gold in Saturday’s races. But in their leadup races heading into World XC, both gave the impression they left something in reserve to ensure they are peaked for this race.
Chebet was only 4th at the Kenyan trials on March 2, nine seconds back of winner Agnes Ngetich. I asked Chebet whether she had to go all-out to make the team. She provided a respectful, diplomatic response, perhaps to avoid ruffling any feathers within the immensely talented Kenyan team, but my guess is 4th place did not bother her too much in a race where she was never in danger of missing the team (she was 55 seconds ahead of 7th).
“We come with a strong team from Kenya,” Chebet said. “I cannot say it was 100% or 90% or any percentage, but the important thing is to qualify to get a chance to come and represent my country here. What I can say is that tomorrow, may the best athlete win.”
As for Cheptegei, he ran 26:53 at the Laredo 10K, a Spanish road race, on March 16. But his true fitness is likely better than that. I bumped into his agent, Jurrie van der Velden, at the course on Friday. Van der Velden confirmed Cheptegei’s main aim was always to get the 27:00 Olympic standard and they were surprised to find out that Yomif Kejelcha was a late add to the race and chasing the world record (Kejelcha won in 26:37).
5) The “Hay Maze” will be interesting to navigate
As far as recent World XC courses go, Belgrade is fairly straightforward, but there is one part of the course where athletes will face an interesting decision: a set of four hay bales arranged diagonally in close proximity to one another. Organizers are calling it the “Hay Maze.”
The bales are staggered similarly to the tire obstacle at last year’s World XC in that you must weave in and out if you don’t want to hurdle them. In Australia, it did not make much sense to hurdle the tires because they were wide and on an uphill portion of the course. But in Belgrade, hurdling may actually be the wise decision because you lose a lot of momentum weaving in and out.
I took a video on the course this morning trying all the different methods of navigating this section. Check it out to see what I learned and/or mock my hurdle form:
For a runner in the race on Saturday, the best approach may be to hurdle the first barrier and then veer to the right, or to simply hurdle both hay bales. They are around two feet high (women’s steeple barriers are 2 feet, 6 inches) — a rhythm breaker, but short enough that almost every runner should be able to get over them.
The key will be to stay adaptable and keep an eye on what others in the pack around you are doing. The 10k senior course consists of five 2k loops, so by the final few laps, the pack will be spread out enough for athletes to do what they feel is best. But in the early going, the field could be dense and chaotic. Even an athlete planning on weaving may have no choice but to hurdle to avoid a collision.
During the course tour on Friday, most athletes seemed to be favoring the hurdle technique.
How to handle the hay bales at World XC?
A few different approaches during the course run-through but most athletes favoring hurdling at full speed.
We’ll see what happens if they’re part of a 100-person pack tomorrow… pic.twitter.com/eTbB4S1uYZ
— Jonathan Gault (@jgault13) March 29, 2024
I also spoke to Team USA’s Allie Ostrander and Team GB’s Adam Fogg about their plans to attack the Hay Maze, among other things:
Want a video preview of World XC? Watch our live show from Serbia below.
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