WTW: What did we learn from Jakob Ingebrigtsen’s half marathon debut & are we entering phase II of the super spike era?

Most weeks, we try to make the sport more fun to follow by putting the prior week’s action in perspective for you. If you missed our coverage of the 2024 Diamond League final  – the 2024 Memorial Van Damme – catch up now: Day 1 *Day 2

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Talk about this article on our world-famous messageboard: WTW: What to make of Jakob’s half-marathon and have we entered phase II of the super spike era? 

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Jakob Ingebrigtsen wins Diamond League final in 1500, debuts in half marathon two days later

2021 and 2024 Olympic champion Jakob Ingebrigtsen had himself a busy weekend. First, he won his third straight Diamond League title in the 1500 on Friday night in Brussels. Thirty-six hours later, he made his half marathon debut in Copenhagen on Sunday morning, where he ran with the leaders for the first 10k before stopping and then eventually making it to the finish line in 63:13 after walking several times. One consolation: his 10k split of 27:27 was a Norwegian road record (Ingebrigtsen has never run the distance on the track; his previous best of 27:54 on the roads dated from 2019).

Ingebrigtsen død igen efter 15 😅#cphhalf pic.twitter.com/aD9CIYsCHp

— Laurits Jensen (@LauritsJ3) September 15, 2024

So what do we make of it? Some on the messageboard are taking great glee and pointing out that Ingebrigtsen debuted in the half marathon slower than Letesenbet Gidey’s women’s world record of 62:52. Additionally, his PB is slower than 1500 rival Josh Kerr, who ran 61:51 on a downhill course last December.

Stop being so cynical.

We should be celebrating Ingebrigtsen for running with the leaders, going for it, and testing his limits. After a long track season (and two days after running 3:30 for 1500), it’s not easy to go out and run 27:27 for 10k by going 13:54-13:33 and then hold on for nearly seven more miles.

According to the World Athletics scoring tables, 27:27 for 10k is equivalent to 60:05 for the half marathon. Would you rather have had Jakob go out on 60:15 pace, kick it in, and run 59:45? 

In the age of Sifan Hassan, we may be a little spoiled about our expectations when it comes to the range of the greats. But the fact that so many people were speculating whether Ingebrigtsen might somehow break the 57:31 half marathon world record is wild and shows you what a special athlete he is. If it had happened, it would have been one of the greatest feats in men’s distance running history.

But let’s remember how poorly Hassan ran at 1500 this summer. While she was training for the Paris Olympic marathon, she tried a 1500 in July and only ran 4:04. Yes, in the past, she’s run a some pretty great half marathons shortly after the track season. In 2018, two weeks after getting third in the Brussels 1500, she debuted in the half in a European record of 65:15. In 2019, three weeks after winning the world title in the 1500, she ran 65:53 in Valencia.

At the time, those half times were super impressive, but now that the world record is 62:52, is running 65:15 shortly after a 1500 track season really that CRAZY? It’s 3.79% slower than the current women’s world record.

3.79% slower than the current men’s world record is 59:40.8. 

We don’t know for sure that Jakob could have done that in Copenhagen if he had gone out more conservatively. But we at LetsRun.com certainly think he could have.

Moving forward, pundits and Jakob fans should take away the following from Jakob’s 13.1 debut:

1. All the talk about handing Ingebrigtsen the 5,000 and 10,000 (and certainly the 13.1) world records is a bit premature. Yes, considering he’s run 7:17 for 3,000, it’s certainly not a stretch to think he could run 12:35 for 5,000. But the reality is, he’s never run within a second per lap of that. Ingebrigtsen’s pb is 12:48.45 and that’s the only time in his life he’s ever broken 13:00. And in the 2010s, Mo Farah showed that being a DOMINANT championship 5,000 runner and the fastest 5,000 runner are not one in the same. Farah won five straight global 5000 crowns between 2011 and 2016 but never ran faster than 12:53.

   Only twice was Farah ever the world leader in the 5,000. In 2011, he led the world at 12:53.11 and in 2016 he led it at 12:59.29. In the three other years that he won gold, he was the 11th-fastest man in 2012, 16th-fastest in 2013, and 31st-fastest in 2015.

2. All the talk talk of Ingebrigtsen being a dominant 10,000 and half-marathon man based on his double threshold training is even more premature. After Ingebrigtsen failed to medal in the 1500 at the Olympics, some wondered whether he should give up the 1500 to focus on the 5,000 and 10,000 at future championships.
   
   Obviously as fans the answer to that question is no, because the 1500 is way more fun with Ingebrigtsen in it. But the presumption behind the question was that Ingebrigtsen would dominate the 10,000 at future Worlds/Olympics because he has dominated the 5,000 in recent years and told The Times earlier this year that he considers himself a half-marathon man. And while it’s true Ingebrigtsen runs more miles than any 1500 runner (110-120 per week during the base phase), perhaps we should have paid more attention to the lack of long runs in that program — Ingebrigtsen said this weekend that prior to Copenhagen, he had never done a run beyond 20k.
   
   Ingebrigtsen could still become a great 10,000/half marathon runner, but it may take some time. Even Ingebrigtsen himself admitted Sunday’s result was humbling.
   
   “It’s definitely not my thing — not yet at least,” Ingebrigtsen said after the race.

• Copenhagen Half Marathon Discussion Board 
• Jakob – “I won’t try this again for another two years” 
• Was running CHM the right call for Jakob?
• Jakob Ingebrigtsen 63 HM
• Copenhagen’s half has made me appreciate Hassan’s greatness even more.
• Could Jakob have won the 10k in Paris?
• Ingy is done

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Streaks are made to come to an end

One of track & field’s longest active win streaks came to an end at last week’s Diamond League final when Kenya’s Amos Serem upset Morocco’s Soufiane El Bakkali to win the men’s steeplechase. El Bakkali had won 14 straight steeple finals prior to that and hadn’t lost in more than 3 years (September 9, 2021). It got us wondering: who has the longest active win streak in Olympic track & field events (finals only)?

If you’re going by duration, that honor belongs to Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, who has not lost a 400m hurdles race since the 2019 World Championship final on October 4, 2019. But if you are going by most consecutive wins, that honor is shared between Faith Kipyegon (1500/mile) and Mondo Duplantis, who both have 20 straight victories in their main event (we are counting in-stadium events only, so Kipyegon is not penalized for her defeat at the world road mile championships last year).

SML, meanwhile, only has 10 consecutive wins in the 400 hurdles — an average of just 2.5 races per year since her streak began in June 2021. For reference, Femke Bol won 16 straight 400 hurdle races from August 2022 to August 2024 — a streak bookended by defeats to SML at the 2022 Worlds and 2024 Olympics.

Here’s a complete list of athletes who went undefeated in any outdoor track event (minimum 3 wins) and won Olympic gold in 2024:

*Entered in ATHLOS meet in New York on September 26

Kipyegon and Duplantis are now tied for third on the list of longest win streaks of the 2020s, trailing Ryan Crouser (26) and an earlier streak by Duplantis (23).

Longest win streaks in track & field since 2020

If you open the criteria up to include any track event, the longest win current win streak, in both duration and number of wins, belongs to Grant Holloway, who has never lost a 60-meter hurdles prelim or final over 42″ barriers in his entire life. Counting high school races (which feature lower barriers), World Athletics says his win streak is 76 races (including prelims). We have him as a perfect 63-0 over 42″ barriers (31 finals) as a collegian and pro. Holloway’s win streak over 42″ barriers began on January 7, 2017, which means his streak has lasted 7 years, 8 months, and 10 days — and counting.

Of course, Holloway still has a ways to go to break the greatest win streak in track & field history: Edwin Moses‘s 122 straight victories (107 finals) in the 400 hurdles from August 1977 to June 1987 — a span of 9 years, 9 months, and 9 days.

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Who is the king of the 200?

At least one other streak of note was snapped last week as well. 200m Olympic champ Letsile Tebogo ended the year as the world leader in the 200m at 19.46, with Noah Lyles second at 19.53, meaning this is the first year since 2017 that Lyles is not the world leader at 200.

It will be interesting to see who rules the event in 2025. Lyles has won the last three world titles and has the faster pb, 19.31 to 19.46. And at 27, he’s should have a few more years of his prime remaining. Tebogo, meanwhile, has gone from 19.96 to 19.50 to 19.46 in the last three years, and at just 21 years old, he may not be done improving.

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Grant Holloway doesn’t get rewarded for supporting the Diamond League while SML gets rewarded for avoiding it

One person who wasn’t in Brussels last weekend was men’s 110m hurdle Olympic champ Grant Holloway. Holloway raced extensively on the Diamond League circuit this year (five times) and his agent John Regis told LetsRun they asked for his normal Diamond League appearance fee in Brussels. He wasn’t given it, so Holloway decided not to run. Meanwhile, Brussels organizers rolled out the red carpet and paid what is presumed to be a much larger appearance fee to Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone — who had run exactly one Diamond League race since 2019 and has signed up to be the lead face of the rival Grand Slam Track in 2025.

Given that, Brussels rolling out the the carpet for SML may appear to be bizarre strategically, but upon closer examination is par for the course in our sport. The problem with our sport is virtually every entity – whether it’s an athlete, shoe company, agent, or meet – does what is in its own best interest and doesn’t worry about the sport as a whole’s interest (or in this case the Diamond League’s). Brussels’ success or failure is largely based on local things — sponsorship, attendance, etc. Its role in the Diamond League is much less important.

Anyway, we thought it would be interesting to see how often each Olympic track champ competed on the 15-meet Diamond League circuit this year. Here are the results.

The average number of Diamond League competitions for the 19 track gold medallists was 3.58 and the median was 4. If you remove the Americans from the list as four of the eight American gold medallists only competed in one Diamond League meet, the average rises to 4.

MB: Grant Holloway won’t race DL finale due to $$ dispute – “Shame that they doing athletes like that.”

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Are we entering phase II of the super spike era?

On September 16, 2011 – exactly thirteen years ago from Monday – the USA’s Morgan Uceny ran 4:00.06 to win the Diamond League women’s 1500-meter final in Brussels. Why do we bring up this anniversary? Because Uceny’s time was the fastest any woman ran in all of 2011. It remains – and will likely always remain – the most recent time no woman broke 4:00 across an entire season.

Thirteen years is not that long, but in the women’s 1500, it feels as if we are living in a different century. In 2024, 43 women broke 4:00. Forty-three!

The recent progress in the event has been remarkable. From 1996 (the first year for which Tilastopaja keeps annual lists) to 2018 (the year before superspikes were introduced), the most number of women under 4:00 in a single year was 13. That record has been broken in each of the last four years – 14 in 2021, 16 in 2022, 25 in 2023, and 43 in 2024. So the current record of 43 is a 231% improvement from the pre-super shoe era and a 72% improvement from even the previous super-spike best.

The numbers are similar if you look across other similar barriers in middle-distance running. 2024 did not just feature the most women ever under 4:00. It also saw the most women ever under 2:00 in the 800 (78) and the most women ever under 15:00 in the 5000 (69). On the men’s side, 2024 had the most men ever under 1:45 for 800 (67), 3:35 for 1500 (86), and 13:00 for 5000 (32). 

The trend was similar across all events – the number of men who broke 1:45/3:35/13:00 and women who broke 2:00/4:00/15:00 in 2024 is roughly double the pre-super spike record for a single year (a 115% improvement, on average). And in each case, 2024 also saw a significant improvement from even the previous super-spike record (38% on average).

So what’s going on here? We’ve got two theories:

• The Olympic year bump. The Olympics is the biggest meet in our sport, and you qualify for the Olympics by running fast. The auto standards this year were faster than ever, forcing athletes (aided by the super spikes) to raise their games higher than ever before.
  
  
• We are entering phase II of the super spike era. It did not take long for super spikes to have an impact on race times. Some pros began wearing the spikes in 2019, and much of the 2020 season was wiped out due to COVID. But we still saw world records in the men’s 5,000 and 10,000 and women’s 5,000 in 2020 and we saw a spike in fast times in 2021 once the spikes were widely available and athletes were able to run close to a full schedule. Obviously athletes were benefiting from racing in spike technology that was vastly superior to that of previous eras.
  
  But as times were exploding, several elite coaches and athletes we spoke to suggested that runners could see another benefit that could take years to unfold. Their theory: athletes who train in super spikes/shoes would be able to train more frequently at a higher intensity because the extra cushioning would allow their legs to feel better during sessions and recover faster once a session is over.

Was 2024 the year when runners started to harvest the fruits of that superior training? It’s impossible to say for now, but we’ll be watching closely to see if 2024 was the start of phase II of the super spike era or merely the product of an Olympic-year bump.

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Taking a closer look at Marco Arop’s 1000m WR attempt

A week ago, on September 8, Canada’s Olympic silver medallist Marco Arop went for the 1000m world record at the Hanzekovic Memorial in Zagreb, Croatia, a World Athletics Continental Tour Gold meet. He came up well short of Noah Ngeny‘s 2:11.96 world record as he ran 2:13.13.

2:13.13 is nothing to be ashamed of. For starters, the record isn’t an easy one to get — only two men have held the world record in the last 43 years. Seb Coe ran 2:12.18 in 1981, which stood for 18+ years until Ngeny broke it. Earlier this month, Ngeny’s mark celebrated its 25th anniversary.

Additionally, Arop is the 5th-fastest man in history and the fastest man in in the top five that was primarily an 800 man. Even though the 1k is closer in distance to the 800 than the 1500, the 1k list is dominated by men who excelled at the 1500. Seven of the 10 fastest men in history also won a global medal in the 1500, and the top four were all either Olympic or world champion at 1500 (Coe and Makhloufi both earned Olympic medals in the 800 as well, but not gold).

Now despite the fact that the meet in Zagreb had an electronic LED screen helping with the pacing, the actual pacemakers did a poor job as they went out too hard for the first 400. Arop, who went out a little too slow (in part because he got tripped and had to run the first turn in lane 2), never had anyone to draft off of.

Still, you cannot put all of the blame on the pacemakers as there was wavelight and Ngeny set his WR with some crazy splits. World record pace averages out to 26.39 per 200 (52.78 for 400, 1:45.57 for 800). Ngeny, a 1500-meter man, went out in sub-50.

Arop’s 800 split was recorded as 1:43.93 on the television broadcast, but that was incorrect. We’ve rewatched the race three times and don’t think he was any faster than 1:45.5 at 800. Below you can compare the splits for Ngency, Coe, and Arop.

Ngeny’s WR Run

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Most Ridiculous Payday of the Year

The famed (that’s a joke people) Mpumalanga Marathon was held in Mbobmela, South Africa, on Saturday and somehow the race with just 394 marathon finishers offered a 1 million ZAR first prize for both the men and women ($56,643).

And the winners ran slow.  The men’s win went to Lesotho’s Jobo Khatoane, who hadn’t broken 2:20 since 2012, as he won by more than 2 minutes in 2:18:04. The women’s win did go to a good runner as 23-year-old Tadu Teshome Nare of Ethiopia won by more than 7 minutes in 2:37:20. Nare has a 2:17:36 pb from 2022 Valencia.

How could the race be so slow? The race did start at approximately 2,500 feet of altitude but finished at 2,160 feet and that would have a negligible impact. It appears it was hot, with a low of 62 and high of 90 on Saturday.

Talk about this article on our world-famous messageboard: WTW: What to make of Jakob’s half-marathon and have we entered phase II of the super spike era? 

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