I am Athlete of the Year?⏱

Lap 145: Sponsored by On

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We all know it’s harder to get out for a run in the cold, dark days of winter than at other times of the year. But if you can escape the duvet and resist the comfort of the couch, it’s always worth it.

There’s a bigger sense of satisfaction after a winter run than after a workout in kinder conditions. It just always feels worth it. And if you’re training for a spring marathon or dedicated to a regular routine, then investing in winter running will pay off big time when the days finally get longer.

Katelyn Tuohy turns professional ✍️

Katelyn Tuohy signed on the three solid lines and is now officially an Adidas athlete. No longer will the German sneaker giant be limited to the use of just her name, image, and likeness – they also get… her name, image, and likeness!

This did not come as a huge surprise because although Tuohy does have some eligibility left on the track, she finishes up her undergraduate degree this week. Why take the GRE if you don’t have to?

In all likelihood there was an earlier deal she could have taken before setting foot in Raleigh, following three straight NXN titles. But one month before that final title her senior year, Mary Cain published the New York Times op-ed, “I Was the Fastest Girl in America, Until I Joined Nike.” As two women both from the part of New York that get frustrated when city folk refer to them being from upstate, the parallels were easy to draw.

And so Katelyn went to North Carolina State to run for Coach Henes, where she became one of the most decorated distance runners in NCAA history, and surely could have gone pro any number of times. 

But while a member of the Wolfpack, Tuohy also became ingrained in a positive team culture. There were certainly some bumps along the way, but that’s par for the course for anyone who has experienced any level of success for more than a few years. But by keeping a small circle and by enjoying balance in life beyond just running, Tuohy was still afforded the opportunity to eventually turn professional, except now she’ll be more fully prepared for it.

Fans become deeply invested in prodigies, so with early success comes a burden of expectations that would never exist for a 24-year-old who has a breakout season. There’s this strange attachment that comes from having watched someone grow up, à la The Truman Show. But at some point, we have to let Jim Carey step outside of the dome and trust that he’s prepared for what’s on the other side. And even if they never find Fiji (or make a global team) then hopefully there were at least along the way there were some… I don’t know… memorable days spent tossing the frisbee and reading a book on the ol’ campus quad.

Foot Locker is BACK 🏁

You can put lipstick on a pig and call it whatever you want, but when there’s a high school cross country meet at Balboa Park in early December then that’s always gonna be called the Foot Locker National Championship! Now with the new sponsorship of HOKA behind the event, and a slightly modified name – Foot Locker Presented by HOKA – the 40 best individual boys and girls came together for the time-honored tradition of their ancestors of going out too fast and seeing who could hold on best.

With experience on his side, having finished 8th last year, senior Drew Griffith knew the deal and waited until the top of the final hill with a half mile left to take over. It was a good day to be from Pennsylvania on Saturday: the Eagles hadn’t yet lost to the Cowboys and the state went 1-2 with Ryan Pajak close behind Griffith. They’ll both be heading to Notre Dame next year. (And before anyone writes me a letter, I know they are both from the suburbs of Pittsburgh and therefore probably Steelers fans, but then my joke doesn’t work.)

The advantage of there being two national championships is that you can learn from your mistakes at the first one, and that’s exactly what Texas sophomore Elizabeth Leechman did. Having fallen back from an early lead at NXN and fading to 15th, she hung off the pace to start, then triumphed in the second half.

Notably, both Leechman and Addy Ritzenhein are sophomores and national champions, hopefully setting the stage for years of rivalry to follow. In the head-to-head, Ritzenhein gets the nod as she won straight up in Portland. But in 2048 when they’re both on their fifth Olympic team together, I look forward to the #ThrowbackThursday picture of whatever social media/AI/VR/cryptocurrency platform they are using to remember how it all began.

For New Yorkers who know that time in cross country is not important, but a speed rating is, the top performances did come from Foot Locker (okay, okay… Foot Locker Presented by HOKA). However, the depth at NXN was much greater, though that is to be expected in a field size of 241 vs. 40.

Since I never made either in high school, I have no bias here. The team element at Nike is special and in theory what cross country is all about. Though the exclusivity of such a small field does feel very special at Foot Locker. The free stream is nice too. Depending on how you look at it, from the perspective of someone who is there vs. sitting on a keyboard at home yelling about the lack of toughness in kids today, the weather is a toss-up.

Just like the coaches of the kids who are racing, there is something about Foot Locker that makes me nostalgic about my childhood. How can you not be romantic about small chaotic loops running around trees and following orange cones alongside traffic? That’s high school cross country, baby!

Euro XC — Slop ‘em up! 💩

The European Cross Country Championships were held in Brussels last weekend, and if you have ever watched some Belgian cycling races then the mud-fest is to be expected. Even though I am a proud American who wakes up his wife every morning by loudly reciting the pledge of allegiance(“four witches stand!”), a part of me rages with jealousy at the existence of this meet and our lack of an equivalent.

Firstly, let’s all agree that we are not going to pretend PanAms or NACAC as an area championship can compare, or even in our wildest dreams have the potential to become a Western version. And without that annual draw to represent our great nation, professionals grow more distant from this side of the sport where many of us began. World XC could be that, but tromping through the muck at the end of March does not have the same appeal in the context of the track season.

This year’s US Cross Country Championships will be held in January, 10 weeks before Worlds. Not exactly ideal for team selection or anyone running indoor track. To spice things up I think we need to integrate some sort of battle between regions of the US. There is a lot of talk about “Flagstaff vs. Everybody,” or at least “Flagstaff vs. Boulder.” This team element would gain more traction as there are running communities across the country with more loyalty to their hometown than for what shoes they wear.

Alternatively, I have always enjoyed the way Ireland fields their teams for Gaelic sports, based on the county where you grew up (for the most part). California kids are good at running in high school, but it’d be a fun test to see who’s long-term development has been most prosperous. It’s gotta be Michigan for the men, right? New York or Florida for the women?

Wait, this section was supposed to be about the European Championships and I haven’t said anything about that yet. Alright, here are the winners and results:

U20 Women: Innes Fitzgerald (GBR) – The 17-year-old received a lot of attention last year when she passed on the opportunity to compete at the World XC Champs because of the length of travel to Australia. Not because she didn’t have enough Netflix shows to binge-watch, but because of the carbon emissions and the impact flying has on the environment. She won the race by 19 seconds and is quite talented, so hopefully there is a good train line to get her to Belgrade so we can see how she matches up on the world stage.

U20 Men: Axel Vang Christensen (Denmark) – Incredibly, a guy who ran 8:29 for the steeplechase at 17 was considered the underdog coming into this race. Yet with Niels Laros having run 3:31 for 1500m and 3:48 in the mile last year, can you blame those of us who gave him the favorable odds coming in? Well, mud is the great equalizer! And in a few months, we’ll probably look back when Axel runs 13:05 and be like, “oh that wasn’t an upset.”

U23 Women: Megan Keith (GBR) – The most dominant performance of the meet, she won the race by an incredible 83 seconds. And of course, she is Scottish! With this victory on top of her U20 title, there is only one more infinity stone needed to be added to the European gauntlet.

U23 Men: Will Barnicoat (GBR) – This was a battle to the line with both Barnicoat and Valentin Bresc being given the same official time. Barnicoat also won the U20 title last year in equally dramatic fashion. Get this guy some NCAA eligibility! I can think of at least five schools in the state of Oklahoma that would be a perfect fit.

SR Women: Karoline Bjerkeli Grøvdal (Norway) – The winningest athlete in European Cross Country history! With this being fourth senior gold and her tenth medal overall, I have become familiar with the keyboard shortcut for writing “ø” on my laptop. (Also, the song “Final Song” by MØ is the de facto anthem from my 2017 Copenhagen-based bachelor party and sometimes when I am on the subway I will play it and think about when life was different.) Grøvdal is one of my favorite athletes to root for because of her longevity and range across all distances and surfaces.

SR Men: Yann Schrub (France) – The downside of not having Jakob Ingebrigtsen healthy and racing is that we didn’t get to watch Jakob, but the upside is that as a result, we did get to see an actual race. I have been trying to figure out why Schrub often puts a chicken hat on his head after races, which is certainly one of the more creative signature moves. But it’s not all fun and games for Schrub who is in his seventh year studying medicine.

Mixed Relay: France – The French and Dutch teams were hawking down the anchor leg for the Great Britain team, as the order of men and women was not set in stone ahead of time. This is how the mixed-gender 4×400 was originally formatted and while I don’t care for the event, I thought it created plenty of drama!

CJ Albertson gets the B standard ✅

The legend of CJ Albertson grows. One week after running 2:11:09 at the California International Marathon, the madman scooted down to Mexico to run 2:11:08 at the Baja California Marathon. Because the first effort was not run on a World Athletics-certified course – CIM’s is point-to-point and net downhill… not that there’s anything wrong with that! – it did not check the sub-2:11:30 box that would make him Olympic eligible should he wind up in the top three at the Trials. He knew this going in.

No one’s body recovers quite like CJ’s and despite being seen sprinting around Balboa Park the day before at Foot Locker, he was fresh enough. (I need to know if this is the sort of training plan he writes for his athletes.) Now he can step on the line in Orlando and not worry about the pace or weather.

Most Valuable Player Players 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦

The Athlete of the Year Award was announced at World Athletics’ James Bond Cosplay Gala and it was a huge victory for boomers who enjoy complaining about how “these days, every kid gets a trophy!” For the first time since 1988, there was not a single winner named on the men’s and women’s side. Instead the presentation was best described by sources in Monaco as the scene in Mean Girls where Lindsay Lohan breaks the homecoming crown into a million pieces and throws it into the crowd, proclaiming that we are all winners!

Rather than two, there were six winners announced across the track, field, and road events. Predictably, the winners were Noah Lyles, Mondo Duplantis, Kelvin Kiptum, Faith Kipyegon, Yulimar Rojas, and Tigist Assefa. How can we possibly pit so many great athletes up against one another and choose just one?

Simple: vote.

Finally, there’s an election with too many good choices! And this is how we squander it. If you’re like me and find this cop out disappointing, then take solace in the fact that the “AGH, PARTICIPATION TROPHIES” opinion is not the hot take that you might believe it to be. Even the athletes have some thoughts on the subject! These are the highest performing athletes in the world – they can handle a subjective loss.

It’s just a made up award, so let’s not get too fussed about it. But why not just create a rubric for judgment and stick to it? In 2023, everyone is breaking a world record, so is that enough? Is it about dominance? Or should we be valuing versatility?

There is no reason to have an event- or gender-based split for this award. It’s not like Kelvin Kiptum is competing against Mondo Duplantis in any way, so how is pitting them against one another any different than including Yulimar Rojas? If there could only be one athlete of the year then it would be Faith Kipyegon: and she shouldn’t have to share that honor.

In-Season Tournaments… In-Season Tournaments for All! 🏆

(This section is written by my editor and big basketball guy, Paul Snyder.)

This is hardly an original idea on my end – Canadian Olympian Aaron Brown tweeted (or is it X’d?) this suggestion as I’m sure did many others – but adjusting the Diamond League season to more closely resemble the NBA’s In-Season Tournament is a GOOD IDEA. So let’s unpack it.

First, some background. The NBA had a problem that will likely sound familiar to track fans: viewers and even athletes didn’t care about the regular season. 

With 82 regular season games, good teams could afford to take some nights easy by resting star players without it meaningfully impacting playoff seeding. As the season wore on, teams would ramp up the intensity, so that by the first round of the playoffs, they were firing on all cylinders. This resulted in engaging, high-quality basketball come late spring, preceded by – pardon the expression – some real horseshit hoops during the winter months.

The shrewd business minds behind the NBA knew this was a problem, so they did what shrewd business minds do: introduce a stakes-raising gimmick designed to prod the players into caring about a game on a Tuesday night in November, and in turn give the fans a reason to tune in. 

And despite the obnoxiously-painted floors, the borderline inscrutable manner in which tournament games were also regular season ones, games being played in Las Vegas, and meager-by-NBA-salary-standards prize money, those crazy bastards made it work. 

We enjoyed playoff-caliber basketball before Christmas. 

The league’s most recognizable superstar, LeBron James, was awarded the inaugural In-Season Tournament MVP trophy as he guided his Lakers squad to the inaugural In-Season Tournament title, and a fun, upstart Indiana Pacers team emerged from basketball purgatory to announce its arrival as a longshot NBA title threat. There were memorable game-winning buzzer-beaters, hard-fought back-and-forth battles between established contenders and rising stars, and the sort of fights that only unfold when something real is on the line.

So what can track learn from this?

For starters, relying on one short championship season to drum up interest among fans is a losing proposition. We do a horrendous job of giving casual fans a reason to stay plugged into the sport between Olympic and World Championship cycles. The Diamond League is sitting there, almost entirely separate from the events that most of the world associates with track & field. Let’s shift it up in the calendar so that the Diamond League – and especially the DL Championship – serves as our In-Season Tournament: the precursor to the even bigger title fight.

Another related note, is that from a spectator standpoint, riveting competition doesn’t necessarily require the competitors to be at their absolute best. The Lakers fought the hardest of any team in the NBA in November and December, but as of right now, there are five teams Vegas oddsmakers think have a better shot at winning this year’s (real/normal) NBA championship than the Lakers. Track athletes tend to be precious about when they compete, and rarely do so if they aren’t in top form – we need to give them a reason to race/jump/throw/vault when they’re still dialing things in. The product on display will still be entertaining.

And the third, is that money talks. Each Laker was awarded a $500,000 prize for winning the tournament. That’s not a lot by American pro basketball standards, but it was enough of a carrot to get players fired up. I’d imagine a significantly smaller prize purse would still be mighty enticing to a lot of the world’s best track athletes. Then there’s the calculation some will inevitably make: “I’m going to go for the money now, knowing the big dogs are going for Olympic gold later.” By presenting athletes with a few titles to shoot for of various levels of prestige, some will take a personally cynical approach, but ultimately that means higher level of competition the entire season, and a chance for athletes outside of the usual suspects (up-and-comers, aging greats, etc.) to enjoy a little limelight.

Rapid Fire Highlights 🔥

• Olivia Markezich joined the CITIUS MAG podcast this week to discuss her third-place finish at NCAAs, running the second-fastest 3000m in collegiate history, and why her dad made her visit Notre Dame in January.

• Why are all of these pro runners hanging out in Waikiki every December? Well, ask Yared Nuguse, the winner of the Kalakaua Merrie Mile, as he ran 3:56.58 and was a few decimals off from the world record. The 30-second head start before the men was not enough for Nikki Hiltz to hold the flying goose off, as they ran 4:28.07.

• NCAA 800m champion Michaela Rose of LSU has signed an NIL deal with Adidas. Don’t tell Nike.

• HOKA announced some NIL deals of its own, signing past Foot Locker champions Natalie Cook, Kole Mathison, and Karrie Baloga.

• And speaking of Karrie Baloga, she’s transferring from Colorado after one season to Northern Arizona. She will be joined by Alyson Churchill, coming from Florida State for graduate school. If there were any doubts that the Lumberjacks would be back in the title hunt next year, this about answers them!

• The Club Cross Country Championships afterparty was preceded by the race itself in Tallahassee. Amanda Vestri and Tai Diner won the open races that were 100% a 6K and 10K. (Results)

• Fionnuala McCormack qualified for her fifth Olympics at the Valencia Marathon last weekend, and then bounced back to finish fourth at the European Cross Country Championships.

• Josh Kerr was snubbed from the BBC Sports Personality of the Year finalist list. Katarina Johnson-Thompson is the lone hope for track and field now!

• The Chicago Marathon saw a record of more than 120,000 applications for next year’s race. And the Valencia Marathon’s registration had an online queue that left many thousands of runners waiting for hours. The people want to go fast and the investment in pros is paying dividends!