Foot Rockets Engage⏱

Lap 34: Sponsored by Xendurance

During my professional career I was fortunate enough to be a sponsored athlete representing Xendurance. The protein powder was already a staple of my diet so this was convenient — it’s important to take clean products that you trust in training. But I always appreciated their willingness to find new creative ways to support the sport and so it was no surprise to me when they reached out to say they are big readers of the newsletter and like the work we are doing here.

Truthfully, when I stopped competing my supplement game lost its consistency. If I wasn’t running 90 mile weeks then why did I need to stay on top of that? But as most of you know, writing The Lap Count isn’t my full-time job. I stay up late on Monday and Tuesday nights to give readers the inside scoop as to what’s happening in the sport. The past few weeks I have started utilizing Xendurance’s Focus product to help me concentrate after a long day of work. I don’t know if you can see any quality improvements in what I am putting out, but my time efficiency is up and my TikTok screen time is down.

Try it yourself: Please use code LAPCOUNT for 20% off at xendurance.com. This is good for one-time orders and is not valid on team subscriptions or Team XND membership.

What in the world? 🌎

1:02:52 — It’s taken a few days for me to process the news of Letesenbet Gidey’s half marathon world record. I think we are all collectively still trying to find ways to digest or at least put into context what happened in Valencia this weekend. But if someone’s capable of debuting with a time like this, it makes sense that it would be Gidey, who’s already the world record holder for the 5.000m (14:06), 10.000m (29:01) and 15k (44:20).

The day before Valencia it was announced that the time of 63:44 that Yalemzerf Yehualaw ran at the Antrim Half Marathon earlier this year would not be ratified — the course had been measured 54m short. (These things happen!) Instead Ruth Chepng'etich’s 64:02 from Istanbul would remain the mark to beat. Although Yehualaw would prove her Istanbul mark was no fluke by going 63:51 in Valencia, Gidey would become the first woman to officially break 63 and 64 minutes for a half.

This result has surely sent a lot of male professional runners into an existential crisis. The half isn’t quite as familiar a distance for many fans so it helps to use the conversion calculators to put this into perspective: it's equivalent to a 2:11 marathon! Does that make it more palatable? Say what you’d like about the shoe technology today and how much that’s worth — Gidey also DESTROYED the field, which included the second fastest time ever. At only 23 years old, this may only be the beginning of what this generational talent is capable of. But considering Gidey “only” won the bronze medal in the Tokyo 10.000m, she might not be alone in churning out this caliber of performance.

On the men’s side, Kenya’s Abel Kipchumba out-kicked Rhonex Kipruto to win in 58:03 for the 6th fastest time in history. Super impressive, but understandably not the headlines

The Lap Count’s World Athletics World Athlete of the Year

There are 20 exceptional athletes up for the Athlete of the Year award, but the winners have got to be Ryan Crouser and Yulimar Rojas. Any other outcome and we riot. There is legitimately nothing more that these two athletes could have done to have had better seasons. Crouser went 14-0 in competition and if he threw under 22m — something only 31 men in history have done — then it was considered a bad toss. Meanwhile, Rojas also went undefeated in the triple jump, minus the one occurrence in Monaco when she had the furthest jump on the day, but the silly Diamond League rules focus on the sudden death final attempt. Both athletes broke the Olympic and World Records, while being consistently dominant. That should be enough.

Runner Ups: Karsten Warholm and Sydney McLaughlin. I’d argue the 400H were the two most memorable races from the Tokyo Olympics.

Interested in supporting athletes? On Friday morning in our premium newsletter we will be publishing a conversation with our first international athlete, Phil Sesemann. You may remember hearing about his 2:12 at the London Marathon — or his training partner, his pup, Kipchoge! 🐶 Sign up to read as this initiative has now raised over $13,300 with all proceeds going towards the elite athletes.

Rotterdammmmm!!! 🇳🇱🇧🇪

You probably remember Bashir Abdi from the Olympic Marathon, where he earned bronze for Belgium, his adopted home since he immigrated as a 13-year-old from Somalia. As he came into the finish line in Sapporo, he was encouraged by fellow Somali-born athlete, Abdi Nageeye of the Netherlands, who wound up taking silver that day. Consider that Abdi’s training partner is none other than Mo Farah — another Somali-born athlete — and it’s not difficult to see a trend. For a country of 15 million people, Somalia has a wealth of talent, but due to three decades of violent conflict, many would-be Olympic medalists sought refuge abroad. The country has never officially won an Olympic medal.

Bashir Abdi experienced some solid success on the track (3:36/7:40/13:06) and was a regular challenger to the Americans who’d post up in Leuven all summer sipping on Stellas and eating from the pasta window. But when he ran his debut of 2:10 at the 2018 Rotterdam Marathon there was no looking back! On Sunday he complimented his hard earned summer hardware with the European record and a victory in 2:03:36. After coming through the half in 1:01:57, he let a 17-second lead open in front of him before closing it down to win by 28-seconds.

On the women’s side it was Kenya’s Stella Barsosio who won in a PB of 2:22:08.

US 25K Championships 🇺🇸

The ‘little bit over a half marathon’ championships were this weekend in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and it was the first USATF title of Makena Morley’s career. Her time of 1:23:17 (5:21/mi) was 43 seconds ahead of Erika Kemp, who traded places with Morley since their head-to-head matchup at the USATF 20K championships in September. I know, I know — it’s funny to have both! But two athletes got paid well and the results flipped, indicating a possible burgeoning rivalry, so in my book both races are worth having.

In the men’s division, it was our very own Biya Simbassa (we claim every athlete who has ever done a Victory Lap as they’re on our payroll!), who won his second USATF title in 1:14:27 (4:47/mi). The race was super tight at the finish and in theory would have made for some incredible viewing. 

Unfortunately, the race was being streamed from a local TV station, and just when it was getting good the following message popped up on screen:

Poor Wood TV. I am too tired to dive into why this sucks and it’s obvious that it sucks. Everyone reading this knows this sucks and the people behind this know this sucks. We don’t need an analogy comparing the sprint finish of a road race to the 9th inning of a baseball game here, but it’s sorta like if….

DOWN GOES THE BEER MILE WR! 🍻

If you’re reading this then the odds are that you’re not only familiar with the beer mile concept, but may have competed in one yourself. The rules are relatively simple: Drink a beer, run a lap. Canada’s Cory Bellemore is the Roger Bannister of the event, except he doesn’t lose the world record a month after breaking down the initial barrier. His time of 4:33 has stood since 2017 and it would require the perfect combination of open-throated chugging prowess and fitness to eclipse that mark. In 2018 he ran 4:24, but was disqualified for leaving 4.5oz of beer in his bottles. The legal surplus is 4oz. Finally at the Beer Mile World Classic in England this past weekend, he closed the tab on it by running a 4:28.1.

Bellemore can obviously chug a beer — he does it in 7 seconds, but there are plenty of frat bros who can do that. It’s being a 3:57 miler that separates him.

Dear FSU XC Course

Of all the things that I have written about over the past seven months, I didn't expect a throwaway joke about the length of Florida State’s XC course to be the most controversial. 

For those who missed it, last week I cracked that because the winner ran so fast on it, if whoever measured the course was my doctor, I’d finally be six feet tall. (For the record, I am 5’11.75“.) Running 22:47 for an 8K is a remarkable time and not something you see very often, hence my quip. 

I did not foresee the ripples that my minimally workshopped bit would send through the Seminoles’ Class of 2011’s text group. Although I was hoping for a two-hour long YouTube video of the course being wheeled to settle the score, I have still reflected on the pushback, and apologize for what I said, no matter how lighthearted it was. 

Moving forward, any discussion of a course's — or track’s — accuracy in The Lap Count will be approached in the same manner as doping accusations: chock full of benefit of the doubt. It’s just not fair to the athletes... even though I think it’s notable that of the dozen kids who slid into my Instagram DMs, not one mentioned what place they finished. If you think times are important in XC, ‘well, that's just, like, your opinion, man…’ and I have mine. 

My non-apology, apology notwithstanding, it doesn’t seem like the city of Tallahassee is going to be welcoming me with open arms any time soon, and that's a shame because it’s probably the most underrated training destination in the country. There’s a reason I spent six weeks there every winter — if you think this course is fast then you should do a tempo run on the St Mark’s bike path. 

And regardless of my earlier stance on the length of the course, watching races at Apalachee is a pleasure. Why there aren’t more European short-loop style courses in the US is beyond me. I feel for the parents who travel to meets only to see their kid disappear in the woods for three miles before reemerging to finish. Those need to be outlawed. 

In conclusion — and not to sound like a Tracksmith commercial — where I come from (STRONG ISLAND, NEW YORK, BABAY!), we pride ourselves not on the course being the fastest, but the toughest. We name our hills. The guy tasked with mowing the course has been taking his union break for the past several years. And there's just a ton of sand... always with the sand. If a mediocre cross country runner like myself isn’t intimidated by a course then I think it could stand to be a bit harder. And if it’s a net downhill, then it should be run in reverse.

If you Floridians or those ascribing to a Florida State of Mind think a cross country course is supposed to be fast, then I have a track to sell you; it’s in Swarthmore, PA, and it’s 393 meters long. All that aside, I do wish to extend a much more sincere apology to loyal subscriber and unquestionable XC stud Conner Mantz. I can only imagine how awesome it must feel to run so fast that people can’t believe it.

How to qualify for the World Championship Marathon

As of today the USA’s lineup in Eugene 2022 would be:

Men - Galen Rupp (8th Olympics), Colin Mickow (6th Chicago), Colin Bennie (7th Boston)

Women - Molly Seidel (3rd Olympics), Emma Bates (2nd Chicago), Sara Hall (3rd Chicago)

USATF finally announced its selection procedure for the World Championship marathon team and honestly, it’s not a terrible system. But it seems a bit counter productive to tell athletes how they’ll be selected after three of the qualifying races have already happened. (And I’m pretty sure the guy who came up with this was named Colin and his goal was to see how many fellow Colins he could get on the team? Pure market manipulation!)

Had athletes known the criteria to be selected then perhaps they may have selected their fall marathon (or race strategy) a bit differently. And this same issue is now playing out for 2024 Olympic Trials hopefuls. Instead of having some sense of direction as to what the goal is, athletes are racing blind wondering if it’ll be enough with no sense of window or time to achieve.

Increasing the standard’s difficulty by an incremental and obtainable amount each cycle is a fantastic way to incentivize the talent pool to keep pushing forward. In 2020 it was 2:19/2:45 and hundreds rose to the occasion to make it happen. Now the athletes are asking how high to jump, so please tell them before they fall a few inches short.

RIP Alex Quinonez 🇪🇨

The 2019 World 200m bronze medalist, Alex Quinonez of Ecuador, was found murdered in the street on Friday. He held a personal best of 19.87 and was the first athlete from his country to ever win a global medal. Quinonez did not compete at the Olympics due to whereabouts violations. Our deepest condolences to his family, friends and community.

Rapid Fire Highlights 🔥

-HOKA has become the title sponsor of the UTMB World Series. Exciting news for big shoes and big ultra fans!

-Roisin Willis has committed to Stanford. The high school star ran 2:00.78 for 800m and qualified for the Olympic Trials semi-final at 16 years old.

-The former heads of UK Athletics, Sara Symington and Jo Coates, announced their abrupt departure from their roles this week. Athletes learned of this news via Twitter, when Symington shared she was heading back to cycling. ‘This had made many people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.’

-Caitlin Adams (32:31) and Isaac Heyne (29:24) won the Burnie Ten in Australia.

-At the Boston Mayor’s Cup XC, Daniel Curts won the men’s 8k race in 24:03 and Annie Rodenfels won the women’s 5k in 16:39. Molly Huddle, who is expecting her baby in April, finished 9th.

-Nike’s Shannon Osika, who has run 4:00.73 and finished 4th at the Olympic Trials, has joined Coach Pete Julian’s Portland-based club.

-The University of Oregon’s track team has been accused of alleged body shaming by six former women athletes. This has led to many serious conversations surrounding the lack of sensitivity and legitimacy to a data-driven approach to weight and body fat percentage. (Article)

-The UK’s Andrew McAslan has been diagnosed with an incurable blood cancer called non-Hodgkin follicular lymphoma. Fundraising efforts to help find a cure have blown through the initial goal of 1 million pounds. (Donate)

-The Players’ Tribune published an article by Gwen Berry about her work as an Activist Athlete. (Article)

-After a year of being nameless, the Alistair and Amy Cragg coached team in North Carolina have a name! Puma Elite Running announced the signings of Patrick Dever (NCAA 10k Champ), Blaise Ferro (13:31/27:55) and John Dressel (13:37/28:03) this week.

Big thank you again to Xendurance for sponsoring this week’s newsletter and so many of our favorite professional athletes.