New York State of Mind ⏱️

Sponsored by Wahoo

Lap 192: Sponsored by Wahoo

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Compiled by David Melly, Paul Snyder, Jasmine Fehr, and Audrey Allen.

Will NYC Produce 2024’s Top Marathoner? 🗽

2023 NYC Marathon champions Hellen Obiri and Tamirat Tola. (Photos by Kevin Morris / @kevmofoto)

The New York City Marathon is just around the corner, and once again, the largest road race in the United States is stacked with top level talent. NYC also marks the conclusion of the Abbott World Marathon Major circuit, meaning that, barring something totally crazy happening in December, Sunday’s race will be the last major data point in determining the best marathoners in the world in 2024.

Unlike, well, most other track and field events, Olympic gold does not necessarily reign supreme over all other accomplishments in the marathon. Winning two majors in a calendar year is a far bigger payday and – because of the concentration of talent in Kenya and Ethiopia and the capping of championships at three entrants per country – likely means you took down tougher competition. When it comes to determining the world #1, there’s no set formula, but basically an athlete should be evaluated based on winning really big races, how fast they ran, and who they beat along the way.

So far this year, no one has won multiple WMM (Abbott does consider the Olympics part of the major series), but two entrants on the start list have the potential to change that. They also happen to be the defending NYC champions: Hellen Obiri and Tamirat Tola. Since winning last year, Obiri defended her Boston title in the spring then picked up her third career Olympic medal with a bronze in Paris. Tola has had a more mixed bag of a year, dropping out of London in April before bouncing back to win Olympic gold.

If Obiri picks up her second win in Central Park this weekend, she’s gotta be the top dog of 2024, right? Boston and NYC champ, plus an Olympic medal? That’s hard to top. But here’s the thing – Obiri is only the 72nd fastest marathoner of the year, and her 2:22:37 from Boston puts her a whopping 12+ minutes behind Ruth Chepngetich’s record-setting run in Chicago. That’s an apples-to-oranges comparison as Boston is a far tougher course (and not even record eligible), but the speed-goggles crew might chafe at the notion that one of the greatest athletic performances in the history of sport doesn’t merit a #1 spot. The main argument against Chepngetich is that her other 2024 marathon didn’t go nearly as well – she only finished 9th in London.

Tola is probably a more cut-and-dry argument because no one else has had a particularly standout year on the men’s side. The world leader is Benson Kipruto, who won Tokyo in 2:02:16 and came back later in the summer to finish third in Paris. But Tola beat him head-to-head in that race, and if they only have one WMM win apiece, tie’s gotta go to the Olympic champ. London winner Alexander Munyao cratered in that race, finishing 21st, and silver medalist Bashir Abdi is toeing the line in NYC but has no other results in 2024. The other two names worth mentioning are John Korir (2:02:44 win in Chicago plus 4th in Boston) and Sisay Lemma, the Boston champ who hasn’t run a fall marathon yet but is likely headed to Valencia, where he’s the reigning champ.

So if Obiri wins in NYC, she’s definitively the top runner of 2024 in our book. If she finishes on the podium but not first, it’s a tougher call, and probably Chepngetich’s brain-breaking run puts her over the edge. If Obiri finishes lower than third, it’s pretty definitively Chepgnetich’s year. On the men’s side, a second Tola win probably puts him atop our informal rankings, but Kipruto fans may want to give him the edge based on time (Tola is definitely not running 2:02 in an unpaced, hilly race). If Abdi flips the script on Tola, it’s hard to say who gets the edge, but if Tola finishes lower than second in that scenario it’s Abdi. And even if Tola gets his second big win of the year, if Lemma manages to run something crazy en route to defending his title in Valencia, he’s part of the conversation as well.

One of the most fun things about comparing the incomparable is it turns into a bit of a Rorschach test for what you, the observer, really care about in the sport of track and field. Is beating the absolute pulp out of a field weightier than winning by a step or two? Does slapping on your supershoes and sucking down a space gel take some of the shine off fast times, even if you run really, really fast? Would you rather win an Olympic medal or Boston?

Winning the New York City Marathon could be a career-defining performance for most athletes, but appreciating the Hellen Obiris and Tamirat Tolas of the world means thinking big picture about what a single win means in the broader context of a long and legendary career. When we start to think about GOAT debates both within and across sports, one day can be transformative but not definitive. And understanding what a win really means makes following the action all the more exciting for the fans.

So whether it’s Obiri, Tola, or someone else entirely who steals the spotlight in New York this weekend, embrace the fun of a good ol’ fashioned sports debate and decide for yourself what really makes someone Number One.

Last-Minute Halloween Costumes For The Track And Field Superfan 🎃

Fans of “the Goose” at the U.S. Olympic Trials. (Photo by Justin Britton / @justinbritton)

We’ve all been there: you’re so focused on your conference championships-slash-NYC Marathon buildup that you totally forgot this Thursday is Halloween. And sure, you’re a little too old to be trick-or-treating, but you still want to get in the spirit of the holiday and show off your knowledge of the best niche track and field moments of the year. Plenty of people are going to go as that one viral French pole vaulter, but you’re a hardcore fan: you’d rather your Halloween costume show off your in-depth knowledge of your favorite sport while also dazzling friends and strangers alike with its inventiveness.

But it’s October 30th and you’re out of ideas. That’s where we come in, with a helpful list of last-minute costume ideas that will give you a perfect conversation starter at your next Halloweekend party. And if you’re single and a total stranger recognizes any of these costumes without an explanation, they might be your soulmate.

Without further ado, here are the Lap Count’s best Halloween costumes of 2024:

Yared the Goose: This is an obvious one, but it’ll be a hit nevertheless. All you need is a pair of Ons, a fake bronze medal, and the swan part of your Bjork costume from 2001. If you really go all-out, you might even get a shoutout on the Coffee Club podcast.

Unretired Kara Winger: “Zombie” is hardly the most original costume idea out there, but throw on a Team USA kit and pick up a javelin (maybe a cardboard one for safety’s sake), and boom: you’re Zombie Kara Winger, who came back from the dead athletic retirement to compete in her fifth Olympic Trials earlier this year.

Mondo DuPLANTis: Think Uma Thurman as Poison Ivy, plus a Swedish flag and a floppy haircut. And depending on your state laws, you could also interpret “DuPLANTis” liberally and give your costume a more cannabis-influenced flavor.

Graham Blanks Space: Now this is a couple’s costume that isn’t exclusively track-related, but it works. One person dresses as NCAA champion and Paris Olympian Graham Blanks (Harvard track kit and New Balance spikes); the other puts on a blonde wig and blue eyeshadow and goes as 1989-era Taylor Swift.

Challengers, but make it track: Another couples costume for the film enthusiast track fans. A few sharp haircuts, Sharpied-on tattoos, and Oakley sunglasses, and a Jakob Ingebrigtsen x Josh Kerr star-crossed lovers costume isn’t hard to throw together. To give it a 2024 spin, dress up in tennis whites and carry rackets as well and you’re Jakob and Josh if they starred in Challengers. Bonus points if a third person dresses up as Zendaya.

Femke Bowl: Speaking of crossover with other sports, if you have plenty of orange clothing and can master a Mickey Mouse impression with a Dutch accent, all you need is a shiny 15-pound ball and rental shoes to dress as Dutch hurdles superstar Femke “Bowl.” She rarely knocks down a hurdle but always knocks down the pins!

If anyone does actually take us up on these challenges, please tag us on social media. And if you have an incredible track-themed Halloween costume we didn’t think of, let us know and you just might find yourself with a shoutout in next week’s newsletter.

Sponsored by HOKA

The CITIUS Cafe presented by HOKA is coming to New York City for marathon weekend!

After tremendous success in Orlando and Boston, we’re back with more events to celebrate the best day in the best city. In addition to our live podcasts and interviews, we’ll be collaborating on group runs and events throughout the weekend. You can find the details and full list of events here. Our on-site CITIUS crew of Chris Chavez, Aisha Praught-Leer, Eric Jenkins, and Mac Fleet will be hosting an alternate watchalong on marathon morning for live reactions, insights, and analysis. The details on CITIUS MAG’s coverage can be found here.

If you’ll be in NYC, catch us at the HOKA 5th Avenue Flagship store at 579 5th Ave, New York, NY 10017 – starting on Thursday, Oct. 31st.

Bring Track And Field To The Field! 🏈

Kalen Walker after running a 40-yard dash in 4.15 seconds during halftime at a Hawkeye football game. (Courtesy @IowaXC_TF on X)

We try to come up with our own hot takes here at the Lap Count, but every once in a while we see a post containing such a good, and seemingly actionable suggestion, that we can’t help but jump on someone else’s bandwagon.

Victoria Jackson, sports historian, Arizona State University associate professor, and NCAA 10,000m champion to boot, tweeted the following:

Yeah. Hell yeah. This is a great suggestion, and it presents a fun problem to solve: what’s the best way to package the entire sport of track and field into a less-than-20-minute window, at a likely track-less facility, with a large but uninformed and possibly drunken audience?

To start, this is ultimately a halftime show. Marching bands and dance teams are cool, but they don’t let you extend the biggest team rivalries beyond the game itself. Award one point per team, per event-level win, per gender. The overall winner is whichever squad earns the most points. All of a sudden, the third-best jumper on the fifth best team in the SEC has tens of thousands of fans screaming their name.

The throws are the easiest to plop down in the middle of a football field – we’ll go with the shot put, since it takes up the least space, and is a very straightforward display of strength and technique. Bonus points if we can get an interstitial video up on the Jumbotron of some of the football team’s linemen attempting to throw the shot for the first time, just to showcase how impressive throwers are, even compared to other massively strong athletes.

The jumps are a bit trickier. We need to keep things moving along quickly and we need to go with an event that wows visually even if the marks aren’t top-tier (remember, there aren’t runways in most of these stadiums). Enter: the pole vault showdown. Each team trots out four vaulters: two men, two women. The two bars are set at easily clearable heights to start. Each athlete gets one attempt to go over. For every clearance, a team earns one check mark. This is round one. The bar is raised a bit for round two and maybe one athlete fails to clear it on their sole attempt – they are not eliminated but they don’t earn a point. The third and final height is meant to be a challenge for these athletes. Tally up the check mark at the end, and you get your winning teams for this event. Put the bar and pads near the uprights, so fans can appreciate that the vaulters are launching themselves way over the height of the crossbar.

For the distance event, ending in the stadium is a nice touch, and having the rest of the race contained to a filmable course is key, so the proceedings can be displayed on the Jumbotron while the other events are taking place. The distance doesn’t really matter. For a 20-minute block, a 5K feels too long. Choosing a basically random distance (2.3K, or whatever a loop of some adjacent parking lot is) takes the emphasis off time and since nobody knows how to race a distance they’ve never raced before, increases the odds of a crowd-pleasing sprint finish. Score it like a cross country meet, with one overall team point on the line for men and one for women.

For sprints, why not go big and do a mixed gender shuttle relay the entire length of the field? The ol’ 4 x 100-yard dash. This obviously needs to be the final event, so let’s run this very shortly after the distance-y event concludes. It’ll take 40 seconds or so, so maybe we even have the football teams looming in the tunnels, ready to take the field again, watching on the Jumbotron as their athletics department peers go to battle and either incite the roar of the crowd further, or dampen things entirely for the home team. That’s some top-tier sports entertainment, folks.

While yes, purists might view this concept as “reducing the beautiful sport of track and field to a glorified sideshow,” you really should view it as “promoting the sport in an interesting way to a passionate new audience.” And remember – football games famously take place in the fall, when there’s not exactly a lot of track and field on the calendar. Swap out one testing day on the schedule for the sprinters, jumpers, and throwers for an exhibition, and all of a sudden the doldrums of non-cross-country fall training just got a lot spicier. Finish the day by handing out copies of the home team’s indoor track and field schedule, and even if a few hundred of those fans remember to pick up a ticket or two to a track meet during a basketball bye week, the field house will be a lot more crowded come January.

One Last Pre-Conference Cross Country Confab 🍂

Stanford’s men’s cross country team at this year’s Nuttycombe Invite. (Courtesy Stanford Athletics)

If you thought we were done talking about NCAA XC conference weekend, you thought wrong. When the Halloween scares turn into pre-race jitters and the clock strikes midnight on Friday, November 1st, it’s officially the month we’ve all been waiting for in collegiate cross country. So here’s The Lap Count fan guide for what to watch out for this weekend:

Conference newbies could make a splash: We could be watching history in the making given the unprecedented shuffle of NCAA conferences heading into this postseason. Because it’s early in the year, here’s one new way to put cross country on the map: if a newcomer (individual or team) to the Big Ten, Big 12, ACC or SEC claims the conference title, they could become the first champion in that league for their school’s history, across all sports.

The biggest hopefuls to rewrite the collegiate history books are the Washington women and the Stanford men. While they might be new to the conference it sure wouldn’t be an upset if the No. 2 Dawgs didn’t pull this one off; it’d actually be a bigger shock if they fell to No. 11 Wisconsin or No. 17 Oregon. The No. 5 ranked Cardinal men might have to work a little harder – and earlier, as they face a 6:30am P.T. start time in North Carolina – with the No. 7 Wake Forest and No. 10 Notre Dame hot on their heels.

A bunch of teams go streaking: Wisconsin have some new company as they go for their seventh straight Big Ten title, but if they can pull it off, it would be the third time they’ve had a streak of at least seven, after an eight-peat from 1985-1992 and a 14-peat from 1999-2012. Now that’s quite the campaign! The BYU women are also looking to extend their streak to lucky number 7, except theirs transcends conferences as they already pocketed five from the WCC and one from their first season in the Big 12.

Another legacy to keep an eye on is the NC State women, who are going for their ninth straight ACC title and are spiking up Friday with an uphill battle against against No. 5 Notre Dame. The safest bet might be the NAU women going for their sixth-straight Big Sky title, and No. 9 Georgetown hoping for a five-peat of the Big East title, who may get a real fight this year from No. 12 Providence.

Teams with the most to gain from a rebound: Conference weekend can provide an opportunity for teams who fell short of expectations during the regular season to build some much-needed momentum as they head into regionals. While the Alabama women are the favorite for the SEC title, both Florida and Tennessee will be looking to make a statement in a potential upset bid. Both the Gators and the Vols were inside the Top 10 after Week 1, but less-than-ideal showings at Pre-Nats have caused the Gators to drop to No. 14 and pushed Tennessee outside of the rankings in the most recent poll. NC State surprisingly heads to the ACC Championship race as an underdog, having dropped from No. 1 to No. 10 over the course of October, and Jerry Schumacher’s Oregon squad heads to their first Big Ten title race ranked 17th in the nation after polling at 4th after Week 1.

Movement on the men’s side has been slightly less dramatic this year, but Notre Dame (No. 5 in Week 3, No. 10 in Week 4) and North Carolina (No. 6 in Week 1, No. 13 in Week 4) will be doing everything in their power to reverse their tumble while also putting a stop to Stanford’s rise.

The hunt for individual titles: Just because you aren’t P4 doesn’t mean you can’t be A1, and that’s the case for some of the individual races over in the Ivy League and the Big East. NCAA reigning champion Graham Blanks’s lone 8K showing this season was a runner-up finish at Pre-Nats, and he’ll be looking to get his first win of a relatively light season, becoming a back-to-back Heps champ for Harvard in the process. Villanova’s Sadie Sigfstead made her name known early in the season with a win at Nuttycombe, and she’ll be looking to reclaim that top contender status after she was only the sixth Big East finisher at the Princeton Fall Classic two weeks ago. At the front of that pack were Providence’s Kimberly May and Georgetown’s Chloe Scrimgeour, who are set for a speedy rematch following their 19:16 and 19:23 6K finishes, respectively.

Maybe UNC’s Parker Wolfe and Wake Forest’s Rocky Hansen are following the “early season opener to conference championship” pipeline as they both only have one 8K this season under their belts with a 1-2 finish at Nuttycombe, and this will be another rematch to watch over at the ACC Championships. 

On the women’s side, there are two more stellar clashes to watch. Rebounding from a loss at Pre-Nats, Florida’s Hilda Olemomoi will be squaring off against her undefeated former teammate in Alabama’s Doris Lemngole for the SEC title. In Big 12 country, West Virginia’s Ceili McCabe will be looking for her hat trick of conference titles after wins in ‘21 and ‘22, but Texas Tech’s Juliet Cherubet stands in her way after an impressive 18:37 at Arturo Barrios. And that’s not even mentioning the vaunted BYU women’s squad led by Lexy Halladay-Lowry…

Whether it’s a dominant win or a sprint finish, conference weekend is the last true check of championship potential before the major players try to coast through Regionals doing the bare minimum. And before you know it, the Big Dance will be here.

An Inside Look At Utah Cross Country’s Rise To The Top: Q&A With Head Coach Kyle Kepler 🎙️

Kyle Kepler, head coach of Utah’s cross country and track teams, joined Jasmine Fehr for this week’s coach spotlight. Kepler is in his 20th year at the helm of Utah’s program and has steadily improved the Utes to one of the nation’s top teams, especially over the past three years. 

In 2021, the women’s team placed 20th at the NCAA Championships. The Utes finished 12th the following year, and in 2023, the team placed 13th. Looking ahead to the postseason for 2024, the women are ranked 6th and are only continuing to improve. 

Kepler shares about the depth of this year’s squad, factors that have led to the team’s improvement, the importance of team diversity, and his hopes for growing Utah’s legacy as a top distance program in the NCAA. You can find the full interview here.

The following interview excerpt with Kyle Kepler has been edited lightly for length and clarity.

Jasmine Fehr: How would you describe your coaching philosophy and how has it changed throughout your career? 

Kyle Kepler: This is my 27th year of coaching Division I, so it's changed quite a bit. My philosophy: “I don't borrow, I just steal.” I steal stuff that works for us – whether it's going to the different clinics or symposiums at the coaches' convention, or just talking to other coaches. Some of it's been trial and error.

It's not like everybody comes in and we all run “x” number of miles. Some kids come out of high school running 30 miles a week and trying to ask them to double that as a freshman is overwhelming. You're probably going to lead them to injuries more often than you're going to have a great amount of success. Certainly there are some that can handle that, but they've got to prove it to me by staying healthy. If we're going back and forth on injuries, then we've got a whole other equation to deal with. We've avoided – knock on wood – a lot of big injuries. Every program will have some things pop up. We're certainly not perfect but we do our best, working with our support staff to help these women stay as healthy as they can and get them all the support they need. 

When you’re recruiting, are there certain characteristics that you look for in athletes? What guides your process? 

We start locally and spread out from there. I'm a big believer that track and cross country are world sports. So we've always had a fraction of international athletes in our program. A lot of them have worn their country's name on their jersey like many U.S. kids would like to do here, whether it's qualifying for the Olympics or an under-20 team or whatever it might be. 

I think those experiences are vital to our women here in helping them progress and learn about championship-style racing. The NCAA Cross Country Championships or the finals on the track are the next closest thing to that type of racing and those things apply. 

I really enjoy having diversity and different cultures in our program. I think it's important on a human level – how to deal with people from different places and different ideas. So there are some life things that go well beyond the running piece of it too. We want to have a group of women who are excited to be around each other, enjoy running together, learning together, and improving together. 

Looking back on your coaching career, do you have a favorite memory that sticks out to you?

Literally on the way to [the Dellinger Invite], we were going through security at the airport and I turned and there was Alyssa Abbott, who was one of our first outstanding athletes in our program. She's from Reno, Nevada, and her family was here in Park City on fall break. I got to see her two young kids and her husband, who I've known since they were dating in college. Almost 20 years ago, she was one of my first big-time recruits: she was an NCAA qualifier in cross country, our first individual in my time here.

There are moments like that in an airport or when you get a text from some of those gals from 15 or 20 years ago who just can't believe where we're at. 

To finish things off, what are you most excited about for the rest of the season and how do you hope to continue growing the program? 

For the rest of the season, we just want to be in the conversation. The number in front of our name doesn't matter because nobody really knows until you get to Madison on November 23rd. I think with the experience that we have with the gals in this program, we can do that at a pretty high level. But we've got to get there and we've got to continue to prove that day in and day out. I don't think we know exactly who our seven on that day are going to be right now – if you're a really good program, you don't know that yet. 

As far as the future – We're just going to keep trying to do what we’ve been doing. We've all got this future in front of us that we're not sure of because of some lawsuits with the NCAA. Nobody really knows the answers to all of the stuff right now, including us. We'll handle that as we need to moving forward, because nobody expected the pandemic to hit either and we all had to deal with that. Change is chaos and the people that embrace it are going to move forward and the people that don’t are going to fall behind. The biggest part is embracing any impending changes, not getting stuck in our ways, and continuing to evolve and advance.

Rapid Fire Highlights 🔥

Yomif Kejelcha winning the Valencia Half Marathon in 57:30 to set the new world record. (Courtesy Medio Maratón Valencia)

– This past weekend in – where else? – Valencia, Spain, Yomif Kejelcha broke Jacob Kiplimo’s old half world record by one second, taking the mark down to 57:30. Every second counts, particularly with a huge paycheck on the line!

– Just a few minutes later, Agnes Ngetich won the women’s race in 63:03 – the second fastest half of all time and only 11 seconds away from Letesenbet Gidey’s 62:52 world record. She became the third woman ever under 64 minutes, followed closely by the fourth and fifth as Fotyen Tesfay and Lilian Kasait both dipped under the mark as well. All five female sub-64s have one thing in common: they were all run in the same city.

– World Athletics announced its nominees for “Out of Stadium Athlete of the Year,” and while the athletes mentioned are worthy of the honor, including major marathon winners, road world record breakers, and World XC champions, the name is extremely dumb and should be changed ASAP.

– Australia’s 16-year-old sprinting prodigy Gout Gout has gone professional and signed with Adidas. He boasts PRs of 10.29 for 100m and 20.60 for 200m.

– Nike has unveiled its latest cohort of NIL signees – the distance-focused crew includes the likes of UNC’s Parker Wolfe and Oregon’s Klaudia Kazimierska.

Noah Droddy has announced his retirement from professional running. The former DIII standout for DePauw steps away from the tarmac boasting a marathon PB of 2:09:09.

– Hard-kicking 2024 NCAA 800m champ and Olympic Trials 6th-place finisher Shane Cohen has inked a professional contract with Nike.

– It seems like Eliud Kipchoge may be returning to racing – or at least running – in Thailand next month as the Daily Mail reports he’lk be running a 10km as part of the Bangkok Marathon weekend. He’s participating as part of an “ambassadorial role,” however, so he may just jog the thing.

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