Talkin' Turkey ⏱️

Lap 196: Sponsored by Olipop

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

A Cross Country Championships Carol 🍂

Even the grumpiest of Scrooges must admit that this year’s NCAA Cross Country Championships did not disappoint. Both races featured multiple athletes who competed for their countries at the Paris Olympics, and both ended in exciting battles for the individual crown.

If you’re a Provo resident or big Diljeet Taylor stan, you probably ended the day saying “God bless us, every one.” Oklahoma State fans, on the other hand, are probably muttering “bah, humbug” as they mournfully pack away their orange body paint for another year (at least Oregon Ducks can rest on the laurels of their 11-0 football team… the Cowboys are DFL in the Big-12 at the moment, adding insult to injury).

Before we bid adieu to the fall season once and for all and get ready for the winter – entering our Thanksgiving food comas, dusting off the Christmas decorations, and shifting into soup mode – it’s worth one last visit with the ghosts of NCAAs past, present, and future as we reflect on the key takeaways from a stellar weekend in Wisconsin.

Ghosts of NCAAs Past:

– Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Graham Blanks wins the NCAA cross-country title with a decisive and unmatchable move in the final kilometer. The Harvard senior and 2024 Olympian beat the racing-like-a-dumbass allegations to become the 13th back-to-back champ in NCAA history. Blanks himself felt like he was racing a ghost – but that this year’s version was even better than the last.

– 2023 was a year to forget for the BYU women. The Cougars finished 14th after entering ranked No. 3. But under the steadfast guidance of head coach Diljeet Taylor, BYU bounced back (with many of the same players) to claim a sixth team title, with 147 points to second-place West Virginia’s 164. The Cougars’ top three had no trouble leaving their ghosts in the past, as Lexy Halladay-Lowry, Riley Chamberlain, and Carmen Alder all placed in the top 40, and posted an average year-over-year improvement of a whopping 160 places.

– Speaking of BYU, super-duper senior Casey Clinger has a long history with NCAA cross country. His first appearance at Nationals came way back in 2017 – yes, you read that correctly. The 26-year-old finished 6th, his highest of five NCAA XC appearances that span the better part of a decade (7th in 2022, 8th in November 2021, 13th in March 2021, and 24th in 2017). He keeps getting better with age!

–  No one seems to have worse luck at NCAAs than Habtom Samuel. Just halfway through the 10km race, the eventual runner-up for New Mexico lost a shoe. And it wasn’t just a poor lace-tying situation. The flat tire of the century left the 20-year-old Eritrean bleeding and with a massive hole in his Dragonflys that quite literally knocked his socks spikes off. The poor guy couldn’t quite catch a break after winning the 10,000m outdoor title over the summer despite a fall on the track mid-race. If you’re looking for a good conversation starter at your Thanksgiving dinner table this week, try: “Do you think Habtom could’ve matched Graham’s move if he had both shoes?”

Ghosts of NCAAs Present:

– Two teams that took “living in the moment” to a whole new level were the West Virginia Mountaineers and the Providence [Lady] Friars, both of whom annihilated their rankings and beat up on the competition to finish second and third on the podium. West Virginia entered ranked fourth and exceeded expectations to land just 17 points behind the champions. More importantly, they didn’t panic after getting out slower than envisioned, moving up from 7th place at 2km to land five places higher at the finish. But the biggest team surprise of the day goes to Providence, who entered the weekend at No. 11 and came out with a team trophy. The Friars’ formidable top three ended up being the difference maker – they were the only team in the field to put three runners in the top 25.

– After the BYU women set the bar as high as it can possibly be set, their male counterparts had their work cut out for them. And they adopted a fearless, high-stakes approach to getting the job done: going out hard and trying to control the race from gun to tape. The Cougars stayed in first place as a team at every 1km checkpoint, but they had to hold on for dear life in the second half as they lost a concerning 77 places from 4km to the finish. They ultimately succeeded in staving off runners-up Iowa State by 13 points in the end. What did it take? Wrist notes, dry-erase scoreboards, and… olive oil. It’s hard to tell if Coach Ed Eyestone was serious, but the details clearly made a difference for the Cougars. 

– In case you were too distracted trying to figure out if your Wi-fi was cutting out or the stream was glitching in the final moments of the women’s race, here’s a refresher: Alabama’s Doris Lemngole clocked a 2:55.8 final kilometer en route to a national title, a kick so hard it matched the final split of men’s 11th-place finisher Denis Kipnegitch of OSU. Lemngole had the unfortunate luck of competing against Parker Valby a bunch of times last year and always finished runner-up, but she’s now a 2x champ after winning the steeplechase title at NCAA Outdoors.

Ghosts of NCAAs Future:

– The Lap Count has a time-honored tradition of calling our shots when it comes to cross country improvement driving future track success. We’ve got a simple but rock-solid hypothesis: If you were a second-team All-American type last spring and made a huge jump in XC this fall, there’s a good chance you’ve got a very, very impressive track season around the corner. So here’s a pre-emptive congratulations to Villanova’s Marco Langon, who finished 121st in 2022 and 146th in 2023 before jumping to 15th this year. He put together a strong campaign last spring, running 13:28.44 for 5000m and contributing to his team’s Penn Relays title over 4xmile, but his best finish at NCAAs on the track thus far is 14th. Expect a big leap forward this year.

– While it’s too premature to see how our homage to the 6k take aged, it’s notable that the Providence middle-distance duo of Kimberley May and Shannon Flockhart improved their cross country performances at NCAAs from 116th to 10th and 69th to 24th, respectively, following a year where they both were All-Americans in the indoor mile/outdoor 1500m. Also on our watchlist is Virginia’s Margot Appleton, who’s a repeat All-American in the mile/1500m/5000m and just added her first cross country certificate to that already stuffed trophy shelf. 

– The future is very, very bright for Michigan State’s Rachel Forsyth, the true freshman who finished 16th overall in her first season as a Spartan. Forsyth ran with a maturity far beyond her years, as she hit 1km in 61st place then methodically moved up the field to land in the top 20.

– Another breakout star might be NC State redshirt sophomore Hannah Gapes, who improved from 73rd in 2023 to 8th on Saturday. The Kiwi hasn’t made an appearance at an NCAA championship on the track and “only” has PBs in the high-15s and mid-4:10s, but a top-10 performance in a deeper field on the grass smells a lot like potential. 

– We’re getting déjà vu from the Olympic Trials as UNC’s Ethan Strand and Villanova’s Liam Murphy clearly like finishing side-by-side with an 8th and 9th place close in the men’s race, followed by Virginia’s Gary Martin in 13th (who improved 206 places from last year and is a certified cross country guy now). As many of these middle-distance stars have to be thinking about a future full of three-round competitions as a 1500m pro, building up the engine now isn’t a bad strategy.

The holiday spirit (and some holiday spirits) could have us merrily listing off even more names of notables (*sips and slurs* Here’s to Dylan Schubert! Bob Liking! Grace Hartman!). But before we frantically pore through the BU 5000m entries the moment the calendar turns to December, we’ll let the post-race glow linger a little longer and reminisce about all the best stories, past and present, until we slip into a long winter’s nap.

Athletic Mixology 🍸

“Shaken, not stirred.”

The world’s most famous martini order was first requested by fictional British spy James Bond in 1956, and over the next 60+ years, became synonymous with sophistication and sexiness in both film and pop culture. 

There’s only one problem: that’s actually a terrible way to order a vodka martini. Cocktails are traditionally only shaken when they contain citrus or juice; drinks that only contain spirits are stirred so they don’t get watered down. In essence, James Bond is shaking things up just because it sounds cool, not because it’s going to end in a better drinking experience.

Another notorious Brit appears to be following Bond’s lead. World Athletics president Seb Coe announced last Friday that the “World Athletics Ultimate Championship,” set to kick off in Budapest in 2026, will feature a condensed program of 28 events – 16 track, 10 field, and 2 relays. That’s down from 49 events at the regular World Championships and more compact than the 32 events contested in the Diamond League. 

Yet another middle-aged Englishman, CEO Jon Ridgeon, offered this vague explanation: “The Ultimate Championship was developed to bring together the very best athletes from our sport in a selection of events that bring the athletics stadium to life and allow the viewer to see each and every run, jump and throw across three nights of unmissable ‘made for television’ competition. The Ultimate Championship is also a chance for us to really innovate how we deliver our sport, presenting it in new formats and across different platforms which are specifically designed to keep the entire venue engaged, ensuring constant, fast-paced excitement.”

Translation: “TikTok has ruined all you people’s attention spans, so we needed to shorten our program to keep you from changing the channel.” 

Whether or not you agree that there are too many disciplines in the average track and field meet, it’s clear that the guys with deep pockets seem to be aligned in this diagnosis. The other two big prize money events announced in 2024 – Grand Slam Track and the Athlos NYC meet – have also made steep cuts to the events they offer. For years, the Diamond League hasn’t offered a 10,000m or hammer throw competition, so this isn’t exactly a recent phenomenon, but if you’re Soufiane El Bakkali or Valarie Allman, your specialty event being knocked out of a $150K-for-first-place competition has got to sting a little.

Some of the changes are understandable if your goal is brevity. (There’s only one event on the track that takes nearly half an hour to complete, after all.) And if your goal is to show “every run, jump, and throw,” cutting out some of the latter two categories – which account for four time-consuming events each – does make sense from a TV producer’s standpoint. And while Americans love the 4x400m, the other 190-odd nations in the world probably aren’t thrilled with the idea of coughing up $300,000 for two events with more or less predestined outcomes.

Other changes are more like a shaken martini: different, but not better. 

In a wildly confusing decision, only the men will throw the hammer and only the women will contest the triple jump. In a sport where, among our many flaws, we can always point to gender parity as a strength, it feels strange and arbitrary to not include both categories or neither. The omission of both shot puts, as well, feels like a huge missed opportunity to feature one of the biggest stars of the sport – Ryan Crouser – and one of the most surprising events of the Paris Olympics, where the women’s podium did not feature the reigning World champion, Olympic champion, or World Indoor champion despite all three athletes competing.

And then there’s the mixed relays. Clearly one of the higher-ups at World Athletics thinks that the mixed-gender relays is a SUPER DUPER FANTASTIC IDEA that just needs more opportunities to capture the hearts and minds of athletics fans, because they keep serving us more and more weak martinis at the top of championship programs and expecting us to say “why, thank you.” 

The mixed 4x100m is a particularly terrible idea. Given the historic challenges that the best sprinters in the world face in getting the stick cleanly around the track, adding in the element of different speeds and unfamiliar teammates will only lead to more botched handoffs and dropped batons. And the best case scenario is still just a battle between Jamaica and the USA that ends in an even-more-meaningless time than normal.

Stupid name aside, the Ultimate Championship presents a great opportunity to offer something new and different. But if the benefit of the changes it proposes aren’t self-evident, it’s incumbent on meet organizers to articulate the method to their madness. Adventurous drinkers and sports fans alike love to try something new, but “variety for variety’s sake” is never going to leave a satisfying aftertaste.

The Ultimate Guide To Dominating Your Local Turkey Trot 🦃 

Unless you personally competed in the NCAA championships or the Philadelphia Marathon, tomorrow is a big, big day.

It’s the goddamn Turkey Trot. An American tradition like no other. Your chance to dispatch with foes from the road racing circuit both domestic and foreign, old and new, real and imaginary. This is your Super Bowl. Play your cards right and you’ll not only earn bragging rights at run club for the next calendar year…. You’ll also return home with a medal you can smugly wear during Thanksgiving dinner, and 20% off your next pair of shoes at the local running store. 

But it won’t come easy: you need to be prepared for the WAR to come. Here are the adversaries you’ll face tomorrow morning, and how you pull off the victory against every one of them.

The Local High School Star

Your first challenge comes in the form of an athlete who could be half your age. They are eager, spry, and haven’t yet been beaten down by a decade of persistent plantar fasciitis. They finished just outside the bubble to qualify for NXN. But they are also running on fumes. They have raced nine dual meets, four invitationals, and five increasingly important championships over the past three months. You, on the other hand, are peaking for this moment. You’re an adult. You vote. The jump up in distance from 5k to 5 miles is going to be this kid’s undoing. You know that a battle of the fast-twitch muscles will not break your way, so you burn the jets two miles from the finish to open up a demoralizing gap. You will have the penultimate laugh when you sweatily break the tape –  then they will have the last laugh when you collapse on the pavement and vomit from overexertion.

The Dejected Collegian

Your next challenge comes in the form of a heartbroken 21-year-old back home from college. A few years back, they were the Local High School Star. Now, they are wallowing away as the 9th runner for a nationally-competitive NCAA program. While the varsity seven was yucking it up in Madison, this runner was back on campus thinking about what could have been. On paper, they should mop the floor with you. But Turkey Trots aren’t run on paper. On the starting line alone, dozens of folks have asked them “why didn’t you race at Nationals?” And crucially, their social calendar has been full of frat parties and high school reunions at the local bar since their season ended. Their skin looks greenish and you can smell the bottom-shelf whiskey emanating from their pores. You will get in their head by asking “is your coach having you do this as a tempo?” (Their coach explicitly forbade everyone on the team from racing their turkey trot.) Then you will leave them in your dust with a hot first mile. (They are going to drop out, walk back to the car, and google “transfer portal.”)

The Age Group Hero

It’s not just the young guns who elbow their way to the front of the Turkey Trot starting line. Unless this is your first rodeo, you know that among the most lethal archetypes you’ll encounter up there is the Age Group Hero – the laser-focused 40-something with weirdly defined arm muscles and an uneven stride who is nevertheless capable of sustaining all-out pace for seemingly any distance. They are rumored to have been “pro in the triathlon” at some point in the early 2000s. They are wearing spotless AlphaFlys they definitely bought for this race. They have STRONG opinions about the new BQ standards. But damn. They are not dropping… no matter how many surges you throw at them. It’s time to put pride aside – you’ve got to win this race the dirty way. You drop into their shadow as they stomp and grimace through the final mile, marking every move like a cyclist in the French Alps. With 400m to go… TURN ON THE JETS, BABY. To the Age Group Hero, this is a dishonorable way to race. But to you? They aren’t handing out trophies with little turkeys on them for honor.

Your Old High School Rival

You know this runner as well as you know yourself. You’ve raced dozens of times over the years and your lifetime record is damn near even. There is nothing they can do to surprise you. You know their every move. To spectators who watch you two zoom past, it’ll look like a piece of performance art, you’re so alike in mind and body. Near the three-mile mark, the world outside the start and finish lines starts to disappear. It doesn’t matter that you’ve got a mortgage or that his wife has a baby on the way. In that moment, you’ve transcended time and space and you’re both sixteen again, with your whole lives ahead of you. Your Haglund’s deformity disappears and his hairline creeps back down toward his eyebrows as you unleash a pair of all-too-familiar finishing kicks in perfect sync. True dominance in your decades-long battle will be determined by this photo finish – except, wait, this race is hand-timed by a local retiree and no one has any idea who really won. A fitting end.

No matter who faces you on the starting line, your truest rival is your own inner demons. The only way to conquer them is by measuring your self-worth with a slightly-above-mediocre performance that everyone but you will forget entirely by December 1st. So good luck, and make sure to charge your watch tonight.

The “Vinterview” Pt. 2: On The Future Of The NCAA 🤔

With the NCAA Cross Country Championships wrapped up, we’re shifting gears for this week’s interview to take a broader look at the new era of college athletics approaching. USATF President and UVA Director of Track & Field and Cross Country, Vin Lananna, weighs in on recent changes to scholarships and roster limits, how they might reshape college programs, and what they could mean for developing Olympic athletes. He also shares his perspective on what might be next as the NCAA enters a new chapter. 

You can read the full Q&A here and can find part one of our “Vinterview” here, where Lananna shares about growing UVA’s cross country and track programs. 

Jasmine Fehr: Can you share your insights on the recent changes we've seen to the NCAA? 

Vin Lananna: We need to remember the case [House vs. the NCAA] has not been settled yet. There are still many aspects about it that are yet to be determined. And it's a little disturbing to me that we are acting like this is a big surprise because it has been coming for a long time. 

The athletes are now being compensated; it's a natural way things should play out. I'm all for the athletes being compensated. [But] how are the universities going to pay for this? 

In many ways this falls in the lap of the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee. The university's role is to have great collegiate track and field programs, to win conference meets and vie for NCAA titles and have All Americans. The byproduct is that it also develops our Olympic-potential athletes and medalists.

I think there were 1,061 athletes who competed at the U.S. Olympic Trials this year, and 960 of them were [once] part of the collegiate system. If we were paying attention, we should have been planning for this and have a robust plan of how we will help bridge this gap, because it's a gigantic gap. 

The second part: there are so many things about it that could have an impact. Our collegiate system is under fire right now – in track field and other Olympic sports as well.

There are so many things about our sport which are so powerful. And aside from great performances, it's also about balance between women and men. It's always been a trait of track and field that the women's 100m runners are just as highly regarded and respected as our men’s 100m runners. Both track and swimming really demonstrate that. 

I also think that of all the things that college athletics does, no matter the sport, it teaches grace under pressure, working as a team, dealing with disappointment, knowing how to win and enjoying the process. It's something really special. 

There's not any clear-cut information yet, and everything seems to be kind of up in the air. Because of that, do you think there is a discrepancy between how coaches and athletes are interpreting the rules? 

I try to stay out of the interpretation and rumors and gossip and try to look at what is factual because that is the only way you can create a plan. 

We have a tremendous number of athletes in the sport of track and field in the NCAA system who are so competitive on a global level. I wonder what happens if we have major cutbacks or eliminations of programs… What happens to our Olympic team? 

I wonder about the opportunities for young people, especially Brown and Black student-athletes, whose opportunity to get a scholarship at these universities could be cut back or eliminated.

Whatever the [scholarship and roster] numbers are going to be… we can adjust to it. The question becomes: can we adjust to a monumental shift towards what's important for not just track and field, but all the Olympic sports?

I'm hopeful that the biggest fears of what's going on are not realized. It’s “shame on us” if we don't plan for this. I still have not seen a plan for what we are doing… I keep hearing about politicking and congressional support. What does that mean? Who's doing it? 

I could talk about a lot of things, but I'd like to see a plan step-by-step. I don't want to be melodramatic and say save the sport… but I think we should have an orientation towards that. And if it doesn't need saving, then great, we're ahead of the curve. 

In your own perspective, what direction do you see the NCAA headed in next? Do you anticipate more changes or think the college system will stabilize for a bit? 

In my career, this is the biggest and most impactful adjustment I've seen. I'm guessing just like other big changes, we will at some point stabilize and figure out what needs to be done. 

In the interim… What we really need are people, organizations, commissioners, and athletic directors to really think about the sport. Not necessarily the distance runners or the throwers or the jumpers or the sprinters and hurdlers or what happens to the scholarships at the University of Virginia or wherever it is… but about the entire sport and its tremendous value. 

We need to tell the story of what's valuable about it and expose those who are in a position to make decisions to understand what's the real value of the sport of track and field. 

I'm not sure there's anything more compelling of a sporting event than the Olympic Games. We just came off a phenomenal event in Paris and especially for track and field. Will we still see those types of performances? No country in the world has a development program like our collegiate system. Nothing even compares to it. It's a great story, but I think it's a story that's never been told.

It's tough because it's at a point now where it does feel transactional: athletes are trying to get as much scholarship as they can, and the programs are trying to get as much out of the athlete as they can. 

It may be aspirational to believe that we can right this ship. But as long as I stay in the sport, I plan to continue to work towards providing the student-athletes with an incredibly valuable experience. All the other things we talked about – ACCs and NCAAs and Olympic Games and all that – are a byproduct. In the end, you have to provide that great experience for student-athletes because there's a lot to be learned in a college system. And that's why I love the college system. It's a special place. No one else has it like we do and we need to capitalize on it. 

Read the first part of the “Vinterview” here, and the second part in its entirety here.

Rapid Fire Highlights 🔥

– Grand Slam Track has announced several more MAJOR Racer signings: Gabby Thomas, the 3x 2024 Olympic gold medalist; Salwa Eid Naser, the 2024 Olympic silver medalist at 400m; Mary Moraa, the 2023 World champion over 800m; Daryll Neita, three-time Olympic medalist, and Olympians Elise Cranny and Nozomi Tanaka.

– At the 62nd running of the JFK 50 Mile, both the men’s and women’s course records went down. David Sinclair broke the tape in 5:08:26 – a 6:09/mile clip – and Rachel Drake knocked about seven minutes off the just-two-year-old course record, going 5:57:32; that’s 7:07 pace. Per Sinclair’s Strava, his last mile split – of FIFTY – was 5:23.

– It was a banner day for the state Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, as William Loevner of Pittsburgh and Katie Florio of Philly won the Philadelphia Marathon in 2:16:12 and 2:32:42, respectively.

– At Cross Champs in Austin, Texas, Emily Venters and Edwin Kurgat took top honors – heavily weighted top honors, as this was a World Athletics Cross Country Tour Gold Label event! We’re once again tapping the “if you’re a pro, there’s only upside to at least occasionally racing cross country” sign.

– In more Gold Label cross country news, Nadia Batocletti and Rodrigue Kwizera emerged victorious at the Cross Internacional de Alcobendas in Spain, while Belinda Chemutai and Matthew Kipkoech Kipruto were the winners at France’s Festival du Cross-Country.

– Last and least, World Athletics apparently looked at all the problems in the sport of track and field and decided an important one to tackle is the lack of a World Treadmill Championship. No, this is not a joke.

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