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Compiled by David Melly and Paul Snyder

U.S. Half Marathon Champs Get An A For Effort 📝

Sometimes it feels like we’ve become so accustomed to the status quo that we don’t even dare to dream anymore.

Yes, that melodramatic sentiment is directed at the USATF road running circuit, historically a scattershot assortment of events defined as a group by random distances (6km, 20km, and 25km are all real options), watery fields, and hard-to-find broadcasts. And that became such a norm (and a meme) that we as a newsletter—and as a nation—forgot that better things are possible.

But then we woke up Sunday morning, a new day dawned teeming with almost religious significance. The Publix Atlanta Half Marathon, which served as the U.S. Half Marathon Championship this year, let us know this wasn’t just any stop on the road circuit, thanks in part to a revelatory new technology: YouTube.

That’s right: a high-quality, easy-to-find, free-to-stream broadcast of the entire race with no cuts to commercial and frequent split-screen of the men’s and women’s leaders. All offered up to the public. No need to download a new app, scour the USATF website, or sell your firstborn child. 

And the races on screen offered three simple but important elements for any enjoyable sport-viewing experience: the stakes were high, the names were big, and the results were unpredictable.

As we gear up for the first-ever World Road Running Championships on U.S. soil (in San Diego in September), the Atlanta race served as a selection event with spots on the line for Team USA. It’s not necessarily possible or even desirable for every single national championship to act as a trials for a larger event. But the confluence of an American-hosted World championship and the expansion of the championship formally known as “World Half Marathon” to include a mile and a 5km helps make those three particular road championships an exciting little mini-series ahead of SD25. 

This is a particularly notable development for the aspirants in the half, because if your best distance is 13.1 you probably end up a little stuck between the track and the full marathon more often than not, and inevitably have fewer tailor-made chances to make a U.S. team. Which is probably also why we got a better-than-average field toeing the line, including half marathon American record holder Weini Kelati, former American record holder Sara Hall, and Olympian Dakotah Popehn. The men’s side saw a clash of strength and speed between guys with recent track success like Joe Klecker and Ahmed Muhumed and guys with recent marathon success like Clayton Young and Futsum Zienasellassie. There were a few notable absences, but given competing priorities on the calendar like the winter track season, spring marathons, and a highly-touted World qualifying opportunity at The TEN, it was a good showing.

The final dab of secret sauce that made the Half Champs so exciting? None of those big names we just listed actually made the podium. The largest shock came in the women’s race, where Kelati, fresh off an American record in Houston only six weeks ago, made a decisive move just before halfway and held an eight-second lead at 10km but struggled mightily over the final miles and ended up seventh, nearly two minutes off the leaders. She may still get to toe the line in San Diego thanks to a complex world ranking-based wild-card system, but it was a bit of a surprise to see Kelati, one of the country’s most consistent road warriors, get handily beaten.

Instead, it was Taylor Roe, the 24-year-old Oklahoma State grad and Puma Distance Elite rookie who, alongside runner-up Emma Grace Hurley, reeled in Kelati over the next few hills and then broke free in the final 1.5 miles to claim her first national title in 67:22, an 86-second improvement over her debut only two months earlier in Houston. Roe wasn’t necessarily one of those collegiate athletes you’d assume would immediately jump to the roads, as she won her sole NCAA title over 3000m in 2022 and finished eighth in the 5000m final at Trials last year, but after her strong start to 2025, it feels highly possible she follows the Fiona O’Keeffe playbook to a quick marathon debut if this trajectory continues.

Hurley and third-placer Amanda Vestri are exactly the kind of athletes this sort of race is designed to reward: stalwarts on the domestic road racing scene who may never crack 30 minutes in the 10,000m or 2:19 in the marathon, but who have nevertheless demonstrated consistent road running chops, and deserve a chance to earn a Team USA kit. And you’ve gotta feel for Jess McClain, who won a U.S. road title over 10km last fall but has now finished fourth in three of her last five national championships, including two Olympic Trialses.

The men’s race was far more opaque from the start, with no clear favorite like Kelati to slap a target onto. Despite Hillary Bor leading at the 5km, 10km, and 15km checkpoints, the splits don’t tell the whole story. Klecker hovered near the front early, Nathan Martin split the pack in two around 4 miles, and Teshome Mekonen stuck to Bor’s big move around 7 miles. Bor eventually shook off Mekonen, but the cost of doing so meant that he had no response when Andrew Colley dragged the chase pack back into contact. But shortly after the pack reconstituted around 10 miles, it was Puma’s Alex Maier—also an OK State grad—who hit the front and never looked back, eventually running away from the field to a 60:48 victory.

Bor’s early heroics weren’t for nothing, as he got a spot on Team USA, but 36-year-old Shadrack Kipchirchir beat him to second by a second, 60:58 to 60:59. If you only started following track and field in this decade, Kipchirchir’s performance may have come as somewhat of a surprise. He made his first U.S. team since 2019, and although his transition to the marathon has gone less than smoothly, real ones know that Shaddy is a game-day player, making four straight 10,000m teams from 2015 to 2019.

Commentators Carrie Tollefson and Tim Hutchings filled roughly 90 minutes of commercial-free airtime with accurate, knowledgeable, and generally entertaining commentary. It’s unfortunate that the standard we set for announcers these days involves checkmarks like “know the athletes’ names” and “have a basic knowledge of how racing works,” and even more unfortunate that half the broadcasts can’t clear that low bar, but Hutchings and Tollefson actually beat the grading curve by a good margin on this one. Plus, we got frequent use of split screen, helpful graphics indicating the course profile and runners’ progress, and an on-screen clock at all times.

Despite its decidedly not-primetime 7am start and a pair of winners who aren’t household names—yet!—the U.S. Half Champs felt like must-see TV for the first time in years. In an era where the average track fan has far more complaints than compliments for any given broadcast, it’s worth taking a moment to actually praise race organizers for successfully putting together a well-run and well-presented event. 

It’s proof-positive that a little effort goes a long way, and should serve as a helpful guide for any other upcoming road races in 2025: this is how you do it right.

What The Tokyo Marathon Tells Us About The State Of The Event 🇯🇵

Technically, the U.S. Half Marathon Championships didn’t boast the earliest road race on Sunday morning. The 18th edition of the Tokyo Marathon, also the first World Marathon Major of 2025, got underway the morning of March 2nd in Japan, which actually was Saturday night for American viewers.

Despite what the broader news media wants you to think, Harry Styles wasn’t the only runner in the field. 30-year-old Sutume Kebede defended her title in 2:16:31, making her Tokyo’s first ever back-to-back champion. Relative newcomer (to the marathon, at least) Tadese Takele took down a field that included defending champ Benson Kipruto and track world record holder Joshua Cheptegei to claim his first major victory in 2:03:23, a one-second improvement on his PB from his debut in 2023.

2024 was a turbulent year in the marathon, where the event was shaken up by seismic changes ranging from the untimely death of Kelvin Kiptum to the apparent decline of Eliud Kipchoge to the barrier-breaking Chicago run by Ruth Chepngetich. So where do we stand at the outset of the 2025 season? It’s largely too soon to tell, but the Tokyo results did generate some interesting takeaways. 

Ruth Chepngetich has moved the goalposts—for better or worse. Just three years ago, Sutume Kebede’s 2:16:31 winning time would’ve been the third fastest marathon performance of all time. Today, it barely cracks the top 20. And while Kebede went out hard, hitting halfway in 66:20, she actually went out over two minutes slower than Chepngetich did in her record-setting performance. One could argue that Kebede went out stupid-fast and paid the price, running 17:20 (2:26 pace) from 35k to 40k, but it seems a lot less foolhardy when the mark of comparison is now sub-2:10. Until this decade, a race where five women break 2:20 would’ve been remarkable; now, it barely makes a blip. That’s not to take away from Kebede’s strong run or the depth of this field, as much as it is a reminder of just how much the event has changed in a comparatively short time.

Benson Kipruto is human. The last time Kipruto, thrice a WMM champ and an Olympic bronze medalist, finished seventh in a marathon was five years and eight races ago, at the 2020 COVID-adjusted London Marathon. That was also the last time he finished off the podium. But while Kipruto didn’t even run that slowly (2:05:46) in Tokyo, this is the first time in a while he’s been so far from the taste of victory in a marathon major. The post-Kipchoge battle for the event’s top dog isn’t going to end any time soon.

The transition from track to roads works really well… for Tadese Takele. If the headline you read coming out of Tokyo was “2021 track Olympian continues his successful transition to the marathon with a major victory,” it would be understandable if you assumed it was talking about Joshua Cheptegei. But after a smattering of success in the steeplechase, including a World U20 silver medal and Olympic berth in 2021, Takele has taken to the roads like a fish to water, running 2:03, 2:05, and 2:03 in his first three efforts and clocking his first WMM win with a one-second PB. 

The Joshua Cheptegei Marathon Project is still a work in progress. With two world records, two Olympic titles, three World 10,000m golds, and a World XC title to boot, the Ugandan affectionately nicknamed “the Silverback Gorilla” would seem a natural fit to run rampant over any longer distance if, and when, he chooses. But his first two cracks at the marathon haven’t gone perfectly. His debut in Valencia was arguably a disaster, with Cheptegei clocking a 2:08:59 for 37th place via huge positive split. It seemed his goal in Tokyo was confidence building, as he hit halfway with the chase pack in 62:09 and picked off stragglers over the second half to finish ninth in 2:05:59. It’s an improvement, but almost certainly not the ceiling given Cheptegei’s resume.

Not everyone believes in running a negative split. Conventional wisdom—in America, at least—is that the ideal way to run a marathon is to stay within yourself for 20 miles or so, clocking even or slightly negative splits to maximize your chance at your best performance. But Japan’s distance runners have a long and storied history of full-sending every race no matter the consequences, and once again that strategy proved… inconsistent in outcomes, to put it politely. Aoyama Gakuin University runner Aoi Ota went out with the lead pacers and hit halfway in 61:19 (imagine if Stanford or Oregon’s top stud was leading Boston at half this year!) only to slow badly over the next chunk of the race and ultimately drop out at 35k. He wasn’t the only Japanese runner in the field to go out hard and pay the price, and ultimately top Japan honors went to one of the guys with the smallest first-second half gap, as Tsubasa Ichiyama got a new PB of 2:06:00 in 10th splitting 62:44-63:16.

What To Do About BU? 🔀

For several months each year, the primary cultural export out of Boston, Massachusetts isn’t sugary iced coffee in a styrofoam cup, gritty, Affleck-tinged movies about male loyalty, or even discourse around whether or not the Celtics’ core will “turn it on” before the playoffs.

No, it’s fast times thrown down on Boston University’s now world-famous indoor track. Seemingly every weekend from December to checks calendar March, now, apparently, the top runners at every level flock to the trampoline-like oval inside of a tennis practice facility just off of Comm. Ave to chew up and spit out the record book. And with the non-championship portion of the professional indoor season now fully sewn up, it was only fitting that the Center of the Indoor Universe churned one last batch of ridiculous performances, for good measure.

Heather MacLean showed up with the stated goal of bettering her placement on the global list just to guarantee her spot at World Indoors – and instead had herself an absolute day in the mile. She obliterated the just-set facility record in 4:17.01 and in the process broke the American indoor 1500m record: 3:59.60. Sometimes, ignorance is bliss: MacLean said she didn’t know what the pace lights were set at and simply ran hard from the front, and look what happened. Yared Nuguse ran 3:47.22 to win the men’s mile in the fifth fastest time ever indoors, and somehow everyone was disappointed. His mark would have broken the Internet(‘s top-visited running news websites) five years ago. Alas, such is life for a former world record holder, publicly proclaiming his desire to reclaim said record, and falling short.

Graham Blanks took time—7:29.72 worth of time, to be precise—out of writing his senior thesis to win the men’s 3000m, and cap off a tidy first professional indoor campaign. In the women’s 5000m Josette Norris held off a late charge from Emily MacKay after 25 laps, getting a small new PB of 14:44.80 to MacKay’s huge new PB of 14:45.81 (a 28-second improvement now U.S. #3 all-time indoors), both under the Tokyo 2025 standard. And Nico Young’s 12:51.56 5000m makes him the second fastest American ever over the distance, indoors or out.

Plenty of other pros did what they needed to do—like Sam Gilman, who, assuming he is granted leave from the Air Force, ought to be headed to World Indoors now. His 7:34.69 3000m puts him comfortably within the quota once the other Americans are removed. Similarly, Luke Houser and Sam Prakel’s 1500m splits from the mile sent them into the top 30 bubble needed to represent Team USA, negating any need to dive deeper into the U.S. Indoors results to come up with two entrants.

You’d be forgiven if your eyes have glazed over a bit at yet another rundown of Boston-based distance results with words like “all time list” and “record attempt” sprinkled throughout. It’s basically what happens whenever this facility is unlocked. But rather than grumble about time trials and pace lights (which weren’t really helpful in either mile race!) and pros skipping out on U.S. Champs to ship up to Boston, let’s take a different approach. Let’s meet them where they are. And where they are is Boston

This is where the pros want to race. Case in point: Sage Hurta-Klecker, who seemingly made a trip (alongside a large OAC contingent) out just to win the women’s 1000m (2:36.13) by over 20 seconds then pace the mile. Others, like her teammate Dylan Jacobs, squeezed a precious race effort in before his Team USA debut in Nanjing, taking a crack at a World standard in the 5000m. Let’s recognize that, and instead of trying to dissuade them from making the pilgrimage, let’s make the pro season work for everyone.

There are great things about racing at BU. It’s easy to get to for athletes and spectators alike. The tightly packed stands can create a deafeningly loud crowd willing to turn up and turn out for athletes like Grant Fisher and Graham Blanks. It’s usually a tightly-run, well-oiled machine.

There are also not-so-great things about BU. We’ve already kvetched about the spectator-unfriendly meet schedule, and the continued integration of collegiate and professional running dilutes the impact of the latter. Time-trial style racing can be exciting, but races like Nuguse’s mostly solo (with some company from teammates Mario Garcia Romo pacing and Olli Hoare sticking to his heels) mile attempt tend to create a high-stakes binary where the perceived success or failure of a whole race hinges on one athlete.

So let’s Frankenstein together the best parts. Instead of the competition for America’s Next Top Distance Star occurring at the same track across different weekends, let’s limit Terrier, Valentine, and the other usual-suspect BU meets to college and club competition only and have one, star-studded annual BU Distance Classic. A banger of a pro meet at BU could nestle neatly alongside Millrose, the NB Indoor Grand Prix, and U.S. Indoors to make for a tidy but not miniscule domestic indoor season, providing ample opportunities for pros to set records, snag qualifiers, and race each other. 

Imagine, if you will, all the BU results from the 2024-2025 indoor season compressed into one meet. Now MacLean is racing Shelby Houlihan and Elise Cranny in the mile, while Fisher has to first shake off Young, Cooper Teare, and Cole Hocker to get his record. You probably don’t get Ethan Strand vs. Yared Nuguse, but maybe Robert Farken and Adam Fogg help push Nuguse back under 3:47. Now that’s a helluva meet.

For any range of reasons, including the financial reality that BU probably doesn’t want to sacrifice a valuable weekend of raking in thousands of entry fees without major sponsor interest, this is probably a pipe dream. But it offers a target to aim at for future seasons, where a little more compression in the pro calendar leads to a better entertainment product without robbing pros of the chance to run fast.

More News From The Track And Field World 📰

– For the 11th time in his career, globally renowned pole vaulter and recording artist Mondo Duplantis set a new world record. The literal and metaphorical bar was raised to 6.27m (~20 feet, seven inches) in Clermont-Ferrand, France.  

– Grand Slam Track has announced another batch of Challengers for its first ever event, set to take place in Kingston, Jamaica, from April 4th–6th, and there are some exciting names in the mix: Emmanuel Wanyonyi, Bryce Hoppel, Jacious Sears, and Dina Asher-Smith

– Growth-and-sports-business-minded track fans, Nick Symmonds, and anyone in the midst of an Uncut Gems-style descent into madness rejoice—GST made more waves last week by announcing an “exclusive global data and betting stats partner.”

– Nikki Hiltz made a couple of big announcements as they gear up for the 2028 Olympic cycle—they have made a coaching change from Mike Smith to Juli Benson, and their contract with Lululemon has been re-upped through 2028.

– LetsRun’s Jonathan Gault broke the news that Tulane’s Carolina Jeptanui, the 12th-place finisher at last fall’s NCAA Cross Country Championships, has been provisionally suspended for anti-doping violations since late September.

– At the World Indoor Tour Gold meet in Madrid, Chase Jackson defeated Sarah Mitton in a highly touted shot put battle, 19.48m to 19.37m. (Results)

– University of Washington pole vaulting twins Amanda Moll and Hanna Moll went 1-2 at the Big 10 Indoor Championships, going 4.91m and 4.81m respectively. Amanda’s mark is the highest in NCAA history, the eighth highest of all-time, and the best in the world this year. (Results) 

– At the SEC Indoor Championships, Georgia’s Aaliyah Butler and Arkansas’s Isabella Whittaker both dipped below 50 seconds in the 400 (going 49.78 and 49.90, respectively), good for the second and third fastest NCAA all-time marks, and the two fastest times in the world in 2025. (Results)

– At the final Ivy League Indoor Championships held in Cornell’s Barton Hall, the Princeton Tigers took the men’s and women’s titles back to New Jersey, but the standout performance of the weekend was perhaps home-track favorite Damien Hackett’s no-pacers, wire-to-wire, flat-track victory in the mile in 3:57.74.

– A series of dramatic DQs and appeals caused the ultimate team victor in the Big Ten Indoor Championships to flip-flop several times shortly following the men’s 4x400m, but ultimately the Oregon Ducks prevailed with a 5.5-point victory over USC. The Oregon women blew Illinois out of the water by 49 points.

– At Monday’s ACC Championships (weird), three women broke 4:27 in the mile, led by UVA’s Margot Appleton in 4:26.21 after NC State’s Grace Hartman took the field out through 800m close to 4:20 pace.

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