Straight to the finish⏱

Lap 28: Sponsored by UCAN

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Slàinte Mhaith 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🥂🍎🗽

After a long year of racing, there’s no better capstone to it all than cruising down the 3rd best avenue in New York City at the NYRR New Balance 5th Avenue Mile. While some athletes are hanging on for dear life and happily showing up to collect a rare appearance fee, others come ready to play. And this year, nobody arrived sharper than the Scots. Somehow, the country of just 5 million continues to punch well above its weight in the world of middle-distance running.

The point-to-point race boasts a net-loss of 29 feet, but the first half features a noticeable uphill section leading to the half mile mark, which Alicia Monson led a gapped field through in 2:15. But ultimately, for the first time since 2012, someone not named Jenny Simpson broke the tape: Jemma Reekie in 4:21.6. Although she has an affinity for the 800m, highlighted by a 4th place finish in Tokyo and a 1:56.90 personal best, she has demonstrated a propensity to crush miles as well. For example, last year at the Millrose Games she ran the indoor British Mile record of 4:17. (A reminder for the American readers that Scotland is not England, but it is part of Great Britain, along with Wales and Northern Ireland is not part of Great Britain, but they’re all in the United Kingdom.)

On the men’s side, the race opened up with a mad dash for the halfway bonus, which is a great aspect of the 5th Ave Mile. Although it’s only a $1,000 payday — which shouldn’t be enough money to change anyone’s race plan — going for broke with another half-mile to run and squandering one’s chances of winning is a tradition unlike any other, and often provides much needed comic relief at the end of a grueling summer on the circuit. This year it was Centrowitz who came through the line in 1:58 and earned himself the payday, or as he probably sees it, ‘the small blind in the next poker tournament.’ After he was caught on the downhill, the race was soon taken over by the 2019 champion, Jake Wightman, who cruised to the win in 3:49.6. That’s undeniably fast, but for context, when the meet record of 3:47.5 was set at the inaugural event 40 years ago, Sydney Maree and company went out in 1:52. That and the fact that no one is wearing super shoes is about all you can make out from the 10 pixels in the race video.

(Please feel free to email me compliments about how incredible my post-race interviewing skills were.)

Thicker than a bowl of oatmeal 🥣👟

Well that is 2 hours and 9 minutes of his life that he’ll never get back.

In what reads like some twisted episode of The Twilight Zone, Derara Hurisa of Ethiopia found out his victory at the Vienna Marathon had been downgraded to a DQ on account of an illegal pair of shoes. Although he ran 26.2 miles, it was the fact that his footwear was 10mm too tall that led to his removal from the results.

The adidas Adizero Prime X is intended to be used exclusively as a training shoe because its stack height is above the allowable 40mm limit in the World Athletics rulebook. Fortunately, this was not Hurisa’s personal best at the distance — that came at the Mumbai Marathon where he ran a 2:08:09, but also made headlines for his shoes because he lost them on his flight and won the race in a pair he borrowed from a friend. No word yet on why he opted to sport banned shoes for the competition, but let’s not rule out the possibility that in Vienna he accidentally borrowed shoes from an enemy.

Oh my god…shoes! Let’s get some shoes

The most heated debate in all of sports has finally come to an end! No more will old men at bars be able to sit around arguing about what the true women’s world record for the road 5k is — and for that, thank you Senbere Teferi.

We’ll remove all the asterisks from Sifan Hassan’s women’s only record, Beatrice Chepkoech’s mixed gender record, Beth Potter and Karoline Bjerkeli Groval’s unratified records and Joyciline Jepkosgei time from before the IAAF officially recognized the event — 14:29 is now the mark to beat. And it probably will be beaten soon, considering Letesenbet Gidey ran 14:06 on the track last year, a surface which has seen 66 sub-14:29 performances.

Unfortunately the women’s 10k world record remains bogged down in ambiguity. As part of the same event where Teferi established a clear cut 5k WR, Agnes Tirop ripped a 30:01 10k: just enough to eclipse the previous women’s only record by 28 seconds, but still well short of the overall time of 29:43 run by Joyciline Jepkosgei. I’m of the opinion that if you did the crime (running fast) then you get the time (the record) and we can stop the semantics and caveats about the field or it was run alongside.

This was all part of a series of races held at the adidas headquarters to celebrate the launch of the Adios Pro 2s. Echoing the success seen by Nike’s promotion of their Vaporfly in conjunction with Kipchoge’s Sub-2 attempt, this has become a popular medium for promoting new shoes and for good reason — it is great PR with a healthy dose of social proof.

Speaking of… on September 22nd, I will be in Essen, Germany, doing race commentary along with my sidekick, Chris Chavez, for a special Saucony 10k event to kickoff the special edition release of the Endorphin Pro+. You’ll be able to watch the world class field featuring the likes of Jared Ward, Parker Stinson, Jo Pavey, Grayson Murphy and more, race LIVE for free here on the Citius Mag YouTube channel.

Where the streets have no name 🎶

I want to run, I want to hide

I wanna tear down the walls that hold me inside

I wanna reach out and touch the flame

Where the streets have no name

Apparently Bono was inspired to write this hit by the notion that one’s address in Belfast was enough to provide a stranger with all sorts of information about their background. Well, the 10 mile road champs was one place where names ceased to matter. Most of you are probably familiar with Jenny Simpson (from her mention earlier in the newsletter… or, I suppose any number of the accolades earned over the course of a decade-long, highly decorated career) as one of the greatest female middle-distance runners in American history. But her over-distance experiment fell 3 seconds short of perfection thanks to a name that is slightly less familiar — Nell Rojas.

After graduating from North Arizona in 2010 with a modest 5k personal best of 17:11, Nell took up triathlon and then obstacle course racing before falling back in love with more conventional running a few years ago. It’s clear the time “away” from the sport and the endurance she built from having a diversity of experience was valuable — she returned to run 2:31 at CIM in December of 2018, and then followed that up by winning the 2019 Grandma’s Marathon in 2:28 and fighting to a 9th place finish at the 2020 Olympic Trials in Atlanta.

When she started to open up a gap with 400m to go at the Cherry Blossom it was not a matter of speed, but strength. The last quarter of a 10 mile race is not completed in 57-seconds, but a hair under 5 minute mile pace. As Nell puts the final touches on her build-up to the Boston Marathon, it’s safe to say the 33-year-old is the best unsponsored distance runner in the country. For a while that title was held by Keira D’Amato, but if a 36 year old can come out of nowhere to earn a contract then we should hopefully be seeing Nell in a new bib soon.

On the men’s side it was further confirmation that the best omen in the sport of T&F is being interviewed for The Victory Lap, as Biya Simbassa took home his first USATF title over Augustus Maiyo in a time of 46:18.

Do you want to hear more from Nell Rojas? On Friday morning we will be publishing a conversation with her in our premium newsletter, The Victory Lap. Interested in supporting athletes? All proceeds from subscriptions go towards financially supporting the elite athletes whose exclusive interviews you’re reading! This initiative has now raised $11,600, but with your help we can give back even more!

Marielle leaves Bowerman ⚡️

Marielle Hall, the 2016 US Olympian at 10,000m, announced that she was moving on from the Bowerman Track Club this week. If you know Marielle, or have read the comments from her former teammates underneath the post, then you’ll know this was not an ugly breakup. The truth is that she had struggled recently and was no longer competing at the same level she was during her first few years with the club. Changing a training situation gets more difficult to do the older an athlete gets, but it can really provide the sort of jolt needed to kickstart a comeback.

Traditionally there are shakeups following an Olympic year, especially as contracts expire, and over the course of the next few months there will surely be other notable moves being made. We will wait in anticipation to see where this Jersey girl and former Texas Longhorn goes next — perhaps the roads? But wherever she decides to go, she’ll take the sort of aerobic base only Jerry Schumacher could have built — it’s a shame there won’t be a two hour TV special to document it.

Cole Hocker signs the swoosh

Nike didn’t sign Cole Hocker — Cole Hocker signed Nike. Normally you’d wonder how well a young kid could handle the pressure of landing what is most likely a massive contract that immediately places them in a much different tax bracket than their friends. Yet if there is one thing we learned this summer, it’s that Hocker doesn’t just not crack, he rises to the occasion. I am sure he’ll find the perfect balance of treating his buddies to the appropriate amount of Dairy Queen. And assuming his contract is through the next couple Olympic cycles, that’s plenty of time to work on his cursive before he has to ink the next one.

Generation Z 🎥

It feels like we watched Cole Hocker grow up in front of our own eyes in a very Truman Show-like way. It started his senior year of high school with the Indianapolis-native winning the Footlocker XC title, but the Covid-inspired gap between his freshman XC season and becoming a US Champion was bridged by YouTube videos.

The man behind the camera is Ben Crawford, and the concept has always been simple: film his fast friends running and being normal. The organic content is both relatable, but aspirational, though its most essential feature is its accessibility. If the goal is to connect with fans and grow the sport, then you need to go where the people are — which is apparently YouTube. Look, I wish The Lap Count had a channel of its own, but who wants to watch a video of me writing this stupid newsletter at 6AM on Tuesday morning?

The Zurich “track” meet

Zurich played host to the Diamond League finals last week in a two-day affair. The first was not held inside the gigantic beautiful stadium, but instead behind a fence in a make-shift arena in the city streets. From a competition standpoint, this doesn’t really affect the field events and it was pretty cool to see the shot put launched over the head of the photographs who were beneath the stage. Repeating my previous reaction to the gimmick, even for the running events it’s not an inherently terrible idea, except that running the 5000m on a 560m track with extremely tight turns isn’t appropriate for a race of this caliber. One, because it’s already such a popular event, and two, because there are World Champs berths on the line — the winners get an automatic invite to Eugene 2022!

On this front, the event was a huge success for the United States as Ryan Crouser (SP), Maggie Ewen (SP), Fred Kerley (100), Kenny Bednarek (200), Michael Cherry (400), Devon Allen (110H, and Victory Lap interviewee!) and Quanera Hayes (400) all have earned the United States an extra qualifying spot. Because a country can only send 4 athletes in any given event, it will be interesting to see if USATF still gives preference to a defending World Champion given that it will have been 3 years since Doha. Does it make more sense to give an automatic bid to Christian Coleman, who has been serving a ban for a whereabouts failure or to Fred Kerley, who is now invincible?

The debate wages on

Burundi’s Francine Niyonsaba has been on a tear since the Olympic Games. She followed up a 9:00 2-mile at Prefontaine with an 8:19 3000m in Paris, and in the last week Francine won the Diamond League 5000m in 14:28 and then set the 2000m world record of 5:21.

Namibia’s Christine Mboma has been equally as dominant since her silver medal in the 200m at Tokyo and her last 50 meters is must-watch television. The 18 year old won the World U20 title, Brussels, Zurich and Zagreb and now has a personal best of 21.78.

As the two women continue to improve despite the goal posts constantly being moved in front of them, the discussion surrounding DSD athletes is increasingly gaining volume. This is an important subject and as it continues it needs to be done respectfully. Regardless of your individual opinion, please recognize that all of these athletes are playing by the rules and are deserving of admiration for continuing to show up and compete at their best despite unfair criticism.

I very much enjoyed this article from Sean Ingle in The Guardian as food for thought on the subject.

Kings of the north🤴

If you think winning NCAA titles doesn’t guarantee future success then don’t look at this picture — it has 23 of them in it. Against this field of former collegiate greats, it was Marc Scott who won the event in 61:22. However, after his great run in Antrim two weeks ago, where he ran 60:35, it should have already been clear that the Brit is fit.

It was encouraging to see Ed Cheserek quietly have himself a strong half marathon debut, posting a 61:31 to rebound well after a tough track season, which was capped by a 7th place finish at the Kenyan Olympic Trials.

Galen Rupp seems to have recovered quickly following the Olympics, but he won’t be the only marathoner with an abbreviated training block leading into the fall blockbusters as Chicago is now just 24 days away.

Hellen Obiri, the 2019 World Champion and 2021 Olympic silver medalist, played frontrunner in the women’s race taking home the crown in 67:42.

Just behind her was Eilish McColgan, whose 67:48 debut now makes her the 3rd fastest Brit of all-time. Of course the only thing that matters is how fast an athlete runs and not how they get there, but given her notoriously low mileage approach to running (with a healthy dose of cross-training), Eilish’s success in the longer distances should be encouraging for all those injury prone athletes out there. And it should make all of the milers who tried running 100 mile weeks only to still be crap at the 5k feel equally bad about themselves.

Who wore it best? 🕺👗

I’d probably wear the white suit that Noah Lyles went with, but that’s just me. It’s incredibly cool to see three of American track’s biggest stars rubbing elbows with some of the regular world’s biggest stars. That said, something like 600 people go to the Met Gala every year so let’s see if we can improve on our .5% attendance rate. A note to the designers of the world: our sport is chock full of well-muscled — or very thin — people who are more than happy to wear bizarre, minimal, tight-fitting clothing in very public settings.

Thank you for reading this week’s newsletter and to UCAN for sponsoring! Next week will feature a “special edition” write-up and I encourage you to send notice on to any avid high school runners to be on the lookout for that next Wednesday.