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Lap 27: Sponsored by Chaski Endurance Collective

You've probably heard of Chaski from our ground-breaking Chaski Challenge Events or how we're changing the game in online coaching with our community-focused approach and collective of elite-athlete coaches. Now, we're organizing the best running trips and retreats out there.

Join us at the end of September for a 4-day running retreat in Flagstaff. Got more time? How about a running adventure in spectacular Ecuador, an epic trip to Everest Base Camp in Nepal, or a journey around Mt. Blanc on the UTMB course in the French Alps? 

All our trips and retreats are staffed by professional coaches and guides with decades of experience, feature Q&As and masterclasses with pro runners, and highlight the unique, off-the-beaten path beauty of each area.

Secure your spot today with a special discount for The Lap Count’s readers.

The USATF “just under a half marathon” Championships

New Haven is known for maybe inventing the hamburger, staking a debatable claim to the best pizza in the world, and hosting the USATF 20k Championships. With the USATF Half Marathon Championships taking place in December, the 20k distance feels sort of like the 1600m equivalent to the more celebrated mile, but there are $38,000 worth of reasons not to complain about the additional opportunities for athletes. One person who is definitely happy about the symmetry of the metric system is Erika Kemp — who won the women’s race by a whopping 39 seconds in 66:20 (5:20/mi). This is the second national title on the mantelpiece, now sitting alongside a 2019 USATF 15k Championships at Gate River. And if your text group chats are anything like my own, then you were discussing which of the two would be considered the biggest win of Erika’s career — we decided this one given the comparative depth and dominance. Anyway, what do you talk about with your friends?

On the men’s side, it was all about Ben True flexing his new found dad strength in the final sprint. The race played out with a significant negative split due in part to the northeast’s Labor Day humidity; the pack came through the halfway point in 30:32 before closing the final 10k in 29:21. Although True has handled his unsponsored status with class, it’s a testament to the changing landscape of professional running that his 8th US title and a close 4th at the Olympic Trials won’t immediately change that. Instead, our blue collar idol is chipping away at fitness, drinking coffee and wearing non-branded flannel as he gears up for his marathon debut in New York.

Before his full conversion to ‘Ben True: Road Warrior’ is complete, let’s take a moment to appreciate his most impressive on-track stat that’s not his 3:36.0 1500m PB: the fact that he ran under 13:20 for 5,000m on 22 occasions! Apparently Ben once said over a pasta dinner that ‘you make your name on the track, but your money on the roads.’ And even if he didn’t actually say that, I hope he doesn’t mind me attributing that badass quote to him.

Close behind him in 2nd was Biya Simbassa, who readers of The Victory Lap had the pleasure of getting to know on Friday!

By a slice 🍕

The biggest off-track win of the week came from Drake’s new album with the line, 'and I'm like Sha'Carri, smoke 'em on and off the track.’ But the collision between our niche little running world and pop culture as a whole likely didn’t direct the attention of the hip-hop fans towards a quiet meet in Padua, Italy. There, Javianne Oliver held off a late charge by Sha’Carri, though they were both assigned the same time of 11.19 (-1.0). Behind the headlines this year have been two emerging US sprint stars who have largely gone under-appreciated due to the media frenzy around Richardson’s controversial suspension and the Jamaican trio having the greatest 100m season of all-time.

Oliver graduated from the University of Kentucky in 2017 having finished 2nd at NCAAs in the 60m, but without an All-American finish in the 100m. Then in her first outdoor USATF Championship, she qualified for Tokyo, running under 11 seconds in all 3 rounds. Another unsung hero is Teahna Daniels, who was the surprise 2019 US Champ at 100m after finishing 4th at NCAAs that same season. But she has steadily built upon that success to prove that win was no fluke, first by qualifying for the World final in Doha and then again at the Olympics. While it’s rousing to see track and field transcend beyond the oval with human interest stories that sell tickets, let it not come at the expense of recognizing outstanding performances by the sport’s emergent stars as well.

Paul Chelimo gets a channel 🎥

Every pro runner doesn’t need a YouTube channel — many of them would be incredibly boring. But if there’s one man who was born for the platform it’s the 2x Olympic medalist, Paul Chelimo. There are a few things that make a running video interesting: a mind-blowing workout, a beautiful stride and some humor. If the first one is an indicator of the quality to come, it looks like he’ll have some help producing each video and it won’t merely be him monologuing in selfie-mode. The workout is a classic 10 x 400 at mile pace as he prepares for the 5th Avenue Mile this weekend. This one pairs nicely with the 4 mile tempo after Pre that was shown on Sweat Elite’s YouTube channel, which has been doing God’s work the past few months.

Fans want to see professional runners run. It’s such a simple concept, but it’s what built the Flotrack empire into what it is today. I remember setting my alarm early on Wednesday mornings in college so that there would be enough time to sit down and watch whatever the workout of the week was. Look at how many views Sweat Elite has been getting on their recent videos and you realize just how many people care a ton about the sport but also don’t always tune in to watch races live. How do we get the half million people spending 20 minutes ogling at Paul Chelimo doing a workout to watch him run a four-minute race? We need an algorithm!

Your own best advocate 🥇

Fred Kerley is never shy about reminding the world that he is actively etching his name deeper into the sport’s history. After his 9.94 (+0.1) victory at the Brussels Diamond League, he is now the only athlete to ever win the 100, 200 and 400. If enough of us tell him he can’t, then maybe he’d give the 800 a shot as well. Distance fans love speculating about what sprinters could do at the distance — I mean think of how easy it would be to run a lap in 50 seconds if you’re capable of going 7 seconds faster!

On a run this summer, Malcolm Gladwell asked me this exact question and I had to use another athlete as a frame of reference. My alma mater, Columbia University, needed another leg for the 2007 Penn Relays 4x800 so they turned to their 400m specialist, Erison Hurtault, who’d go on to run 45.40 and finish 3rd at NCAAs that same season. (Erison also eventually competed at two Olympics.) Instead of going out hard and holding on, his leg went out in 56, but he negative split to run 1:50.6 and handed off in first — the pivotal moment that led to a Lions victory! Extrapolating this story with no idea how he trains, I’d give Fred Kerley roughly the same time during an early spring 800m in a year he’s focusing on the quarter. But that’s a very different scenario than this year amidst training that’s yielding consistent sub-10-second performances.

If you’re a fan of Kerley and want to invest in his future, he just launched his NFT series — which for the uninitiated is sort of like having a trading card you can’t touch, but can lecture people about at parties.

Would you like an extra Cherry? 🍒

Michael Cherry has become Mr. Consistency this year. After winning the Brussels Diamond League in a new personal best of 44.03 to take down Michael Johnson’s meet record, he then went on to win Poland’s Continental Tour meet in what was his 13th sub 45 second performance of the season. While he continues to rack up those stats, the US Champion, Michael Norman, has run under 10 seconds in the 100m three times — which begs the question, whose season would you prefer?

Beansing It 🦘

Without having the stat to back it up, Stewy McSweyn has spent more time at the front of Diamond League races than anyone else this year. Unfortunately most of those races have a lingering Jakob Ingebrigtsen waiting in his wake so it was good to see the Australian pull out the victory in Brussels in 3:33.20. Two days later he quietly came back to win another race in Italy, posting a 3:33 to prove that he has the shortest refractory period amongst all modern distance runners. At a time when many athletes are shutting down their seasons, McSweyn has somehow found the mental energy to continue lining up despite living out of a suitcase since May. When the options are to race again or quarantine in a hotel for 2 weeks, the best course of action may just be to keep the ball rolling until the pandemic ends.

Interested in supporting athletes? Subscribe to our premium newsletter, The Victory Lap to help financially support elite athletes by reading exclusive interviews with them! This initiative has now raised $11,200 that we are fully passing onto the athletes.

On Friday morning we will be publishing a conversation with Fred Huxham, who just finished 6th place at the US 20k Championships. Hear about his transition from college and the leap of faith move to New Hampshire to be coached by his new training partner, Ben True.

Local hero inspires 𐃆

“I told you this would happen!” says everyone who watched Neeraj Chopra win Olympic gold in the javelin. This is what they mean when we talk about how representation matters. It’s not necessarily just that someone looks like you, though that can be huge. Sometimes it’s just as important for your hero to come from a similar background or place. In high school I was aware of how fast some kids in California were running in their perfect weather along the beach, but they didn’t matter to me. My heroes were local — other hardscrabble boys with shaggy mid-2000s haircuts, who pounded the Long Island pavement, trained in the elements, and whose parents moved to the suburbs for the schools — people just like me.

NCAA Pre-Season Rankings

If rankings mattered then they wouldn’t run the race — but they’re fun, so here are the rankings. Maybe it was the fact that last year’s NCAA XC season happened in March (of this year) or because it was a couple days after the Indoor Championships, but it sort of feels like this will be the first XC season in a couple years. If there is a consistent theme across the division it’s that basically everyone is returning. Let’s just hope this one happens in November!

The CAS Decision - Shelby Houlihan

Not breaking news: The Court of Arbitration for Sport released a 44 page document detailing Shelby Houlihan’s case notes and subsequent four-year ban for the performance enhancing drug, nandrolone. There weren’t many groundbreaking revelations that shed light on the case, but it was enough to reignite the public discourse on the subject. My opinion hasn’t changed significantly since the initial story broke, although we have all collectively had time to develop our thoughts and theories.

At this point, the majority of non-biased fans do not believe that a burrito was the cause of the failed test. Despite the dissertation by an anonymous author, the CAS findings overwhelmingly determined that the probability of that meal being the catalyst was close to zero. It is clearly a story that was reverse-engineered as Shelby and her team desperately search for answers. And while they do that, can you blame them? Her friends are doing what friends do and truly believe she is innocent — there is not some crazy Nike conspiracy theory to sway public opinion behind their support. We know what those templated social media posts look like and this isn’t that.

With that said, it’s fascinating to see how silent others in the running community who were directly affected by a convicted doper have remained about their own possible suspicions. Our sport is never shy about tossing around baseless accusations and yet when there is finally a top athlete found guilty of something, it’s crickets. Where are the women whose records she broke and who lost out on national titles? What do those who were left off international teams think? Maybe they want her to be innocent — but we need some facts.

And that’s the most disappointing aspect of the CAS report. It wasn’t necessary to mention the bachelorette on 11 different occasions to prove her character. While the argument about Shelby never wearing the super spikes has its flaws (is wearing them demonstrative of a willingness to cheat? ) it at least attempted to support the idea that she would not knowingly ingest nandrolone. She went to the chiropractor that day — well what’s their name and what treatment was performed? Were there certain injuries she was dealing with at the time? Were there any active TUEs? What vitamins, supplements and lotions was she using? If Shelby is innocent, then the more information the better, at least if the attempt is to shift public perception or compromise for a reduced ban. 

Shelby still has the opportunity to present in front of the Swiss Federal Tribunal, however, the likelihood this decision is overturned seems minuscule with this weak of a defense. I don’t know the truth. It’s probably somewhere between the accusations of a Nike-sponsored doping program and the flimsy excuse of a burrito. That incredulous middle ground take won’t satisfy anyone — just like the report.

The Long Island Mile

Today would have been the Long Island Mile. The event that I founded with my buddy, Brendan Barrett, of Sayville-Smithtown Running Company, was never going to happen this year. It was a combination of the shifting landscape of our personal lives and the pandemic. Although we never fully mobilized in an attempt to make it happen, it’s still hard not to be nostalgic for the wonderful memories the event produced in the five years we hosted it.

It began with an idea of a new way to connect our hometown with the exciting world of professional running, but it also filled a gap for late season track miles that I experienced during my first year on the circuit. Our sport is small enough that if you recognize places for improvement then it’s possible to enact that change yourself. It was an incredible opportunity for personal growth as I was forced to learn on the job, but the support from the community, my family, the sponsors and the athletes made it special.

It pains me that we won’t be having the race as an outlet to celebrate and honor the life of David Torrence. Please do me a favor and think about him on your next run — he was the best of company and always willing to share the pace.

Thank you again to the Chaski Endurance Collective for supporting this newsletter!