The Great Indoors ⏱️
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Compiled by David Melly and Paul Snyder
Too Good To B(U) True ✨
Teammates Ethan Strand and Parker Wolfe after dipping below the collegiate indoor 3000m record. (Photo by Austin DeSisto / @austin.desisto)
The snow has barely settled on the Madison cross country course, but every All-American from Provo to Gainesville already has visions of Virginia Beach as they headed to the Boston University Sharon Colyear-Danville Invitational last Saturday to pick up an early NCAA indoor qualifier.
And that cross country fitness really paid off. NCAA champ Doris Lemngole is honing her Parker Valby impression to perfection – and improving on her predecessor’s work, as the Alabama sophomore knocked a few decimals off the indoor collegiate 5000m record with a 14:52.57 run. There was a bit of déjà vu in the event as the top four finishers (now #1, 3, 4, and 5 all-time indoors) were the same as NCAA XC, with only runner-up Hilda Olemomoi and third-placer Pamela Kosgei switching spots.
Not to be outdone, the middle-distance studs in the 3000m put not one, not two, not three, but four runners under Drew Bosley’s old record just two months before its second birthday. It was a tangle of Tar Heels up front as Parker Wolfe and Ethan Strand, the seventh- and eighth-place finishers from NCAA XC, ran a pair of astonishing 7:30s, with the 21-year-old Strand turning the tables on his teammate in the final strides. Poor Yaseen Abdalla (7:34.17) and Gary Martin (7:36.09) had to settle for a pair of shiny new PBs. At 7:30.15, Strand is also 0.01 seconds ahead of Galen Rupp on the all-time list, a time that would’ve been an American record were it not for a guy named Yared Nuguse on the same track in 2023.
It’s hard to call Graham Blanks’s 12:59.89 5000m win a failure simply because he missed Nico Young’s collegiate record of 12:57.14, and the newly-minted New Balance signee will head into the professional ranks with a World standard secured for 2025 and a comfortable spot at #5 on the U.S. all-time list indoors. Speaking of… the 13 fastest marks on the list all have one thing in common. So do the top 8 American 5000m women’s performances and three of the four collegiate distance records. They were all run on the BU track.
How the heck did we get here, and why is it starting to feel like Groundhog Day? Have super-spikes, wide turns, and bouncy plywood boards completely desensitized us to the thrill of fast times? (Editor’s note: The fans don’t seem to think so based on the crowd roar for Blanks’s win.) A 7:30 3000m is crazy for one collegian to run – let alone two on the same team. And this isn’t some kind of freak lingering effect of COVID eligibility either – Lemngole (22), Strand (21), Wolfe (22), Blanks (22), Martin (20), and Abdalla (23) aren’t in their eighth year of college or anything like that.
The simple answer might be the correct one: The secret is out on BU, and NCAA coaches have basically reached the consensus that extending the fall season two weeks past XC championships is a smart move for, well, pretty much anyone. That’s a relatively new phenomenon. At this meet in 2019, the top collegiate times were much different – 13:24 and 15:13 for 5000m; 8:01 and 9:10 for 3000m. The women’s 5000m was a bit of a trendsetter, to be fair, as both the 2018 and 2019 editions were fairly stacked and did some damage to the all-time lists at the time. But it wasn’t a foregone conclusion that every distance runner went to BU to lock up their Nattys qualifier mere days after the season began.
Is this good for the sport? Hard to say. It certainly makes for a fun kickoff event for the indoor season, and helps fill some airtime in a relatively quiet time of year for non-marathon runners. It does, however, take some of the wind out of the sails out of the first proper month of the season in January and virtually guarantees that the tippy-top few stars can coast into the next championship on autopilot instead of fighting for a top-16 mark at a last-chance meet ten weeks from now. It’s also gotten wildly expensive to enter (to the tune of $100 entry fees for a track 5k), which isn’t exactly a huge dent in the athletic budgets of SEC schools but does contribute in some way to the widening gulf between the haves and have-nots in the sport. BU has also never been the fastest place to run a sprint time, so a total chokehold on the indoor season remains slightly out of reach.
At the end of the day, watching talented athletes run fast remains fun and exciting. And until we come up with a totally non-time-based way to select championship fields at all levels – NCAA and professional – it’s not BU’s fault that they set scores of runners up for success better than anyone else. The Colyear-Danville Invitational has earned its place in the athletic calendar… but they gotta start writing the records set there in pencil.
Is It Too Early To Talk About The Sprints? ⏰
North Carolina A&T’s Jason Holmes. (Courtesy NC A&T Athletics)
With all the distance runners going hog-wild over at BU, it’s easy for all the slow-twitch specialists out there to forget that indoor track’s opening weekend is about more than riding your cross country fitness into the post-postseason. For the sprinters, jumpers, and throwers on the team, it’s a coming-out party when months of event testing and countless hours in the weight room finally fall away in favor of season opening marks.
For many, if not most, the first indoor meets will be a glorified rust-buster. If you’re in the midst of a strength-building period in training, it makes little sense to back off and sharpen up for one weekend in December when you can just train through and compete again – and again, and again – in January. Unlike the distance events, where conventional wisdom is that you should pick your racing opportunities sparingly and leave plenty of room in the schedule for recovery, once you’re in a racing groove as a short sprinter, it can actually be beneficial to race your way through the meat of the season as you work on all the technical minutia that goes into a perfect seven-second race.
All this is our way of saying there weren’t many notable performances outside of Massachusetts this weekend – with one particular exception. Down in South Carolina at the Clemson Opener, North Carolina A&T junior Jason Holmes clocked nation-leading marks in both the 60m hurdles and 200m. His 200m time of 20.94 isn’t anything to write home about (although it is an indoor PB and only 0.05 seconds off his outdoor best), but his 7.64 victory in the 60H is intriguing, to say the least. That mark would’ve placed him fourth in last year’s NCAA final (although a few other guys ran faster in the prelims), and it’s a lifetime best by 0.01 second for Holmes.
Holmes made indoor and outdoor NCAAs in the hurdles last year, but he’s yet to make a final and his best finish at those races was 12th. It’s also worth noting for the “times don’t matter” diehards that Holmes also beat Dylan Beard, the hurdler-slash-viral Wal-Mart employee who won Millrose last year in the 60H and has a 7.44 PB (plus a 13.10 in the 110m hurdles outdoors), at Clemson. And with last year’s NCAA champ Caleb Dean departed for the professional ranks, someone will need to come in and take his crown.
Anyone placing giant bets on The Next Big Thing based on one good weekend in December should probably be a little wiser with their money, but it’s fun to speculate nevertheless. It’s far too soon to tell whether Holmes will sustain this momentum, but all indications are that the 20-year-old has leveled up. And given that NC A&T’s hurdles coach is two-time Olympic silver medalist Terrence Trammell, now in his third year with the Aggies, his talent is in very good hands.
So keep an eye on Jason Holmes. And remember: if he ends the season with a shelf full of national titles, we said it first. But if this take ages like milk, you didn’t hear it from us.
Evaluating How We Evaluate Great Marathoning Seasons 🤓
CJ Albertson raced CIM over the weekend for this fifth marathon of 2024. (Photo by Audrey Allen / @audreyallen17)
Over the past five road racing seasons, only once has it been truly obvious who the top American marathoner was in a given year: 2021 Molly Seidel. As a quick refresher, Seidel snagged an out-of-left-field bronze medal at the COVID-delayed Tokyo Games in August, then hit the tarmac again in November to place fourth in New York City in an American course record.
That’s not to say other American road dawgs haven’t had themselves great years. (Keira D’Amato’s 2022 campaign or Conner Mantz’s rise to the top of the U.S. ranks come to mind.) It’s just that the way we evaluate a great season for a marathoner is tricky.
They simply don’t normally give us enough data points to do much other than point to a significant highlight or two. High finishes at world majors are weighted heavily. Global medals are the ultimate trump cards. And the occasional broken record doesn’t hurt, even if times are seeming less meaningful by the day. That’s basically it. In the event of a “tie” after tallying up these types of accolades, we’ll go with whoever ran faster at Berlin or Valencia or whichever dragstrip is en vogue at the moment.
But CJ Albertson gives us something interesting to think and write about in this newsletter: that total work product matters. Because he puts so many more marathons on his calendar than basically any of his peers, he’s once again forcing us to rethink conventional wisdom in the road-running world.
Last weekend, Albertson made the short trip over to Sacramento for the California International Marathon, where he “used up [his] last ounce of fitness…then had 12 more miles.” What “blowing up” means for a runner like Albertson is that he still took second place behind Tsegay Weldlibanos’s 2:07:35 victory and crossed the line in 2:10:06. He was the first American by almost two minutes. A performance that could be the year’s crowning achievement for many a domestic pro was, for CJ, a mere footnote on the season.
It was his fifth marathon of the year and his third since mid-October. He placed fifth at the Olympic Trials, seventh at Boston and Chicago, tenth in NYC, then second at CIM. Time is less of a concern than place, but for the record, every one of those races was finished between 2:08:17 and 2:10:53. By time, Albertson is the third-fastest marathoner of 2024, and his slowest time would still put him in the top 10.
You could easily make the case that Conner Mantz, Clayton Young, and hell, at this point Biya Simbassa all enjoyed higher highs than Albertson throughout their 2024 campaigns. Sports science dorks are probably clenching their fists and weeping thinking about the hypothetical 2:06 he might’ve had in his legs had he trained differently or prioritized fewer races. But marathons – at least in CJ’s world – are made meaningful by running with your heart and your ‘sack, not by adhering with laserlike focus to advanced metrics, careful biomonitoring, or prototype technology.
Compared to track and field, enjoyment of which already skews pretty hard into numbers territory, marathon fandom runs the risk of being entirely reduced to statistics. How fast did you run? Where did you place? How far back from the winner? And that’s just on the professional level, where we don’t give much weight to even crazier number-crunching like age-grading performances.
But remember, as a fan, it’s supposed to be entertaining. And you shouldn’t need to be proficient in Microsoft Excel or statistical analysis in order to make a defensible claim about who you think is the best American male marathoner. Billy Beane and his advanced metrics can stick to baseball where he belongs.
Here’s another way to think about it: CJ Albertson is an employee (well, technically an independent contractor) of Brooks Running and has spent a heckuva lot of time modeling their shoes and yellow-pink racing kits at or near the front of major races. If pro runners had performance reviews, the bigwigs in Seattle would be giving Albertson top marks for his ability to do the one thing that really matters to them: get the Brooks name and logo out in front of many sets of eyes very frequently. Between that and the number of Strava kudos a 26.2-mile entry racks up, CJ Albertson is essentially acting as one of the world’s biggest running influencers without having to make 15 insufferable videos a day on TikTok.
But let’s look at Albertson’s season for what it was: consistent, gutsy, and fun as hell to witness. If three marathons and one or two off-distance outings is the industry standard season for American marathoners these days, we need to commend those who do even more while still running well, for no reason other than it’s entertaining to follow.
Just about every other sport out there provides a range of avenues for greatness. Part of what makes “which player is better?” conversations around a sport like basketball nominally interesting is that the numbers only tell a portion of the story and the debate ultimately becomes one of style and personal preference. The intangibles can be a little harder to find in running, but guys like CJ make a compelling case for themselves that there are X factors you have to consider within the rote activity of running from point A to point B.
With marathoning, especially as the upper echelon of performances becomes faster and less comprehensively human, (unless you have really weird form or something) it’s hard to stand out for succeeding in a unique way. Albertson is far from the GOAT. He’s definitely not even a guaranteed selection for BAMMOTTF (best American male marathoner of twenty twenty-four). He is, however, putting together a successful and memorable career without being a 2:02-level talent or a likely global medal threat. When CJ hangs ‘em up, hopefully many years from now, he’ll be able to say with conviction that, like Frank Sinatra, he did it his way.
The lesson here isn’t that the only thing better than running five marathons in 2024 is to run six in 2025. Really, it’s that there are many ways to define success. Just because you’re a 2:25 lady or a 2:10 gent doesn’t mean that your career has to consist of doing your best Eliud Kipchoge impression twice a year for a decade. And if you find a version of professional running that works for you and your unique skills and interests, you can become too successful to be denied.
The Lap Count Holiday Movie Lineup 🎄
Photo by Justin Britton / @justinbritton
It’s that time of year again! No, not indoor track season. It’s the holiday season, and most importantly, we are squarely in the 25-day period when Hallmark, Lifetime, Netflix, and pretty much every other network and streaming service fart out a bunch of low-budget, barely coherent made-for-TV movies that mix up a reliable recipe of ‘90s heartthrobs, fake snow, and titles made from every Christmas-related pun in the book.
At the pace they’re going, sometime in the next 1-3 years, they’re going to run out of ideas for new films. And hey, if Hot Frosty can go from silly tweet to fully-realized Netflix film about a sexy snowman coming to life, maybe our newsletter can generate some new original content. (If any studio execs are reading, TLC owns the rights to all these but we are willing to negotiate a fair deal.)
By next December, you could be mixing up some hot cocoa and cuddling up under a blanket to watch one of the following films:
Dashing Through The Snow: Local run specialty store owner Joe reunites with Olympic champion-slash-college-sweetheart Emma, who’s returned to her hometown in Colorado for the holidays. Together, they use her fame to stage a Christmas Eve 5k and save the struggling small business when the whole town signs up for the road race.
Home Meet For The Holidays: Oh no! The last big home meet of the year is in jeopardy as Holly, an assistant coach at Rudolph University, finds a winter storm has damaged the track right before the big Holiday Invitational. Lucky, local track repairman Olli saves the day – and the indoor season.
Meet Me In Boston: All-American Habtom meets the girl of his dreams at the NCAA XC Championship, but they don’t exchange names and numbers after the race and all she has to remember him is his lost racing spike (yes, this one is also Cinderella-themed). Will she reunite with her Prince Charming after all when he heads to the BU track two weeks later for a fast 5000m?
A Club Nats Christmas: Inspired by true events, two cross-country runners happen to meet in the finish chute at Club XC Nationals. Zack needs a date for his family holiday party later that day, and the mysterious distance runner from out of town just might be the Christmas gift of his dreams.
All I Want For Christmas Is A PB: Two runners from rival run clubs always seem to be battling for team points at the finish line. At first, it seems like the beef between Jingle Bell TC and the Racin’ Reindeer might be too much to overcome, but after the big New Year’s Eve race, Chris and Kari realize that the real team trophy was true love.
Running Down The Leads: This murder mystery meets PG-rated, hamfisted romance opens with dedicated local jogger Grace Faith happening upon a corpse out on the trail. (A murdered corpse. Wearing holiday regalia!) She reports her discovery to jocular small town cop Mike Jawline, and a steamy and decidedly not by-the-books investigation leads to a discovery that will rock the town – and their courtship.
The Miracle Miles: Former state champion runner Sharlene, now 32, something of a mess, and a few glasses of bubbly deep, accepts a dare on New Year’s Eve: run the town record in the marathon that year. Well, it’s December 21st… and she hasn’t done it yet. So with two weeks to make good on her promise, she sets to work with a little help from all sorts of endearing townies! Halfway through the movie cuts out abruptly and is replaced by an infomercial for a weighted blanket that is attached to a small microwave.
Rapid Fire Highlights 🔥
Photo by Audrey Allen / @audreyallen17
– In this week’s now-recurring “YOU AREN’T TOO GOOD TO RACE CROSS COUNTRY” mini-segment… at the European Cross Country Championships in Turkey, Jakob Ingebrigtsen prevailed over a stout field and Nadia Battocletti added another bullet point to her already list of impressive 2024 accomplishments.
– Australian sprinting wunderkind Gout Gout ran a wind-legal 20.04 200m at the Australian All Schools Athletics Championships in Brisbane. With that performance, not only did the 16-year-old become the Australian record-holder in the event, he’s now faster than Usain Bolt at 16.
– Calli Hauger-Thackery broke the tape at the California International Marathon in a speedy time of 2:24:28. She led 21 American women below the previous Olympic Trials qualification standard of 2:37:00. Just behind her, Jackie Gaughan turned a lot of heads with her incredible 1:14:19-1:10:21 negative split for second and a 2+ minute personal best of 2:24:40.
– At the Kalākaua Merrie Mile – part of Honolulu Marathon weekend – Nikki Hiltz and Hobbs Kessler “won” in 4:28.65 and 3:56.85, respectively. Hiltz, however, got the outright W, marking the first time in event history that an entrant from the men’s field – which starts on a roughly 32-second delay – hasn’t successfully hawked everyone else down down.
— Five new signees were announced to the Grand Slam Track league, bringing the total up to 43 of 48 “racers” committed to the four-meet series. Long sprinters Alexis Holmes and Nickisha Pryce, Jamaican 100m star Oblique Seville, hurdler Sasha Zhoya, and 12:36 5000m runner Hagos Gebrhiwet have added their ink to the growing pile of contracts.
– HOKA’s Northern Arizona Elite group will look a whole lot different come 2025. Longtime mainstays like Aliphine Tuliamuk, Steph Bruce, Kellyn Taylor, and other veteran team members will reportedly not have their contracts renewed. Club founder and, until recently, coach-turned-executive-director Ben Rosario is also leaving to pursue a yet-to-be-announced venture.
– At Nike Cross Nationals, Utah’s Jane Hedengren won by a whopping 39 seconds and broke Katelyn Tuohy’s course record on Glendoveer Golf Course, while Charlie Vause of New Mexico pulled off an upset victory in the boys’ race. Hedengren is staying close to home and heading to BYU in the fall, and Vause has yet to share his plans for next year.
– Coaching changes are afoot for several top American 800m runners: Raevyn Rogers has moved to Los Angeles to train under Joanna Hayes, and Isaiah Jewett has relocated to Starkville, Mississippi to train with Marco Arop under Chris Woods.
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