If you #ranwithmaud, what are you doing next?
Social media solidarity isn't enough. And there's some running news in this issue too.
Hello,
Thanks to everyone who liked and shared last week’s newsletter, which was a roundup of running books.
Sports may not be happening right now, but there’s a lot to listen to, read and watch about sports. This issue highlights a lot of interviews with pro runners happening across the internet: podcasts, video Q&As, movies, replays of old races — it has it all.
It also looks at the biggest running story of the week: the murder of Ahmaud Arbery, who would have turned 26 on May 8 and whose killers were finally arrested this week.
Let’s get to it.
— Erin @ Run the North
#IRunwithMaud, the horrific murder of Ahmaud Arbery and the whiteness of running
On Feb. 23, Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old black man, was shot and killed by two white men while out for a run. They claimed Ahmaud looked like suspected burglar in the area.
The two men walked free and the murder was little reported until this week, when a gruesome video of the encounter and eventual murder circulated online.
And, finally, with the combination of the video, the birthday and with nothing else happening in the running world, people learned what happened and finally got mad about it.
Friday, May 8 was to be Ahmaud’s 26th birthday. People were encouraged to #irunwithmaud and post a 2.23-mile run to social media to show their outrage and solidarity. The run was organized by Ahmaud’s high school football coach.
All of this — the murder, the video, the solidarity run, the too-late arrest — ignited several conversations about police violence against black men and race and privilege both within the running community and beyond.
Alison Désir, the founder of Harlem Run, wrote a piece for Outside about the whiteness of running:
It is time for white people in the running community to cultivate a white identity that is separate fromwhite supremacy—that means committing to antiracism and social justice. There are two great books I recommend to start with in this process: White Fragility and Me and White Supremacy. It is time for white people in the running community to take each other to task in spaces and rooms where there are no black people or other people of color. If you, as a white person, ever find yourself in a place where everyone is white or mostly white — including at your workout — then there is a problem and you are perpetuating it. And it is time for white people in the running community to recognize the humanity of black people, indigenous people, and other people of color (BIPOC) and raise up our stories as if they were their own.
The New York Times looked deeper at the experience of running while black:
The killing brought to life what Tianna Bartoletta said she faces during a split second of pause — “Is it worth it?” — when she steps outside to go running. The three-time Olympic gold medalist, a black woman, said the activity that has brought her immense joy and professional success is paired with fear.
“I’ve run through streets in Morocco, Italy, Barcelona, Netherlands, China and Japan,” she said over the phone on Friday, “and it’s only in my home country that I wonder if I’ll make it back home.”
So ask yourself: How white is your run crew? Is your gym? Is your life? How are you participating and upholding anti-black institutions and systems?
What will you do beyond posting a run on social media to make this sport — and this world — more inclusive, more accepting and safer for everyone?
It’s great if you ran with Maud. But it’s time to do more, myself included.
Reading this Medium post by Taharee Jackson is a good place to start:
If you are a White person and find yourself indescribably disgusted by this murder and the many others that are senseless, end innocent lives, and blatantly rooted in the inherent conviction of Black and Brown people before they can live long enough to be formally charged, then I am asking you to do some work. None of it will require you to leave the safety and comfort of your own home during the COVID-19 global pandemic, but all of it will require you to face yourself, your family, and some difficult to digest stories and statistics.
Athletics Canada officially names Canada’s first three track & field Olympians
Athletics Canada officially named three athletes to the Canadian Olympic team. None of them are a surprise.
Canadian marathon champions Trevor Hofbauer and Dayna Pidhoresky earned their spots by auto-qualifying with wins at the Canadian marathon championships in Toronto in 2019.
And racewalker Evan Dunfee qualified for Tokyo by running the Olympic standard over a year ago at a race in Japan.
For other athletes, qualification for the Olympics is currently on hold for track & field athletes.
Any athlete with the standard will remain qualiifed. But any performances that take place between April 6, 2020 and Nov. 30, 2020 will not count towards Olympic qualifications or world rankings.
The new qualification windows are as follows:
Marathoners and 50K racewalkers will be able to qualify between Dec. 1, 2020 and May 31, 2021.
10,00m runners, decathletes, heptathletes and 20K racewalkers will be able to qualify between Dec. 1, 2020 and June 29, 2021.
All other track and field athletes will be able to qualify between Dec. 1, 2020 and June 29, 2021.
This could still change, as there’s still so much unknown with the coronavirus and the state of the world.
Canadian collegiate star Brogan MacDougall leaves Queen’s for NCAA’s Wisconsin
Canadian university standout Brogan MacDougall has decided to leave Queen’s University and the USports system and transfer to the University of Wisconsin-Madison, an NCAA D1 school.
Brogan confirmed she is transferring because of the firing of her coach Steve Boyd. Boyd had begun to coach Brogan in high school, he’d been her coach for nearly seven years when he was fired by Queen’s for comments he made online about Dave Scott-Thomas and the breaking news around Dave’s misconduct and mistreatment of his athletes at Guelph University, including the sexual abuse of standout runner Megan Brown.
From Queen’s University’s student newspaper, the Journal:
MacDougall also said Boyd’s abrupt firing had implications on her academics and mental health.
“If you were to find my classmates, they'll tell you I was breaking down all the time in class. It was pretty embarrassing because I'm not a super emotional person, usually.”
Although sad that her time at Queen’s came to an abrupt end, MacDougall expects that the University of Wisconsin-Madison will be a good fit.
As a geological engineering student, finding a university that offered her program was the most important factor. The University of Wisconsin-Madison also has one of the best cross country programs in the NCAA, holding seven national championships.
Brogan, alongside her older sister Branna, are two of the best Canadian collegiate runners in recent memory. They helped Queen’s win the USports cross-country championship this past fall.
Branna is graduating this spring.
Brogan is not the first prominent Canadian to go to Wisconsin. It is also where Olympian Moh Ahmed spent his collegiate career.
Other prominent Wisconsin grads include American triathlete Olympic gold medallist turned marathoner Gwen Jorgensen.
The 1000K Great Virtual Race across Tennessee has over 18,000 sign-ups and inspired knock-off races, including one across Nova Scotia
The Great Virtual Race Across Tennessee, the 1000K virtual race that will last all summer and conceived by Barkley Marathon organizer Lazarus Lake, has become the event of the summer.
More than 18,000 people from around the world have signed up.
Also so many people signed their dogs up that Lake made a separate dog division, with proceeds going to a to-be-determined animal shelter charity.
Lake was expecting 200-300 participants, but he’s been leaning into how big the race has grown. It’s raised more than $100,000 for Feeding America, has given work to vendors struggling during the pandemic.
“It’s going to be a really fun summer,” Cantrell said. “It’s quickly developed a community, so there’s going to be mutual support, especially for ones that are doing the 1,000K as a lifetime achievement.”
:It’s also spawned a few knock-off races. You can now run across New York and even Nova Scotia.
The Run Across Nova Scotia is a 792K race from Yarmouth on the South Shore to Meat Cove on the tip of Cape Breton. If this wasn’t virtual, running Cape Breton last would just be cruel.
The race runs for 99 days, from June 1 to Sept. 7, which makes the daily required distance the same as the Tennessee race: 8K a day.
There will be an interactive map to track your progress. And you’ll get to run right past my hometown.
If you’re wondering why the route dips down to Halifax, it’s because it’s following the major N.S. highways.
The race is $30 and you can sign up here.
Leslie Sexton & Reid Coolsaet profiled in Unbounded documentary
Athletics Canada released a 30-minute documentary called Unbounded, which profiled Reid Coolsaet and Leslie Sexton as they prepared for the Toronto Waterfront Marathon in October 2019, where the top Canadians could potentially auto-qualify for the Olympic marathon.
Neither Reid nor Leslie had a great race (Leslie DNFed and Reid ran 2:15:23 to place 14th overall and fourth Canadian), but it’s still a decent look at how pro runners approach big races.
You can only watch it on the Athletics Canada website.
Andersen Runs’ weekly video Q&A series with pro runners continues
There are a lot of weekly Zoom, Instagram Live, Facebook Live, etc., chats with pro athletes right now. I am really enjoying Stephen Andersen’s series. I haven’t shared episodes for a few weeks, but his latest three were particularly interesting:
He talked to Canadian Dylan Wykes and American Jared Ward about their Olympic experiences (Wykes in 2012 and Ward in 2016), being parents, their respective sponsor Saucony and what life has been like in lockdown.
He talked to Mike Woods, an elite middle-distance runner to transitioned into pro cycling, about that. It’s thought Mike is the only person who have run a sub 4-minute mile and compete in the Tour de France. The full episode isn’t available yet but there’s a 6-minute highlight clip you can check out.
And he talked to running couple Julie-Anne Staelhi and Chris Balestrini. They both currently train at Western University, where Chris is doing a combined PhD and medical degree and Julie-Anne is doing a masters in sport psychology. Chris is a distance runner while Julie-Anne is focused on the middle-distances at the moment. They talked about balancing school with training, their collegiate careers, live in lockdown and more.
Women Run Canada has released a few great episodes
I haven’t shared Women Run Canada episodes in a bit, but host Kirsten Parker has released a few good ones:
She talked to Gabriela DeBues-Stafford and her younger sister Lucia Stafford from their childhood home, where they are quarantining. Their sibling dynamic is very cute but it also offered a lot of insight into how their relationship has fuelled watch other’s career.
She also talked to Canadian half-marathon record holder Andrea Seccafien. Andrea has not done many podcasts or interviews — especially since moving to Australia in 2017 — and this was a good overview into her overall career, and her transition into longer distances and how her Australian team is helping her take it to the next level.
And she talked to Leslie Sexton, who won the Canadian marathon championships in 2017. Leslie has been on the cusp of the Olympic standard for a while, and they talk about her disappointing result in Toronto in 2019, her love of Star Wars and more.
You can relive Lyndsay Tessier’s ninth place finish at the 2019 world championships
Lyndsay Tessier, a 41-year-old elementary school teacher, became the breakout Canadian star of the track & field world championships in Doha last fall, thanks to her unexpected ninth place finish in the women’s marathon, under some of the most brutal conditions ever faced for an international competition.
CBC streamed the race at the time, but a replay hasn’t been available. In light of COVID-19 and the fact there are no races or sports happening right now, World Athletics is releasing big races on YouTube — including the women’s marathon:
They also released the 50K racewalk, where Evan Dunfee won bronze.
I hope they release the men’s 5,000m, where Moh Ahmed won bronze and the women’s 1,500m, where Gabriela DeBues-Stafford ran 3:56 to smash the Canadian national record and the world championship record and came sixth.
Lyndsay recently did a Q&A with Endurance Odyssey about how she got into running, what her routine looks like and her experience in Doha:
SW: I had the great pleasure of watching your Worlds race with the Langleys and your coach (Boyd); it got pretty loud! I’d love to hear how the race played out in your words.
LT: You were there?!?! Oh my! Thank you for watching and cheering! I take such pride in the gathering at the Langley’s. I truly do. On race day, my jitters and worries morphed into sheer excitement. I genuinely love racing and I was so glad the positive vibes kicked in for this race. I spoke to Steve a couple days before the race. He told me to run 3:45-3:50 and so having that in my mind helped calm me tremendously. The gun went off and everyone more or less stayed in a group for the first kilometre. This was extremely settling. I had fears I’d be blown out of the water and so to find myself next to Charlotte Purdue for a bit was like, ok! I’m good! The first three loops were great. I was feeling very comfortable with the pace - which was a big confidence boost! My friends were also on course and so knowing I would see them every loop, was immensely lifting. At around 30k I was still feeling good! Every lap that I was upright and happy was not taken for granted! By the last loop, I still had a positive mind, but the heat was starting to get challenging to fight. My right calf was threatening to spasm and my stomach was flirting with cramps. When I got to this stage, I allowed myself to self talk (I try to hold off/save that that until the bitter end). When I hit the final turn around I was going to all of the places in my mind that would distract me from the heat and discomfort. By the time I saw the finish line I was reinvigorated. I don’t think I’ve ever felt that kind of personal pride in my life.
This poor high school cross-country team gets caught up in Canadian politics every Sunday, thanks to their Twitter handle
Cross-Country CheckUp, CBC Radio’s national call-in show, airs every Sunday afternoon. Canadians are invited to call, email and tweet the show to share their opinion on the issues facing Canadians today.
The show’s handle is @CheckUpCBC. Which is very close to @CBCCrossCountry, the Twitter handle of Christian Brothers College High School’s cross-country team, which is in St. Louis, Missouri. And they’ve had enough of getting tagged in conversations about gun control, the coronavirus crisis in long-term care homes and the mass shooting in Nova Scotia:
Host Duncan McCue tried to help them out:
That’s it for this week!
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Thanks for reading, and keep on running. Alone.
We’ll see you next week.