The Athletics Canada virtual marathon relay and the world half-marathon championships are both this weekend
Plus there's lots more to read, watch and listen to from the London marathon
Hello,
I hope you had a good long weekend, and got to celebrate thanksgiving or at least enjoy an extra day with great weather. It’s been my one solace as I hunker down in Toronto as cases go up: the weather has been October perfect.
This week’s issue has a lot of content coming out of the London marathon, a preview of the world half-marathon championships, a rundown of who is competing in Athletics Canada’s elite-only virtual marathon relay and the usual grab bag of links, news and podcasts to wrap up.
Oh, and two world records were broken this weekend. Runners are still finding ways to run fast, even as the second wave of the pandemic is various places around the world.
Let’s get to it.
Tristan Woodfine reflects on his London marathon breakthrough and did a lot of media this week
In last week’s issue, I recapped the London marathon, which included a 2:10:51 performance by Canadian Tristan Woodfine.
This made Tristan the second Canadian man to run an Olympic qualifying performance, making him eligible to be named to the 2020 Tokyo team for the marathon.
(Trevor Hofbauer was the first Canadian man to qualify. As the winner of the 2019 Canadian marathon championships, he will be automatically named to the team. The other two spot will be selected by Athletics Canada out of all qualified athletes. The window to qualify is open until May 31, 2021, and the team should be named shortly after that.)
This week meant a lot of media coverage for Tristan.
He was on the Terminal Mile podcast with Michael Rochus and I’ll Have Another with Lindsey Hein.
I’ll Have Another is an overview of Tristan’s life and career — a good one to listen to if you don’t know much about him. He talks about being a competitive triathlete and transitioning into running, his paramedic training, going all in on running, and what it’s like living in the rural Ottawa Valley and working with hi high school coach again.
Terminal Mile focused on his buildup to London and the race itself.
Doug Harrison from CBC Sports spoke to Tristan’s coach, Greg Kealey, after the race. Greg coached Tristan in high school, and Tristan went to him for guidance a few years ago. Greg has never coached an elite marathoner before, and the two collaborate of Tristan’s training:
"One thing that has led to his [recent] success and future potential was the belief in himself; that he was able to change his direction and environment [in 2017] and take chances not many athletes in his position would have," said Kealey.
"He is constantly looking for ways to improve. Being open to work on his form and open to suggestions has allowed him to stay healthy since 2017."
Kealey said the next goal for Woodfine, should Athletics Canada name him to the Olympic team for next summer, is to cut another "two minutes or so" off Sunday's personal best.
"I do think he would be able to run under 2:10 on any given day next year," said Kealey, "so that would be the expectation."
Tristan also got the Q&A treatment by Trackmith — he wore the brand when he ran London and is part of their amateur support program:
How did the race go? Did it feel unusual to race so far on a circuit?
The race went well, but I would say it was one of the toughest marathons I've ever run. Right from the start I just couldn't seem to get comfortable. In any other marathon I've run, I've been able to mentally check out for the first half and just relax. But this time I found that I really had to stay engaged the entire time or I risked falling off pace, I think this was in part due to the weather conditions. Going around the 2.1k circuit actually felt ok since we had chosen to do most of my long runs on a 1.8km loop in preparation for the race. We had also done a number of track workouts that totalled around 20k or so of work so that also made 2k loops seem long!
Tristan also spoke to Athletics Canada:
“Hitting the Olympic standard means a lot. It's been a dream of mine to represent Canada in the Olympic Games since I was 13 and this helps bring me one step closer to making that possible,” Woodfine said. “Also, I've had such amazing support from so many people over the years. I really wouldn't have been able to make it this far without that, so today's race was definitely for all of them.”
A small correction from last week’s issue: I said that Tristan’s 2:18:55 in Ottawa in 2018 was his marathon debut. I was wrong. That was his second marathon. His first was 2:27:55 in Rotterdam in 2015.
More stuff to read coming out of the London marathon
🚩Tristan wasn’t the only Canadian to have a stellar day in London — wheelchair racer Brent Lakatos won the men’s wheelchair race. He talked to CBC Sports about the chair he designed for London, how the race went in the cold, wet weather and how how h'e’s transitioning to the marathon for the Paralympic Games in 2021.
🍁 One Canadian had a rough day, marathoner Cam Levins. He dropped out around the 39K mark because the cold weather had gotten to him. He talked about his race with Canadian Running: “By the end, I was reaching for bottles and just knocking them off the table. Even through the race, I was squeezing with both hands to get anything out,” he said. “My body just slowed me down. I obviously didn’t handle the conditions well.”
😷 Runner’s World has a good article about what it was like for athletes to live in the bubble the race created.
🥇 World Athletics profiled the men’s marathon winner, Shura Kitata. It covers his mentor (Kenenisa Bekele), his idol (Haile Gebrselassie.) and his continued respect for Eliud Kipchoge. Kenenisa, who withdrew from the race two days prior, is a mentor for his younger countryman. Kenenisa gave him advice on race strategy that clearly worked.
🐐 Eliud Kipchoge proving that he was mortal with his eighth place finish continued to dominate headlines. His coach Patrick Sang spoke to NBC Sports about what happened and Eliud did an Instagram Live Q&A after the race, where he talked about what happened and what running means to him.
Two days before the race, the New York Times published a great profile of Eliud, but I didn’t see it until after.
This past weekend also marked the one-year anniversary of the INEOS 1:59 challenge and Eliud running 1:59:40 in an exhibition marathon in Venice.
📺 2020 marked the 40th anniversary of the London marathon. There are 10 men who have run all 39 previous editions of the race.
They did not let the 2020 edition of the race going virtual stop from from keeping their streak alive. All 10 members successfully completed the race on Oct 4. Canadian Running has their results.
The London marathon shared this video of the 10 men, who call themselves the Ever Presents. It warmed my heart:
Joshua Cheptegei broke the men’s 10,000m world record & Letesenbet Giday broke the women’s 5,000m world record on ‘NN World Record Day’
The pandemic has meant runners and sponsors have had to find creative ways to race. The latest was NN World Record Day on Oct. 7, a day organized by the NN Running Team with the intention of taking down two long-standing world records: the men's 10,000m and the women's 5,000m.
The men’s 10,000m mark was 26:17.53, which was set by Kenenisa Bekele in 2005.
The women’s 5,000m mark was 14:11.15, which was set by Tirunesh Dibaba in 2008.
Uganda’s Joshua Cheptegei was going after the men’s record, with Ethiopia’s Letesenbet Gidey going after the women’s.
Both races used wavelight technology lights and pacers to set the pace.
In the end, both runners crushed their respective benchmarks.
Cheptegei ran 26:11.00 to break the old record by six seconds and Gidey ran 14:06.62 to break the record by five seconds.
Cheptegei had two pacers, Matt Ramsden and Nicolas Kimeli, take him through 5,200m. Gidey was paced by steeplechase world record holder Beatrice Chepkoech, who guided the pace until the halfway mark.
Cheptegei is 24 years old and has been tearing up international races for the past few years. He’s competed four times in 2020, winning all four races and setting three world records in the process. He also set the 5K road record and the 5,000m record this year. He also won the 2019 cross-country world championships and the 10,000m world championships. He’s set to make his half-marathon debut this weekend (I have more on that below).
Gidey is 22 years old, and this world record is possibly her biggest accomplishment yet. She has an impressive running resume, though. She holds the world best in the 15K, having run 44:20 in 2019. She also came second to Sifan Hassan at the 2019 world championships in the 10,000m. And she won two junior world cross-country titles, in 2015 and 2017. I’m sure we will see more of her in the coming years.
You can watch both races in the YouTube player above.
Elites across Canada will be competing in the Athletics Canada virtual marathon relay this weekend
Teams consist of four members. There are categories for men’s teams, women’s teams and mixed teams. The marathon distance can be divided up any way the team sees fit, as long as each team member runs at least 5K. Team members can be anywhere in the world. The runs must take place on Oct. 17 and 18.
The contenders I know of are:
The Quarantine Queens: Kinsey Middleton, Malindi Elmore, Natasha Wodak & Emily Setlack
Rockin’ Rock Ladies: Kate Bazeley, Julia Kawamoto, Jade Roberts & Jennifer Baron
The Random Track Club: Matt Hughes Kate Van Buskirk, Madie Davidson & Paddy Birch
Gdynia Red: Ben Preisner, Luc Bruchet, Rachel Cliff & Catherine Watkins
Gdynia White: Justin Kent, Kevin Coffey, Kirsten Lee & Erica Digby
Three of the athletes who signed up will be racing at the world half-marathon championships in Poland this weekend, and their efforts there will count toward their team’s performance: Ben Preisner, Justin Kent and Rachel Cliff. I have a preview of the world half-marathon championships just below.
Athletics Canada has written three preview pieces about the event so far: one about the Quarantine Queens, one about the Rockin’ Rock Ladies and one about the BC Endurance Project teams.
I’ll cover the results next week.
The world half-marathon championships are in Poland this weekend
The world half-marathon championships will take place in Gdynia, Poland on Saturday, Oct. 17.
62 countries have sent teams, resulting in 157 men and 126 women competing.
The world half-marathon championships are held every other year. They were annual from 1992 to 2010. It was. 20K race in 2006 and 2007. They were held in Canada in 2005, in Edmonton.
The 2020 edition of the event was postponed from March to now because of the ongoing pandemic. The mass participation race that was supposed to happen alongside the elite race was cancelled.
Several countries, including the United States, Japan, Australia and New Zealand, chose to not send a team to this event because of COVID.
The Canadian team
The Canadian team is comprised of Rachel Cliff, Trevor Hofbauer, Justin Kent, Phil Parrot-Migas, Benjamin Preisner and Thomas Toth.
Rachel boasts a half-marathon personal best of 1:10:06, which she ran in December 2019. At the time, it was the Canadian half-marathon record, but it was quickly broken by Natasha Wodak and Andrea Seccafien over an impressive six-week period. At the beginning of 2020, Rachel was both the Canadian half-marathon and Canadian marathon record holder, but both records were broken in Houston in January.
Trevor is the reigning Canadian marathon champion, and one of few athletes who booked their ticket to the Tokyo Olympics before the pandemic began. His half-marathon PB is 1:03:02.
Justin ran a 1:04:20 in the time trial to qualify for this event. Justin has been making the most of his COVID summer, on July 1, he won the Canadian 10K virtual national championships.
Ben won both the Vancouver and Toronto half-marathons last summer. Ben’s half-marathon PB is 1:03:08, which he ran in Toronto in 2019.
Phil’s half-marathon PB is 1:03:56, which he ran in Houston in January. He was added to the team after he successfully appealed not being selected.
Thomas’s half-marathon PB is 1:04:28, which is from 2016. He came second at the Canadian half-marathon championships in June 2019, running 1:05:27 to finish behind Tristan Woodfine.
The fields are really, really fast, with world record holders in both the men’s and the women’s races. The big question will be how well the Canadians can run. The current women’s half-marathon record is 1:09:38, which was set by Andrea Seccafien in January. The current men’s half-marathon record is 1:01:28, which was set in 1999 (!!!) by Jeff Schiebler.
The men’s race: Can Joshua Cheptegei win in his debut at the distance?
16 men are competing with personal bests under 60 minutes, including the entire Kenyan men’s team.
All eyes will be on Ugandan Joshua Cheptegei, who just broke the 10,000m world record is set to compete. The 24-year-old has never run a competitive marathon, but he’s headed into this weekend as the heavy favourite.
Don’t rule out Kenyan Kandie Kibiwott. The 24-year-old has the fastest half-marathon time of 2020 so far (not that that means much, since there hasn’t been much racing this year). He ran 58:38 in Prague on Sept. 5th.
Men’s three-time defending champion (and current half-marathon world record holder) Geoffrey Kamworor chose to not participate this year because he is still recovering from being hit by a motorcycle this summer on a training run.
According to the website Nation, team Kenya wants to keep the title in the country for Geoffrey. Kenya is sending six men in total to race. In addition to Kandie Kibiwott, Leonard Barsoton, Morris Munene Gachaga, Benard Kimeli and Bernard Kipkorir will be racing.
The men’s race will be held at 12:30 p.m. local time, which is 6:30 a.m. ET.
The women’s race: A showdown between two world record holders
The women’s race has fierce competition. Both the all-comers half-marathon record holder, Ethiopia’s Ababel Yeshaneh, and the women’s only half-marathon record holder, Kenya’s Peres Jepchirchir are set to start this race.
Ababel Yeshaneh, who is 29, set the all-comers word record of 1:04:31 in February at RAK half-marathon in the United Arab Emirates. Her marathon PB is 2:20:51, which she set in 2019 at Chicago — she came second to Brigid Kosgei’s world-record run.
Peres Jepchirchir who is 27, won this event in 2016 and just set the women’s only half-marathon record of 1:05.34 in Prague in Sept.
But headline maker Sifan Hassan, defending champion Netsanet Gudeta and 2018 runner up and reigning NYC marathon champion Jocelyne Jepkosgei are all set to compete too.
Sifan Hassan just broke the European record for the 5,000m. The 27-year-old Dutch athlete completed the stunning 1,500m and 10,000m double gold at the 2019 world championships and broke the one-hour world record earlier in the pandemic. She also holds the world records in the 5K and the mile and boasts a half-marathon PB of 1:05:15.
Netsanet Gudeta set the women’s only world record at this event in 2018. But the 29-year-old from Ethiopia hasn’t had a notable result since then.
Kenya’s Jocelyne Jepkosgei has a 1:04:51 half-marathon PB and is known for being a fearless racer. She won her marathon debut in 2019, when she broke the tape in New York City. The 27-year-old came second in this event to Gudeta in 2018.
I also want to shout-out Finland’s only runner, 43-year-old Annemari Kiekara. She last competed in this event in 1998. She’s since had three children and battled hamstring injuries, according to the Olympic Channel, but she’s now healthy and competing at an international level again. World Athletics published a nice profile of Annemari last week — she’s not ruling out a Tokyo 2020 appearance.
The women’s race will be at 11 a.m. local time, which is 5 a.m. ET.
Strides: Other stuff to listen to, watch and know about
🇯🇵 The 2021 Tokyo marathon has been postponed from its usually early March date. Instead it will take place on Oct. 17, 2021 to give the mass participation race the best chance of actually happening. London previously announced that it is moving from its standard April date to Oct. 4, 2021. This means Boston is the only world major still set for the spring, but they haven’t opened registration yet. I won’t be surprised if they announce 2021 will be elite-only or also move to a fall 2021 date and cross their fingers the world is safe enough we can have mass participation events by then.
🥇 CBC Sports put together an oral history of how Donovan Bailey became the fastest man alive in 1996, when he ran 9.84 to set the 100m world record and win Olympic gold.
📖 Win at All Costs by Matt Hart came out this week. I read it, and it’s a good overview of what happened with Alberto Salazar and the Nike Oregon Project, and how much cheating went on — and how haphazard and scientifically unsound so much of it was. People well-versed in the story won’t learn much, but there are a lot of new details that fill the story out. People who only know the outline of what happened will learn a lot.
🇺🇸 Rory Linketter got his American citizenship, and is now a dual Canadian-American citizen. Before this, he was a permanent resident of the States. He got his citizenship so he could vote, according to an Instagram post. He’ll still represent Canada internationally.
🌟 Los Angeles runner Michael Agyin wrote a piece for Runner’s World about what it’s like to run while being deaf. It’s a good reminder about how we can make running more inclusive, in so many different ways.
👟 Please enjoy how entering a race worked in 1980:
That’s it for this week!
Run the North covers Canadian running and running stuff Canadians might be interested in.
You can subscribe below:
It comes out on Mondays, except when Monday is a holiday, like this week. Then it comes out on Tuesday.
Thanks for reading. Stay safe. Keep on running.
I’ll see you next week.