2021 Outdoors

[Grassmarket]

European Athletics’ Athletes of the Year named - Sifan Hassan & Karsten Warholm win.

https://european-athletics.com/news/...es-of-the-year

Jaz Sawyers was joint MC, a career in the Eurovision Song Contest surely beckons.

[treadwater1]

An up and down few years for KJT continue as she’s been somewhat forced to find a new coach

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/othersports/article-10095833/Katarina-Johnson-Thompson-parts-ways-coach-Bertand-Valcin.html

[LuckySpikes]

Good day for Scottish women on the roads on Sunday.

Over in Toronto Sarah Inglis won the Canadian Championships race in 31:59, taking 25s off her road PB. She said in her interview afterwards that she's aiming towards a marathon sometime this year and hoping to make the Comm Games Marathon next year. She has a 2:29:41 best but a 70:24 HM best so she's probably capable of a couple of minutes quicker over the full distance. In the end it was quite a close race with Leslie Sexton taking a huge chunk off her PB with 32:04. Ben Flanagan won the men's race in 28:45 from Luc Bruchet, 28:52.

At the Great South Run Eilish McColgan ran 50:43 for the 10 Miles - a European Record by 2s for what it's worth and taking 28s off Paula's British Record. There's so few 10 Mile races in Britain these days but there was many more 10 Mile races in the 60s and 70s than there was half marathons. After really suffering in Sapporo, great to see Jess Piasecki having another strong run in 2nd, 51:50, to follow up from her 32:01 PB in the Manchester 10k. I wonder if she's aiming to compete in the Florence Marathon again, where she won 2 years ago? That's on 28th November.

[trickstat]

Until about the '90s, 10 miles was the most common distance for road races. Since then, they have been very much usurped by the shorter 10k or longer half-marathon. I think most of the few that are left have either some kind of special history or a notable course. The Great South Run is a quick course, as long as the South Coast breezes aren't too savage. I think it's also the only 10 mile of the various 'Great' runs.

[LuckySpikes]

What a bummer! Yalemzerf Yehualaw's 63:44 at the Antrim Coast Half Marathon has not been ratified as a WR because the course has been found to be 54m short (9 or 10 seconds at that pace). So, the WR reverts to Ruth Chepngetich's 64:02.

But, Yehualaw doesn't have long to wait for another pop at the record - less than 48 hours in fact! She'll be facing Gidey (debut) and Senbere Teferi in the Valencia Half on Sunday.

[Grassmarket]

World Athletes of the Year nominees announced.

https://worldathletics.org/awards

[trickstat]

What a bummer! Yalemzerf Yehualaw's 63:44 at the Antrim Coast Half Marathon has not been ratified as a WR because the course has been found to be 54m short (9 or 10 seconds at that pace). So, the WR reverts to Ruth Chepngetich's 64:02.

But, Yehualaw doesn't have long to wait for another pop at the record - less than 48 hours in fact! She'll be facing Gidey (debut) and Senbere Teferi in the Valencia Half on Sunday.

Well Yehualaw beat the previous record with 63:51 but Letesenbet Gidey on her HM debut ran 62:52! To put that in perspective, that would put her equal 71st on the UK men's all-time list with Peter Fleming and Eamonn Martin (former UK 10000m record holder and London Marathon winner).

[philipo]

What a bummer! Yalemzerf Yehualaw's 63:44 at the Antrim Coast Half Marathon has not been ratified as a WR because the course has been found to be 54m short (9 or 10 seconds at that pace). So, the WR reverts to Ruth Chepngetich's 64:02.

But, Yehualaw doesn't have long to wait for another pop at the record - less than 48 hours in fact! She'll be facing Gidey (debut) and Senbere Teferi in the Valencia Half on Sunday.

all irrelevant now after Gideys fabulous half in Valencia... 62.51 for a great WR with 29.45 at 10 K or was it half way. amazing!! and Yehualaw beat her previous best.

[philipo]

i don't suppose that on this super parochial site, where what happens only concerns British athletics 90 % of the time , in all its slightly tarnished glories, we can get too many of the "fans" here interested in one of the very greatest performances in the history of the sport.

Perhaps they have not heard about Gideys half marathon run, Crikey i bet that McColgan got more huzzahs for her recent 10 mile run than this new fab world record. The fans could start a cosy little British Athletics Only Forum on their own.
I exclude from my comments, of course, LuckySpikes , whose comments about and knowledge of worldwide athletics is massively respected by all.

[trickstat]

Modesty forbids me from pointing who posted about this just before you did!

[Occasional Hope]

A landmark performance certainly. Can't you just comment on that rather than trying to pick fights with people for what they haven't said as well as what they have?

[MysteryBrick]

Posting about athletics is purely philipo's mechanism for starting fights.

[Ladyloz]

Or maybe these incredible performances are becoming all too commonplace on the roads that many of us are simply not that excited about them anymore.

[trickstat]

I am somewhat amazed that the majority of athletics fans here could hardly be bothered to comment on this outstanding performance.

Maybe some of them are otherwise engaged on a Sunday in October. Perhaps they were at a family gathering or on a long country walk or traipsing around IKEA or something.

[MBChristie]

Maybe people were recovering from celebrating Canadian Corey Bellemore, who broke who world mile beer record the day before in Manchester - 4:28 (Has run 3:57.20i without Beer)

[jjimbojames]

At the end of the day people come here to post about what they want to post on - if people don’t want to reply, life moves on

[trickstat]

That's true. I know there are times when I don't post about something because I don't think there is anything worthwhile to add. When you read of a performance, however outstanding, there are only so many ways you can say "wow" or "that's amazing" or whatever.

[Grassmarket]

Rule tweak for lane infringement - basically a single step is no longer an automatic DQ.

https://worldathletics.org/news/news/competition-rule-changes-november-2021

[LuckySpikes]

Common sense prevails! No-one is doing it deliberately and the advantage is negligible. It's always seemed an extremely harsh rule to me.

[LuckySpikes]

Japan has some fabulous female youngsters at the moment - Ririka Hironaka, Kaede Hagitani & Nozomi Tanaka have all run sub-15 for 5000 this year (aged 20, 20 & 21 respectively) and Tanaka 3:59 at 1500. Any of them would dominate in the NCAA.

But 18 year-old Seira Fuwa may turn out to be the best of them all. I first noticed her (and mentioned her here) in July when she ran 15:20.68. For an 18yo that was seriously impressive but what she did at Sunday's Morino Miyako Ekiden (AKA the Japanese Women's University Ekiden) was on another level. Heck, based on this, she might even be better than Hironaka etc already!

She ran the 5th leg, the longest leg at 9.2km. The Course Record for this leg from the previous 38 editions was 29:14. By no means a soft record - every team puts their best runner on this longest leg since it's where they can make the most difference. Anyway, Seira Fuwa ran a phenomenal 28:00 ... If she'd continued at that pace for another 800m she would have run 30:26 for 10km!!
The U20 WR on the track for 10,000 is 30:26.50. Finishing just ahead of her, Yuka Suzuki ran 28:59 (she ran a 31:37 PB on the track this year) and Narumi Kobayashi ran 29:28 (31:22 PB this year - the collegiate record). There's a few small ups and downs on this leg but the net elevation looks close to zero.

She's not 19 until next March and so will still be eligible for U20 records next year!

Someone put together a video of the TV coverage of her run - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZWLjAkkhIM (it starts about 15s before she starts; she's in the orange top). She got quite a lot of air-time because they knew she's a talent and it was clear from the first kilometre that she was doing something amazing.

[LoveSprints1]

Thanks for the link. That was an amazing run. Fuwa never stopped looking strong. She was like the Duracell bunny on turbo! Lovely, smooth technique and what a great talent!

[LuckySpikes]

LoveSprints1, yes, when she passed through 5km in 15:28 I thought there's no way she could maintain that pace but she did, even speeding up to sub-15 5km pace for the last 4.2km!

She has that strong forward arm action that's not very common amongst female Japanese athletes. For some reason - I don't know why - many of them have a very wide arm carriage and swing their arms right across their body.