Rupp’s 13:01 at BU shatters the 5k AR

Posted on January 17, 2014 by Jon Waldron

Last night’s crowd at the Boston University Track and Athletic Center didn’t come close to filling the place, but it was enthusiastic and appreciative of what was happening on the track below. Circling the oval with little apparent effort, the trio of Cam Levins, Galen Rupp, and Sam Chelanga cruised through 3k in 7:55, and it was clear that things were just beginning to get interesting. The cheering, which had been moderate through the first half of the race, began to swell with each successive lap of the 5000m, the evening’s final individual event.

I had arrived around 6:30 and taken a seat high up in the stands. Although it sounds stupid to admit it now, I had actually been looking forward more to the women’s 1000m, which had been billed as an American record attempt by Oregon Project athletes (and USA World Championship teammates) Mary Cain and Trenier Moser. I dunno, I guess I’ve just hopped aboard the Cain train, expecting the 18-year-old to do something astonishing every time she toes the line.

In the end, Cain’s race was good, but not spectacular. She eked out the win over Moser by a tenth of a second, after trailing/drafting the entire race. Cain’s time of 2:39 was far off Jen Toomey’s American Record of 2:34, but it was announced as a World Junior Indoor Record, and probably would have been about her ten-thousandth American High School record, if the USATF allowed pro athletes in high school to set HS records.

If my anticipation for the 1000 was influenced by Cain’s celebrity status as track’s most recognizable teen idol, my hope for the 5000 was much more primal. I wanted to see another member of my species run really, really fast. I was prepared to yell quite loudly, as was everyone else around me, to make sure that Galen Rupp and anyone near him at the time would have no doubts about what I wanted.

And I was not disappointed. With about 1600 to go (8:58), Rupp and Chelanga began ripping off sub-31 second laps, leaving the immensely hard-working, but increasingly mortal Cam Levins to fend for himself. No longer did it look easy; it looked like an all-out assault on time and distance. By now, everyone in the stands was into it, and the noise followed the two leaders around the track like a maelstrom.

With about 1000 to go, Rupp dropped a sub-30 200, and in a matter of a backstretch, had opened a gap on Chelanga. As he came around and hit four laps to go, the clock read 10:59. It was a foregone conclusion that he would be under Lopez Lomong’s old American Record of 13:07; the question now was whether he could conceivably run under 13 minutes. The crowd urged him on, and Rupp threw everything he had into the effort, but he was flat out and running 30-point laps now. He split 2:01-something for the last 800, finishing in 13:01.26 and taking nearly six seconds out of the Lomong’s time. Chelanga, who had looked for a while as though he might just have enough to beat Rupp, finished strong to run a personal best 13:04.35. Levins, a half lap back, finished in 13:19.16 to set a Canadian record.

Rupp thanks the crowd after setting the AR.

Rupp thanks the crowd after setting the AR.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So, once again, Salazar and his athletes had a successful visit to BU. There’s no doubt that the draw of having world-class athletes compete on a world-class track with a small, but very enthusiastic crowd has proven to be a great formula. With two more chances to see the NOP athletes at BU, I wonder how big this will get. I know as I was leaving the building to jog back to my car, I was surrounded by runners, and everyone was talking about how they couldn’t wait to get to a track and run some blazing intervals. If watching someone run fast can make us run faster, there will be a lot of PRs set this weekend.

Posted in Indoor Track, Pro Runners | Leave a comment

Short and Sweet

Posted on January 15, 2014 by Jon Waldron

BUTrack

Any hope I had of becoming an “iron runner” in 2014 (by completing all the USATF New England Grand Prix Championship road races) died an early death when the actual slate of events was announced. The first two events — the Amherst 10-Miler on 2/23 and the New Bedford half-marathon on 3/16 — conflict with the USATF-NE Indoor Track Championships, and the USATF National Masters Indoor Track Championships, respectively.

I feel a little guilty missing two important club races to careen around 200-meter banked ovals in overheated fieldhouses. I also feel a little embarrassed. Running fast is not a seemly activity for senior citizens. It’s a game for for high school and college kids, hardly a respectable pastime for an aging bag of bones whose speed peaked at the tail end of the Reagan administration.

So why do it? Am I so vain that I need the ego boost of being marginally faster than all the other grey ghosts haunting the masters meets? Is it the even greater vanity of earning victories by the simple expedient of outliving all your rivals? No and no, I say. There’s a much simpler explanation for why I’ll forgo the pleasures of a half marathon with thousands of runners for an intimate mile with perhaps only a dozen other rebels.

The explanation dawned on me as I was talking with Gordon over the weekend about his winter racing plans. He had a half marathon lined up down in New Orleans, the Amherst 10-miler, and of course, New Bedford. I was impressed that he already had a full schedule of long, tough races. That schedule represents a set of choices — choices about training, travel and, inevitably, what races to skip. I thought, too, about Terry, and the choices that he makes so that he can ski all winter and be at his best for the 50K American Birkebeiner at the end of February. He’ll do his long runs and track workouts, but no Amherst 10M for him!

At some point we all have to admit that the running scene, like the cereal aisle in the local supermarket, presents us with far too many incompatible options. At some point, you just need to decide whether you’re going to go with the Shredded Wheat or the Count Chocula. In theory, you could have both, but the result would not be a happy one.

I’m going to run my track races because one of the main pleasures I get out of running is the pleasure of running fast enough that I KNOW I can’t sustain it for very long. There’s something thrilling about the feeling that it’s only a matter of a couple of minutes before the muscles seize up, and that if you time it just right, total system failure occurs just AFTER you cross the finish line. If I’m healthy enough, I want to keep experiencing that for as long as I can. I don’t care that it doesn’t LOOK fast; it feels fast, no matter what the watch says, and that’s good enough for me.

For this winter, at least, let others run half marathons, marathons, and ultras. I’m choosing the mile because that’s a kind of running that I’m not willing to give up. I never cared that much for Shredded Wheat, anyway.

Posted in Indoor Track, Racing | Leave a comment

Slavic Studies

Posted on January 13, 2014 by Jon Waldron

I have a tendency to over-think simple questions and ordinary social interactions.

If someone asks ‘How’s it going?,’ I’m likely to give the question way more thought than it deserves and then launch into a meandering answer that leaves the questioner stirring their coffee nervously. It’s not that I’m under any illusion that ‘how it’s going’ for me is particularly interesting to others, it’s just that for some reason I’ve never mastered the formula for giving the right amount of information when asked a simple question.

I thought about this as I pondered the number of times people have asked me “what’s up with the blog?” It’s been a couple of years since I abruptly stopped writing my NNHS blog, but I’m always running into disgruntled readers waiting for the next installment. I really wished I had a simple. coherent answer, but it was complicated. I was sick, and when I got better, I found that my priorities had shifted. I was putting all my extra time into starting a Track and Field program at Concord Academy. I was confused about whether I was supposed to be an amateur journalist covering H.S. running, or an amateur runner keeping an online journal. I ran out of things to say. I was dissatisfied with the quality of my writing. All of these are true, to some extent, and all of them probably contributed to my hiatus.

“So what’s up with the blog?” I still don’t have a simple answer. I’m not sure what comes next, or even how long this will last. I’ve never been good about answering questions about my future plans.

That reminds me that one of my most embarrassing public moments occurred when I botched an answer to that very question. It was back in high school, and I was one of several students from Amherst Regional chosen to compete as a team on a TV quiz show. The idea was to have teams from different schools vie with each other answering general knowledge questions. At the start of every show, the host would introduce each of the kids, and ask them their plans for the future. This would prompt responses like:

  • “I’m a senior and I’ll be attending Georgetown University next year.”
  • “I’m a junior and I’d like to pursue a degree in Fine Arts from a four-year college.”
  • “I’m a senior and I’ve been accepted at Amherst College where I hope to study modern languages.

Simple, right? A pat formula for giving the audience a good feeling about these promising young academics.

But when it was my turn tell the world about my shining plans for the future, I didn’t stick to the formula and I blurted out “I’m interested in Slavic Studies.”

Now, I don’t know to this day why I said that. It was true I was taking Russian at the time, and I had read a few works by Tolstoy, Turgenev, and Dostoevsky, but I actually had no interest in Slavic Studies or any other kind of studies at that point. I wasn’t even planning to go to college, but I just wanted to say something that sounded erudite and plausible — something that would not invite any follow-up questions. Unfortunately, my lack of conviction (and practice) led me to stumble on the words as they came out, and instead of moving on to the next student, the host raised his voice in challenge. “What?!” he cried out in a voice much more agitated than his usual urbane patter. “‘Sloppy Clergy?!!'”

But I digress.

I don’t know where this will lead. All I know is that I like to write about goes through my head before, during, and after a run. I like to write about the changes that take place in a person’s life when they commit themselves to training. I like to write about what I feel when I watch runners strive for their goals.

My intention is to offer up a new blog post every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I hope that frequency strikes the right balance between actually having something to say, and having enough time to put it into words properly. We’ll see.

In the meantime, thank you for your patience. I appreciate having people who take the time to read what I write. I don’t know exactly what I’ll be exploring, and whether it will include Slavic Studies, or for that matter sloppy clergy, but I hope you enjoy reading about it as much as I plan to enjoy writing about it.

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