....it's not 2000 where we have one 2:14 guy or anything...

David Morris and Joe LeMay and that awful Pittsburgh Marathon trial...damn. I was and still a big fan of LeMay - he lives around here, and I've raced him. He was one of the first (if not the first) pro runner to have a web presence. A true blue collar runner - working in his 100 plus mile weeks around 40+ hour job.

Some good nuggets from Chris Derrick.

RT: Do you do much ancillary work in the gym?

CD: We go three times a week with our assistant coach, Pascal Dobert, and our focus is definitely more on injury-prevention. We do the three pillars: general core strength, glute activation and strength, and shoulder strength and posture. Those are the three big things he focuses on. It’s mostly body weight stuff. We do some weights with the legs, but nothing too intense. You definitely need what we’re doing. If you’re going to run a lot, you need to make sure your base is solid and everything is working in concert, and Pascal does a lot of that. Some people will life heavy weights, but that’s not our philosophy.

How about the Half Marathon Championships yesterday?  That was quite the debut for Diego.  Fellow RA'er and local NCC graduate finished 12th in 63:21.  Got the qualification for the Olympic Trials!

Houston was remarkable. Estrada lead wire-to-wire. Jared Ward also ran mostly solo.

Hall ran 64 min in Arizona. Mildly interesting. Im sure its just a workout and trying to stay healthy.

Good Grief..

Kyle Merber in his own words:

Dinner with 3 (living or dead); who and why? 
At first I planned on bringing my three favorite authors and having a good conversation. But then I thought this would be a stupid opportunity to pass up, so instead I thought of bringing three super hot girls. Though it’ll be difficult to juggle so many ladies. So maybe I’d bring just one hot girl, say Taylor Swift, and two guys that will make me look way better and bring us together in mutual disdain. So it’s me, Taylor Swift, Kim Jung Un and Hitler. But my girlfriend is probably going to read this interview, and she won’t like that response, so it’d be her, Taylor Swift, my teammate, Travis Mahoney and me. He’s a good guy, and I think we’d have a fun double date.

Im not sure what Bekele is trying to do, other than cash paychecks. Now onto London? Jeeshhh

The Dubai field is suicide. I cant even imagine what its like to be in that environment.

Did you guys watch the live stream last night?  It came on at 8PM PST and I watched it for a good bit.  I was surprised to see Bekele fall off. Hayle really laid into the pace the last 800m and Desisa had no response.  Amazing how these guys run.  Also, the leaders all, at one point, CUT THE COURSE!  There was a 180deg turn with a curbed median in between each direction.  The leader (Robi) jumped over the median and the rest in the lead pack, I guess, just followed him.  Haile was commenting at the time and laughed and said "100%, there will be no disqualification!".  I couldn't believe it when I saw it.  With that much money on the line, what a risky move!

Well, circa 2005 or so, I was running the Crim 10-Miler in Michigan.  The elite men were GONE immediately but for awhile I was running with the lead women.  This one African woman in particular would jump every curb on the corners, even running through spectators, to cut distance off the course.  It was blatant, and it was not just a few feet she cut.  After the second or time she did it I warned her that if she did it again I would have her DQ'd, and she did it anyways.

So after the race I talked to the officials and turned her in.  She was DQ'd.  They told me after talking to her that she claimed this was standard practice over there --- if there was no physical barrier, they cut it.

I don't know how true her defense is, but IMHO in international races you need to learn the international rules.  They probably didn't DQ because the entire lead pack did it.  In the US I think it would be a bigger deal.

I wonder what would have happened if one of them had set a WR?  Maybe they did it because they knew they weren't running a WR and also knew they wouldn't be DQ'd?

Interesting question.  If a WR is run, they re-certify the course as run.  This is how Salazar lost the "WR" he thought he set in NY -- they re-measured the course as run on race day, and the start (?) had been moved from where it was supposed to be when the course was actually set up and so his WR was negated.

I would speculate that in a case such as this, they would look at the video and re-certify according to the off-course tangent...possibly resulting in a short, record-negating measurement.

This said, I did not watch the video to see the magnitude of the indiscretion.