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I saw Abel Kirui stop his watch after he crossed the finish line. I saw someone else do that as well. Plus on the start line, it looked like Emmanuel Mutai was wearing watches on both wrists.
Wikipedia says Steven Kiprotich is from east Uganda in the Rift Valley/Kalenjin area -- and apparently almost all the Kenyan runners are Kalenjin -- so probably it is not so much a coincidence, his having the same last name as Wilson Kiprotich.
It's a 5k. It hurt like hell...then I tried to pick it up. The end.
He looked as Kenyan to me as could be. That's why I assumed he must have emigrated there. If that's still in the Rift Valley, then he would have been raised almost the same as Kenyan, at least in terms of interacting with the landscape.
All last night I kept waiting for them to show the marathon medal presentation --- the most historic and distinguished facet of the Sumer Games closing ceremony --- but it never came. This confused me, as I clearly remembered the awards ceremony for the men's cross-country skiing 50k (the Winter Games equivalent of the marathon) being a feature of the Vancouver 2010 closing ceremony. Did the IOC decide to phase that tradition out? No, NBC just edited it out of their broadcast!
You get the politics of marathoning--Meb was upset that Ryan Hall was given an introduction before the race but he was not. I agree to some extent, while Ryan Hall was probably favored to beat Meb, Meb was the more accomplished runners as he has two huge items on his resume a first place at a major marathon (the NYC Marathon 2009) and a silver medal at the 2004 Athens Olympics. Ryan Hall is 8 years younger and going into yesterday was favored over Meb despite losing to him at the Olympic Trials, but his best finish at a Major Marathon was 3rd and his next two best marathon finishes at a major were fourth. Not bad, but those are not as impressive as Meb. However, in defense of the race organizers I think the common wisdom was to figure Meb was past his prime and that Ryan was in his prime.
It would seem that Hall suffered the same fate in the Olympic marathon as Phil did in the Crofton Kiwanis 10k: hamstring hindrance.
I thought it was a pretty big slight to Meb foremost because he was the only one in the field with an Olympic marathon medal. As for announcing Ryan Hall and not Meb, that was pretty bad to do considering Meb beat him at the trials.
Yes, but as I was pointing out earlier, NBC greatly slighted the very notion of the marathon by deeming the Spice Girls and British fashion icons to be more essential to their presentation of the closing ceremony than the marathon medal ceremony --- which they cut out of the viewing.
In the LRC Olympics prediction contest I finished 137 out of 2197. That's without updating any of my picks, either, while the Olympics were happening. That's not quite the 94th percentile.
Congrats to Joe on a valiant victory at Lounge Lizards. He relegated Rapp to runnerup, mocked McCollum mercilessly, and walloped Walser wantonly! However, congrats to me for establishing a course record that's evidently untouchable (it was the exact same course, right?) --- though I'm of course curious to know if Joe gave approximately the same effort that he did on 6/28/12, or if he used more restraint this time. I imagine that me blasting off so hard last time (at Leapin') set both Joe and Perry up for faster times, as they daringly kept after me during my 5:23 opener. That's too bad about the attendance this time, though (there were more runners in the 2nd heat of the CBRC 5000m track race!).
It occurred to me recently that I own a few course records. Lancaster, yes, and then two different Solomons Island courses, since Jingle Bell 2011 and Young Life 2012 were both new courses and I won both events. Then I believe there's also the Maxwell Hall 4-miler(ish) trail race course, as Vic's winning time from the previous year was over 2 minutes slower (and that was the debut Maxwell event, as it was snowed out in 2010 and, as the CBRC site says, "In 2009 we used Greenwell State Park; we had not yet discovered Maxwell Hall Park"). Then perhaps sometime I should email the organizers of the Crofton Kiwanis 10k to find out where my 2012 time stands on the all time (going back to the late '80s!) Crofton leaderboard (I know that my 35:30 is at least the fastest time they've had since before 2005 --- as far back as the online results go).
My race yesterday was inexplicably slow. I knew I was fighting only the clock, but I tried to push through and ignore the solitude. Yet I faded a lot after the first mile. I used Liza's mile markers, which according to my watch were all slightly over a mile from one another. According to her mile markers I ran 5:57, 6:14, 6:12, and the final 200m in 39 seconds. My final distance read 3.18. I was a lot slower than last time on the same course. I didn't have Perry to run with this time, but the weather was better and I tried to stay focus, so I wasn't thrilled with my finishing time. The only real excuse I can make is that I didn't do any purposeful taper or rest going into it.
I suspect the course may run slightly long, in which case DR's original time is stronger than implied.
Liza has posted the results on her official site (as a doc file), and I made an html version on my site containing historical results of her races.
Just a note about the female winner of the 10k today (she jipped Joe, but in his defense she probably set a women's course record by a couple minutes). I thought I'd heard her name before, so I snooped on Facebook and indeed --- she's the girlfriend of another notable runner: Brandon Demers! Perhaps I should've thanked her for evidently not encouraging her beau to show up today, as he was the one person who I most worried might spoil my day. Anyway, should they procreate, I'm certain they'll beget Olympic-class runners.
Exhibit A.
Exhibit B.
If you zoom in on the spot where the 10k course U-turn falls (setting the map to satellite for good measure), it's clear that in 2011 the U-turn fell just before that dirt driveway (on the left as you're heading south on Rt. 234) --- but that today the U-turn fell a bit past that driveway. I'm convinced that's why I had 6.27 miles this year as opposed to the 6.22 I ended up with last year ... and why I was robbed of narrowly breaking 36:00.
I believe your maps may be private, so we can't view them.
That can't be, I thought for sure that my maps were viewable to everyone in this group. Maybe it's because those urls represent my internal user profile view. Anyway, I just made a point to click those "publicly viewable" check boxes on each map.
I hope Joe will produce a revealing race report. There was a whole lot going on a ways back behind me during this race --- both genders included (the much anticipated Alison vs. Allison battle, indeed, yet neither stood a chance against a certain Towson running star) --- and I'd like to hear the full story from beginning to end.