Fast Women: AR for Weini Kelati in her debut
Agnes Ngetich lowers the 10K world record to 28:46.
Issue 274
Sutume Kebede and Weini Kelati set half marathon records in Houston
Early in Sunday’s Houston Half Marathon, Ethiopia’s Sutume Kebede and Kenya’s Hellen Obiri ran together. They split 15:16 for 5K and 30:28 for 10K. Kebede maintained her pace over the next 5K, hitting 15K in 45:42, while Obiri trailed by five seconds. Over the last 3.8 miles, running into the wind, both runners slowed, but Kebede held on well and won the race in 1:04:37, the fastest time ever run in North America. Obiri struggled in the closing miles but managed to hang on and take second place in 1:06:07.
Ethiopia’s Buze Diriba started off aggressively, going through 5K only two seconds behind the leaders. She slowed down significantly over the next 5K, and some time between 10K and 15K, she and Weini Kelati began running together. Kelati was debuting in the half marathon, and it was no surprise to see her start off aggressively, because that’s how she runs most of her races, especially on the roads.
The race for third between Diriba and Kelati came down to the kick, with Diriba (1:06:24) getting the edge. Kelati finished close behind in 1:06:25 and took 14 seconds off the American record Keira D’Amato set at last summer’s Gold Coast Half Marathon. “I can’t believe it. This is amazing,” Kelati said in her post-race interview. “When I was at the start line, I didn’t know what to expect, and halfway, I was like, ‘This feels pretty good, we are under the pace. I can keep going.’ And then the last half mile was pretty windy and I was like, ‘Oh, I’m just going to finish this.’ But I’m glad I got it.”
If you’ve followed Kelati’s racing over the past several years, you know she’s really good at hammering a given pace. She has especially shined on the roads, where she can go out hard and still have men to chase. The past two years, she has finished fourth at the USATF Outdoor Championships, missing out on a spot at the World Championships by one spot. She’s great in the 5,000m and 10,000m, but if she has a relative weakness, it’s her closing speed. I’ve long thought her best events will be the half marathon and marathon.
“I would love to get faster and faster in the half marathon and move up to marathons,” Kelati said after the race. It’s going to be fun to follow.
Because a few people have asked, I will clarify that Kelati will not be running the U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials. The qualifying window for the Trials ended on December 5. She couldn’t get into the race if she wanted to, and she clearly has other plans for this Olympic cycle. It would be fascinating to see what she could run for a marathon right now, but it will be even better once she decides to focus on the event. If her body can tolerate the increased training load, I think she could quickly become one of the best in the U.S., if not the best, just as she has done with the half marathon.
Ethiopia’s Mestawut Fikir took fifth in 1:07:36. Kenya’s Edna Kiplagat finished sixth in 1:07:52 and at age 44, broke her personal best from 10 years ago. Coming off her 2:22:17 marathon in October, Great Britain’s Calli Thackery had another strong run, taking seventh in 1:08:20, another PR.
It’s dangerous to read too much into what half marathon times mean leading up to a marathon, but that said, Makenna Myler was the fastest woman in the race who will be running the U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials. She had a good showing in eighth, running a big PR of 1:08:28. Nell Rojas was the next Trials runner (ninth in 1:08:52, a PR) and her strong run is a good sign that she’s over the injury issues that plagued her last year. And rounding out the top 10, Mercy Chelangat of Kenya and NAZ Elite ran a big PR, finishing in 1:08:58.
A strong half marathon three weeks out from a big marathon can be a sign that training is going well, but I’m not worried about anyone who didn’t knock it out of the park. Prior to winning the 2020 U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials, Aliphine Tuliamuk finished 19th in Houston in 1:09:49. Granted the two races were farther apart four years ago, but the point still stands.
In the marathon, Bosena Mulatie and Rahma Tusa of Ethiopia and Vicoty Chepngeno of Kenya were still together at 30K, but around the 34th kilometer, Tusa began to pull away. She won the race in 2:19:33. Chepngeno took second (2:19:55), and Ethiopia's Tsegaye Melesech moved up to take third (2:24:50).
Debbie Schöneborn was fourth in a PR of 2:24:54, which makes her the fourth-fastest German during the Olympic qualifying period, but only three athletes per country will run in Paris. (“So close. Massive PB, but I wanted more,” she wrote on Instagram.) And Peru’s Jovana de la Cruz Capani just snuck under the Olympic standard in fifth (2:26:49). She’s only the second Peruvian woman to get the standard, so she likely secured her Olympic qualifier. The top American finisher was Andrea Pomaranski, who finished 14th in 2:36:41. (Results)
Agnes Ngetich runs 28:46
Early on Sunday morning, Kenya’s Agnes Ngetich, 22, set a pending 10K world record, a mind-blowing 28:46, at the 10K Valencia Ibercaja. She became the first woman to break 29:00. Eleven seconds later, Kenya’s Emmaculate Anyango, 23, became the second, running 28:57. Their times were faster than Letesenbet Gidey’s 10,000m world record of 29:01.03 on the track. And Ngetich improved Yalemzerf Yehualaw’s 10K road record by 28 seconds.
Ngetich went through halfway in 14:13, which matches the pending world record Kenya’s Beatrice Chebet ran in Barcelona two weeks ago. And Anyango was right behind her. Ngetich began to pull away from Anyango around 21 minutes into the race.
"Honestly, my clear goal was to break the world record but 28:46 is beyond any expectations," Ngetich said. "When I saw 14:13 by halfway, I didn't scare, it just motivated me a lot to keep on pushing until the end. I have no words to describe what I feel now."
In September, Ngetich appeared to set a women’s-only 10K world record of 29:24 at the Brasov Running Festival, but the course was found to be short. So hopefully this one holds up. Up next, she’ll focus on the World Athletics Cross Country Championships in March.
Times were very quick across the board, with four women breaking 30:00. It took 30:26 to crack the top 10. Because athletes can now get their Olympic standards (30:40) on the roads or track, Great Britain’s Jess Warner-Judd would really like to know whether it’s chip time or gun time that counts. Her official time was 30:41, but her chip time was 30:38. (Race results | Race replay)
This next section is written by Charlotte Staudenmayer, a Williams College student who is helping me out. I asked her if she would be interested in writing some brief profiles about some of the Olympic Marathon Trials qualifiers, and she quickly cranked out 16 of them! I’ve included one of them below, and you can read the rest of them here.
Watching the 2021 Olympic Trials inspired Sara Lopez to earn a Trials qualifier of her own
Sara Lopez set her sights on qualifying for the U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials after watching the Track Trials in 2021 and hearing the story of Sarah Lancaster, an unsponsored athlete who competed in the 1500 while also working as a full-time lawyer. Lopez reached out to Lancaster on Instagram and asked her how she was competing at such a high level with a demanding job. “She was so nice, and responded saying that she had a coach and a club she trained with,” Lopez said. “It was really inspiring for me, and I decided to give competitive running a shot.”
Lopez then called her mother and told her she wanted to qualify for the Marathon Trials. “It was kind of wild at that point,” she said. “Because I had only run one marathon, in 2020, and I did the bare minimum. It was just for fun.”
But at the 2023 Eugene Marathon, she accomplished her goal, running 2:33:50 to win the race and earn her qualifier. The accomplishment was particularly gratifying after she struggled to make it to several marathon start lines due to injuries like a sprained ankle and a slipped disc.
Coming off of an 11th-place finish at the USATF 10K Championships in September, Lopez struggled with persistent shin pain. But she is now feeling healthy after adding in more cross training and focusing on recovery, strength, and fueling. “It’s been a roller coaster,” she said. “I would have good months and then something would come up, but now I’m running probably the most consistently I have in a while.”
Lopez did not run competitively in college. She ran track and cross country in high school and dreamed of running for BYU. She thought maybe she could train hard and walk on, but her senior year of high school, her family moved to Mexico City, and her new school didn’t have a running program. “I thought that was it,” Lopez said. “I was also working through an eating disorder at the time, which wrecked my relationship with running for a long time. I didn’t even think about running competitively again until I had recovered and healed my relationship with running. I wanted to run again just for the love of it, and to see what my potential was.”
She’s looking forward to using the Trials as a learning experience for future races. “As long as I’m healthy getting to Orlando, I’m happy getting to put myself in the mix,” she said. “I have a future in the sport and want to continue loving running.”
Read the rest of the Trials profiles, which include Abbie McNulty, Veronica Eder, Stephanie Sherman, Billie Hatch, Claire Benjamin, Ann Marie Pierce, Caroline Cole, Flannery Davis Love, Sylvia Bedford, Holly Clarke, Kaitlyn Peale, Lexie Greitzer, Amelia Keyser-Gibson, Elaine Estes, and Brittney Hall, here.
Other News and Links
In 2022, I wrote about Gabi Rooker, because she had recently set a 20-minute PR, going from 2:54 to 2:34, to qualify for the Olympic Marathon Trials. In 2023, she lowered her marathon time to 2:24:35, which gave her the distinction of being the fastest unsponsored female marathoner in the U.S. I was wondering when that was going to change, because not only is she fast, she has a great story. On Friday, she announced that she has signed with Nike. Rooker ran her first marathon in 2021, and now, at age 36, she is a professional athlete. (And speaking of Rooker, I love how supportive Mill City Running is of its Olympic Trials marathoners. And that their core principle is “The front supports the back and the back supports the front.”)
Sara Hall was originally scheduled to run the Houston Half Marathon, but race organizers announced on Thursday that she had withdrawn due to a minor injury. Her agent, Josh Cox, told LetsRun that she is dealing with some hip tightness and didn’t want to risk anything three weeks out from the Trials. The day of the announcement, Hall posted a video of herself running on a treadmill.
Reigning U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials champion Aliphine Tuliamuk struggled with injuries prior to her Trials build, but things seem to be on a better track for her now. On Saturday, she posted that she had just run the highest mileage week of her entire career—129.3 miles. She added the caveat that it included two long runs, because she did them six days apart.
Hellen Obiri of Kenya, who runs for the On Athletics Club, will attempt to defend her Boston Marathon title in April, but the B.A.A. has assembled a very strong field. This is partially because she has only raced in Boston and New York, but Obiri has only the 17th-fastest personal best in the field. The fastest is 2019 Boston champ Worknesh Degefa of Ethiopia, who has run 2:15:51. Emma Bates is the fastest American in the field, Des Linden will run the Trials-Boston double, and I wonder if others will commit after the Trials. With so many athletes struggling to get elite entries to marathons these days, I appreciate how deep Boston’s pro field is.
The field for April’s London Marathon hasn’t been announced yet, but reigning Olympic champion Peres Jepchirchir of Kenya let it slip that she plans to run the race. Jepchirchir finished third in London last year (in 2:18:38) but had to withdraw in advance of the 2022 and 2023 New York City Marathons due to injury. Most recently, she won the half marathon at the World Athletics Road Running Championships in October, with a 1:07:25.
Reigning U.S. 800m champion Nia Akins did a good video interview (11 minutes) with FloTrack.
After talking to Courtney Frerichs for last week’s Q&A, I also listened to her on the C Tolle Run podcast (a fun episode) and read her LetsRun Q&A to see what else she discussed. From the former, I learned that Frerichs is hoping her Park City home will be ready by April. And in the latter, Frerichs said that the communication around moving the Bowerman Track Club from Portland to Eugene was handled poorly. And she said that Jerry Schumacher had shifted the team’s training so that there were fewer recovery days between workouts, and that was one of the things she didn’t think was working for her. She also said that communication has never been Schumacher’s strong suit, and Shalane Flanagan and Pascal Dobert had previously helped with that. But Dobert left the team, and Flanagan is busy with her University of Oregon coaching role.
I appreciated this post from British mountain runner Eleanor Whyman-Davis about how gaining weight helped her run faster.
Savannah Shaw, a new addition to Tinman Elite, wrote about the ups and downs of her NC State career.
Mary Albl wrote about UMass Lowell’s Kenzie Doyle, who ran 15:27.42 for 5,000m, a massive personal best, in her indoor season opener in December. Doyle’s father, Bobby Doyle, finished fifth in the 1985 Boston Marathon, but he passed away when she was six. “My siblings and I wanted to carry on his legacy and kind of feel connected to him in a way through the sport,” she said. Doyle’s team is co-hosting the NCAA Indoor meet this year, so she really hopes her time will be enough to qualify.
Aime Alley Card has a new book out called The Tigerbelles: Olympic Legends from Tennessee State. It’s the story of Tennessee State’s all-Black women’s track team that starred at the 1960 Olympic Games, and you can get it here.
Additional Results
Carley Thomas of the University of Washington and Australia looked great in winning the mile at the Washington Indoor Preview in an NCAA-leading 4:30.38, nearly a six-second personal best. Later in the meet, she won her 600m heat in 1:29.80 but finished second to Nevada’s Halyn Senegal, who ran 1:29.16 one heat earlier. Nia Akins of the Brooks Beasts, an 800m specialist, finished third in the mile in 4:32.08, which is 10 seconds faster than she had ever run, indoors or out. (“Happy PR and happy to not do that again for a while lol,” she wrote on Instagram.) Canada’s Gabriela DeBues-Stafford was in the race, but she unfortunately tangled with Oregon’s Dalia Frias a bit past halfway, fell, and did not finish. DeBues-Stafford returned to rabbit the 3,000m, which she led through 2K, before dropping out with about 600m to go. Allie Buchalski passed her Brooks Beasts teammate Kayley DeLay in the homestretch to win the race, 8:55.46 to 8:55.89. (Buchalski said afterward that she was hoping to get a qualifying time for the USATF Indoor Championships, and she thinks her time will probably be on the bubble, so she might have to run another one.) Canada’s Briana Scott took third (8:57.52), and it was a good day for Australian collegians as Stanford first-year Amy Bunnage took fourth in 9:03.21. With pacing help from Canada’s Addy Townsend, Stanford’s Juliette Whittaker dominated the 800m, winning by more than six seconds, in an NCAA-leading 2:02.67. Roisin Willis won the 400m in 53.56 seconds and said she’s focusing on having more fun this year. (Results)
Sarah Pagano Buchanan won Sunday’s Naples Half Marathon in 1:12:09 and Allie Kieffer took second in 1:14:47. If you look at the age-graded results, 75-year-old Jeannie Rice, who ran 1:41:56, comes out on top. (Results) Last week, Kieffer said in an Instagram post that her Trials buildup has been bumpy, she isn’t sure she’ll race the race. And the part of her post about not being able to afford an MRI is infuriating.
Podcast Highlights
I really enjoyed hearing from Rachel Drake on the Run Hard, Mom Hard podcast. She is unusual in that she has qualified for the Olympic Marathon Trials and she’s healthy, but she’s not running the race. She is opting to run the Black Canyons 100K a week later instead, with the goal of qualifying for Western States. Drake said that after running 2:35:28 at the 2023 California International Marathon, the thought of jumping right into another marathon build felt draining, and to her, trail racing feels almost like a different sport. She said that when she was considering potential sponsors, her current sponsor, Nike, was the most pregnancy-friendly, and she thinks that stems from learning from their past mistakes. “It’s so unfortunate that so many women had to suffer previously,” she said, adding that she’s grateful to those who advocated for change.
I appreciated the chance to hear a little bit from Betsy Saina on the Citius Mag podcast. Track & Field News (rightly) ranked her the top U.S. marathoner of 2023, and though she tends not to get as much media attention, she’s one of the leading contenders heading into the Trials. If you prefer text, there’s a partial transcript at the link.
Jenny Simpson was on the Ali on the Run Show, and this quote made me laugh: “I’ve been known to say, ‘My forties are going to be wild. I’m going to have so much fun.’ Someday, when I retire, I’m going to be the fun version of myself that I keep telling people exists, like very deep inside, behind my competitive drive.” (She’s 37 now.)
Additional Episodes: Dom Scott on I’ll Have Another | Fiona O’Keeffe on Lactic Acid with Dominique Smith | Jenny Hitchings discussed record-setting as an age-grouper on Spring Snyggt (The episode briefly starts out in Swedish, but don’t worry, it’s in English.) | British marathoner and running influencer Phily Bowden on Relay | Paralympian Liza Corso (whom I featured a few weeks ago) on Legally Blonde & Blind
Olympic Trials watch parties
The Olympic Marathon Trials will stream live on Peacock from 10:00 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. ET, and there will be a tape-delayed broadcast on NBC from noon to 3:30 p.m. For those who won’t be in Orlando, I’m starting to hear about some watch parties. There’s one, organized by a member of the Fast Women Facebook group, happening at The Perfect Pint in New York City. Even without a Facebook account, you should be able to see the event details here. And if you don’t have a Facebook account, you can RSVP by sending an email to nycmarathonwatchparty@gmail.com. And Run Flagstaff is organizing an event as well.
Upcoming
The USATF Cross Country Championships, which will decide the U.S. team for the World Cross Country Championships in March in Belgrade, Serbia, take place on Saturday in Richmond, Virginia. The event will be streamed live on USATF.tv, and there’s a schedule at the link. You can see all the entrants here and sort by the race they’re in. Some notable entrants in the women’s 10K are Weini Kelati, Katie Izzo, Abby Nichols, Allie Ostrander, Emily Venters, and Katie Camarena.
Something that made me smile
I love that because the person behind this post couldn’t be at the Houston Marathon to support their partner, they hired someone else for the job. I really want to know how it went.
Thanks to some incredible performances, today has been an exhausting day. I woke up at 6:00 a.m. and would have stayed in bed longer, but who can sleep after hearing that a woman ran a 28:46 10K? And 14 hours later, I’m still staring at a screen. It’s for a good cause, though.
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Alison
Ok thank you both for your feedback!! I’ve had the same experience with DL, etc and I was wishfully hoping they would have a specific time hahaha
I’m also now wondering about that tape delay on NBC... hopefully it doesn’t delay it after that. 🫣
I'm excited to go out and watch the XC champs again this year!