Fast Women: McColgan, Monson battle in California
Rosemary Wanjiru wins the Tokyo Marathon and Betsy Saina is the top American.
Issue 226, presented by Puma
The British, North American 10,000m records fall at the TEN
On Saturday night in San Juan Capistrano, California, Eilish McColgan flew by Alicia Monson with 300m remaining in their 10,000m duel at the TEN and kicked to a British record of 30:00.86. In the midst of training for the London Marathon, McColgan broke Paula Radcliffe’s record, which had stood since 2002, by 0.23 seconds. And a moment later, Monson finished in 30:03.82, and shaved 9.35 seconds off of Molly Huddle’s North American record.
I enjoyed Sarah Lorge Butler’s moment of appreciation for Huddle’s record in advance of the race. Huddle’s mark, set in 2016, isn’t that old, but it was a good one. And Radcliffe’s record, set at the European Championships, probably deserved its own moment of appreciation. On the latest episode of Kara Goucher and Des Linden’s podcast, Nobody Asked Us, they had an insightful, nuanced discussion about the ways in which super shoes are changing the sport. And that is important to keep in mind when discussing all-time lists and the historical significance of these performances. No record is safe these days.
But even without super shoes, the all-time 10,000m lists were bound to be rewritten. It’s hard to believe, but the women’s 10,000m wasn’t added to the Olympic Games until 1988. And there still aren’t that many opportunities to run fast 10,000m races. Championship races are often tactical, and they tend to be held in climates not conducive to fast times. That’s why the TEN has become such an important event, especially for athletes who are looking to hit qualifying times.
All of the top women in the race had 5,000m PRs that suggested they were capable of running faster 10,000s, and on Saturday night, they had a great chance to do so.
It’s not easy finding rabbits to pace a 30-minute 10,000m. Eleanor Fulton led the race through 2400m, and then Josette Andrews, Monson’s On Athletics Club teammate, took over through 5,000m, which she hit in roughly 15:08, with Monson and McColgan splitting 15:09. After that, Monson led every step of the race, until the final lap. Monson may not have had a pacer on those laps, but in Monson, McColgan certainly did.
There’s no social contract in running that says that anyone who isn’t a designated rabbit is obligated to help set the pace in a race. But when they do take turns in a race like this, it feels more fair to me, as a spectator, at the end. (There’s a good chance McColgan would have outkicked Monson no matter what. Her last lap was a 64.87, compared to Monson’s 67.99.) In the second pack, Natosha Rogers, Fiona O’Keeffe, and Elly Henes took turns in front, and that felt like a more even race when the kick began. If nothing else, McColgan owes Monson a beer, or some cheese curds.
Henes and Rogers had an excellent race for third, with Henes getting the edge, 30:48.26 to 30:48.69. Both came into the race with 14:52 5,000m PRs, so it was clear they had faster 10Ks in them. But Henes’ time was a personal best by 83 seconds, the kind of drop rarely seen at the professional level. And Rogers ran a 21-second PR.
Though Henes, Rogers, and O’Keeffe (fifth in 30:55.05, a 77-second PR) had fantastic races, becoming the sixth-, seventh-, and 10th-fastest American women of all time, none of them hit the 30:40 World Championships standard, which is likely to become significant later this summer. As of now, only Monson, Elise Cranny, and Karissa Schweizer have it. Sixth-place finisher Laura Galvan set a Mexican record of 31:04.08. (Results)
Rosemary Wanjiru wins at home
Kenya’s Rosemary Wanjiru, who has been based in Japan since 2010, pulled off a victory at home, winning the Tokyo Marathon in 2:16:28. She pulled away from Ethiopia’s Tsehay Gemechu late in the race, and Gemechu hung on to take second in 2:16:56. A pack of six women broke away by the 15K mark, but many of them later paid for the quick early pace.
Betsy Saina, running her first marathon representing the U.S. and also her first since becoming a mother, let the leaders go early on. She wisely worked her way up throughout the race and finished fifth in a personal best of 2:21:40, which makes her the eighth-fastest American woman of all time. Anyone who is paying attention will have Saina, 34, on their list of 2024 Olympic Trials contenders. (For more of her story, she was recently on the Keeping Track podcast.)
At 20K, Lindsay Flanagan was only five seconds behind Saina, and though her place slowed, Flanagan did a good job of hanging on, and she finished eighth in 2:26:08. Manuela Schär won the wheelchair race in a course record of 1:36:43. (Top finishers)
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Emily Sisson three-peats at the USATF 15K Championships
Due to technical difficulties, most of the USATF 15K Championships, held at Jacksonville’s Gate River Run, wasn’t broadcast live. But it was easy to guess how the race was playing out up front, because it looked a lot like the 2021 and 2022 editions of the race. Emily Sisson took off from the gun, and no one could hang with her.
Sisson’s closest competition ended up coming from men’s winner Hillary Bor. The women got a five-minute head start over the men, and the first person across the finish line would get a $5,000 bonus, on top of their $12,000 first place prize. Sisson won the equalizer bonus the past two years, but the women’s head start was reduced by a minute this year. And coming off the Hart Bridge, with just over two minutes remaining in Sisson’s race, Bor caught and passed her. Sisson broke the tape in 48:26.
It was the slowest of Sisson’s three wins, but the temperature was in the mid 70s at the start—the hottest it’s ever been at this race—with 15-mile-per-hour winds. “I think it was solid,” Sisson told USATF.tv of her effort. “It always feels like rolling the dice a bit when I race in a marathon training block. My legs definitely didn’t feel as great today as they sometimes do, but I was happy I could ride it out, especially in this hot weather. I was hoping I could nab the equalizer but when Bor passed me, I had nothing in my legs. I just told him, ‘Good job.’”
Sisson is scheduled to run the London Marathon on April 23. She pointed out that this is her first time training at altitude for a marathon, but she said she’s hoping to end the training block feeling good.
A breakthrough day for Emma Grace Hurley
The surprise of the USATF 15K Championships was Emma Grace Hurley’s runner-up finish, in 50:04. The Atlanta Track Club Elite runner finished 98 seconds behind Sisson, and 71 seconds ahead of the third-place finisher, Jessa Hanson. And striking out on her own was not part of Hurley’s pre-race plan, but she followed her instincts.
“I told myself, ‘Stay attached for eight miles and then race,’” Hurley told Fast Women by phone, shortly after the race. But just before the mile mark, she found herself trying not to one-step her competitors. “So I decided, ‘You know what? I feel good, I may as well go for it. If it’s going to be my day, it’s going to be a day that’s hot and humid, being from the south.’ So I went.” At the 5K mark, Hurley was only 16 seconds behind Sisson.
Hurley, 25, has shown good fitness this season, running 8:51 for 3,000m just over a month ago, but by the five-mile mark, the distance, longer than she usually races, began to catch up to her. On some of the race’s tight turns, she glanced back, to see what was happening behind her. “At one point, I stopped being able to see other women behind me, I could only see Emily in front of me. I thought I was losing my mind,” she said. “I could hear cheers, but it would be when I was around the next block. I didn’t really believe that that was actually happening.”
Hurley and her coaches, Amy and Andrew Begley, knew she was capable of a performance like this one, but they didn’t necessarily expect it to happen on Saturday. “I don’t know that it changes what I think I can do, I just think that it affirms what I think I can do,” Hurley said. “Training has gone really well and I’m surrounded by people who believe in me and think I can do really well this year.”
Hurley graduated from Furman in 2020, having missed her final track season when it was canceled due to the pandemic. At first, she took a relatively standard post-collegiate route, working full time and putting running on the back burner. But then she started helping coach a high school team, and her co-coach saw her potential and helped her see that she wasn’t done with high-level running.
“I think that part of the reason I really even considered running again was I felt like I left a lot on the table in college,” she said. Hurley ran 15:57 for 5,000m while she was at Furman, won a conference title in the indoor 3,000m, and had a highest finish of 51st at the NCAA Cross Country Championships, but she never qualified for NCAAs as an individual.
Being from Atlanta, Hurley already had ties to the Atlanta Track Club, and she began training with the team in November 2021. The team’s elite and developmental squads include a lot of middle-distance runners and marathoners, but not many athletes who run the in-between distances like she does. “I’m always doing a workout with someone who is either way stronger than me or way faster than me,” Hurley said. “I’m never the one in the workout crushing it. I’m almost always going to be getting beat at the end, especially in track workouts, if we’re finishing with a 400m or a 200m. I’m always going to be pushed.”
Hurley works close to full time in sales at a small technology company, and she feels fortunate that her employer allows her the flexibility to make it to team workouts.
Next up, Hurley plans to race the Atlanta Women’s 5K on March 25 and the B.A.A. 5K on April 15. Does her success at this long race mean she might explore the longer distances more? “One of the things I told myself this morning was, ‘Okay, just get through this and this is the longest you have to race for another six months or so,’” Hurley said. “We might consider some longer things earlier than planned, but we’ll have to see.”
Minnesota Distance Elite’s Dakotah Lindwurm (52:03) and Annie Frisbie (52:24) finished fourth and fifth, respectively. And Allie Ostrander, who was making her debut for her new sponsor, NNormal, finished sixth in 52:37. (Free race replay | Results)
Additional News and Links
Brenda Martinez had her baby, Socorro “Coco” Belen Handler, on February 28.
TIME did a good Q&A with Elle Purrier St. Pierre on her due date.
Hannah Borenstein wrote a great feature on Italy’s Sintayehu Vissa, who runs for the On Athletics Club. Vissa was born in Ethiopia and ended up in an orphanage when she was young, before being adopted by Italian parents. Though her family was great, it wasn’t easy being the lone Black child in her school and her family.
Erika Kemp has signed with Brooks. She’s being coached by Kurt Benninger, and after the Boston Marathon, she’ll be moving to Providence, where her training partners will include Marielle Hall. There aren’t many Black American professional distance runners, so it’s pretty cool that two of the best will be working together. And I had to laugh at the anecdote in this Runner’s World article about Kemp trying to run 20 miles on the Boston course and going the wrong way. Kemp made her Brooks debut at the USATF 15K Championships on Saturday, and she had a tough day, finishing 14th. “It was 100% an inhaler day and that little life saver is sitting on the counter back in Boston,” she wrote on Instagram.
The results of the Rock ‘n’ Roll Las Vegas Half Marathon, held February 26, indicate that Sarah Pagano won in 1:13:09, Savannah Berry was second in 1:13:20, and Laura Thweatt finished third in 1:14:41. But this is one of those cases where the results don’t tell the full story. Thweatt said she was leading the women’s race early on, when she was directed to follow the lead men and take an incorrect turn. Thweatt estimates she went 300–400m in the wrong direction before turning around, and that she ran about 13.8 miles. Pagano said that she went the wrong way for a bit, too, but not as long as Thweatt did. Both still put in a hard effort, but they were sorry not to have a fair shot at racing one another.
Makena Morley said that the injury that took her out of World Cross is more serious than she thought, but she caught it early.
Other Results
Laura Muir (1500m, 4:03.40) won her fifth gold medal at the European Indoor Championships and Keely Hodgkinson (800m, 1:58.66) repeated as champion. Germany’s Hanna Klein pulled off an upset by outkicking her teammate, Konstanze Kosterhalfen, to win the 3,000m, 8:35.87 to 8:36.50. Belgium’s Nafi Thiam won the pentathlon with a world record 5055 points. Runner-up Adrianna Sulek, of Poland, also broke the previous record, with 5014 points.
Rider University’s Teagan Schein-Becker tends to be a mile/1500m specialist, but at Sunday’s ECAC Championships, she lowered her 800m time by almost six seconds, running 2:02.59. Had she run that time a week earlier, it would have qualified her for this week’s NCAA Indoor T&F Championships.
At the NAIA Indoor Championships, Addy Wiley won the 600m (1:29.47), 800m (2:10.93), mile (4:48.04), and 3000m (9:47.57), and she anchored her team’s winning distance medley relay. Wiley ran a total of 10 races, because she had to run prelims in all of her events. (Results)
Sierra DeGroff won the USATF 100 Mile Road Championships. (Results)
Kenya’s Sheila Chepkirui won the Paris Half Marathon in a course record 1:06:01.
Maria Langholz won the Newport News One City Marathon, and finished fourth overall, in 2:39:29.
Ann Centner won the Napa Valley Marathon in 2:43:08, and Kayla Knapp won the half marathon in 1:14:34.
Sheila Jerotich won the Fresh 15 15K in 51:01. Allie Kieffer finished second (53:08), and Jennifer Pope was third (53:38). (Results)
California high school sophomore Sadie Engelhardt ran 9:51.49 for 3200m in her outdoor season opener.
Natosha Rogers is ready to go all in
(This feature is sponsored by PUMA)
Making the World Championship team in the 10,000m last year was a big moment in Natosha Rogers’ career. And at Worlds, she had a solid showing, finishing 15th and running a personal best of 31:10.57. But she walked away wanting more.
Rogers says around that time, multiple people in her life suggested she might benefit from a change. “I had several people say, ‘Okay, you’re at the prime of your career, you’re in your 30s. Are you going to keep doing the same things you’ve been doing? Or are you going to capitalize on being in your prime?’”
After giving the decision a great deal of thought, Rogers, 31, left the Hansons-Brooks Original Distance Project, signed a contract with Puma, and joined their North Carolina based Puma Elite team in January. “It was a really, really hard decision, because I very much appreciate the Hansons and Brooks and what they did for me in that chapter of my life,” Rogers said. “But I was just hoping that everyone would understand that I was just trying to better myself and get to the next level.”
And after only a couple of months with her new team, Rogers already seems to have arrived at a new level. In her first race of the year, she ran 14:52.21 for 5,000m, a 12-second personal best. And on Saturday night, she took 21 seconds off her 10,000m PR, running 30:48.69.
When Rogers was part of Hansons, she did training stints with her teammates, but she lived in Denver while the rest of her team was based in Michigan. She ended up doing a lot of her training alone. Rogers grew up in the Denver area and has lived there for the past seven years, but at the end of the month, she plans to dive into her new training setup headfirst and move to North Carolina.
“In my 20s, I really did prefer to take my own path and have more balance in my life, so I wasn’t ready for the commitment until just recently,” Rogers said.
Before she signed with Puma, she made sure the company’s shoes were a good fit. “I need a very minimal, neutral shoe, and if I wear the wrong shoe, I get injured within one run, basically,” Rogers said. She found that Velocity Nitro 2 was perfect in that regard. She also trains in the Deviate Nitro 2, especially on long run days, and on workout days, she wears the Deviate Nitro Elite 2. The latter is the shoe she will race in when she moves to the marathon.
Rogers is planning to make her marathon debut in the fall, but because her track racing is going so well right now, she’ll run a full track season first. Part of the motivation to run a marathon this year is that she would like to race in both the marathon and track Olympic Trials in 2024.
Beginning in January, Rogers spent four weeks altitude training in Iten, Kenya, with two of her new teammates, Sarah Inglis and Fiona O’Keeffe. Rogers appreciated the simpler lifestyle she led while she was there. “In America, we’re so distracted with so many things,” she said. “There you focus on running, eating, and getting your massages, and that’s about it.” In order to get online, she had to walk to a coffee shop. Paying less attention to social media, in particular, helped her. And that’s one practice she tried to bring home with her. “I don’t go on there to scroll and look at what everyone’s doing,” she said. “For me, that’s not a healthy thing. I’m way too competitive.”
She hoped that more of the routine she adopted in Kenya would stick. “I fell right back into my old habits here,” Rogers said. “That’s how I know I actually need to move and I can’t stay here in Denver.”
Returning to the U.S. also drove home how much harder it is to train on her own. In Denver, Rogers doesn’t have access to a track, so she does her hard workouts on the treadmill. “It became a habit, like ‘I can control all of the variables here and know that the workout will get done the way it needs to get done,’” Rogers said. She has seen good results from treadmill training, but he also finds it to be mentally draining. “It’s definitely time to move away from that habit,” she said.
Rogers’ strong race on Saturday came after a couple of tough weeks of training. First, she was dealing with some calf pain, then she got sick. Rogers said via text on Sunday that she was happy to have run a sizable PR and come so close to her sub-30:40 goal, but the pacing didn’t quite go according to plan. Her pack went through halfway in 15:30, a little slower than she had hoped, and she had to do more of the pacesetting than expected. Though good 10,000m races can be tough to find, she’s hoping that with another shot, she can make another significant jump.
Podcast Highlights
Lauren Hagans (formerly Paquette) talked about her runner-up finish at the USATF Half Marathon Championships on Women’s Running Stories. And she’s officially back to going by Hagans now.
Cory McGee discussed rabbiting races on the Ali on the Run Show.
On the Freetrail podcast, Heather Jackson, who recently finished second at the Black Canyon 100K, talked about applying things she learned from triathlon and gravel racing to her ultrarunning.
I enjoyed learning more about TrailBlazHers Run Co on Keeping Track, including the ways in which they’re making their group runs inclusive.
Other Episodes: Starla Garcia on the Injured Athletes Club | Alison Mariella Désir on The Run Duo | Keely Henninger and Meghan Morgan on Trail Society | Corrine Malcolm on Women of Distance | Shelia Burrell on I’ll Have Another | Allie Ostrander on Singletrack | Jenny Hitchings on RunChats with @RonRunsNYC
Things that made me smile
It’s not often that running books go mainstream, so it’s incredible to see Lauren Fleshman’s Good For A Girl on an Amazon billboard in New York City.
Stadium cats at the European Indoor Championships in Istanbul. This is probably just a me thing, but I’d definitely attend more track meets if they were guaranteed to have cats.
Upcoming: The NCAA DI Indoor Track & Field Championships begin Friday in Albuquerque. The meet schedule is here, and the entries are here. This meet is going to feature some incredible competition. Watching live will require access to ESPN+. The live results will be here. And the NCAA is usually quite good about posting full race videos on YouTube shortly after the event. I’m impressed by South Carolina’s Şilan Ayyildiz, who flew home to Turkey to compete at the European Indoor Championships. (She ran a PR of 4:11.55 in the first round of the 1500m but did not advance.) She’ll be in Albuquerque as well, competing at NCAAs.
Both Molly Seidel and Sara Hall will race on Sunday. Seidel will run the Nagoya Women’s Marathon, and Hall will race a strong field at the Lisbon Half Marathon.
Thanks to PUMA for supporting Fast Women this month (go here for a chance to win free shoes) and to those of you who support Fast Women on Venmo and Patreon.
Have a great week.
Alison