Fast Women: Nikki Hiltz earns their first Diamond League win
A look at Justine Fédronic's journey from Olympian to recreational runner.
Issue 369
In Brussels, Nikki Hiltz times their kick just right
Without Faith Kipyegon or Gudaf Tsegay in the field, the 1500m at the Brussels Diamond League meet felt a bit more unpredictable than it often does. The pre-race favorite was probably Kenya’s Nelly Chepchirchir, who was undefeated this year and had notched three Diamond League wins earlier in the season.
The pace lights were set to 3:54.75, which is tame by Diamond League standards, but only Australia’s Linden Hall went with the pacers and the lights. With a lap to go, Hall led by 2.4 seconds. But running alone, she was vulnerable, especially with Chepchirchir and Nikki Hiltz leading the chase pack.
In the end, the race played right into Hiltz’s hands. They ran their final 400m in 60.7 seconds, getting faster each 100m, and passed Hall with 30 meters to go, running 3:55.94 to win. Hall took second (3:56.33), and Chepchirchir was third (3:57.35).
Hiltz is the first American runner to win a Diamond League women’s 1500m since Shelby Houlihan did so in 2018. They were only 0.61 off of their personal best, and they’ve now run between 3:55.94 and 3:56.10 in their last three races. It seems like a breakthrough is coming.
Hiltz’s post-race comments made it unclear whether they will race at the Diamond League final on Thursday. When they spoke to FloTrack, it sounded like Zurich was a go, but when they spoke to Citius Mag and other reporters, they said they were still deciding and expressed disappointment that the race would have pace lights and rabbits. “I ask myself the question: Do I want to be race sharp or maybe get in a couple more workouts?” they said.
I was really impressed by Great Britain’s Laura Muir, who ran her best race of the season by far to take fourth in 3:57.63. After a long injury layoff, she’s starting to look like herself again. Heather MacLean finished 10th in 4:00.54.
The race was a bit of a bummer as Ethiopia’s Freweyni Hailu, Sinclaire Johnson, and Portugal’s Salomé Afonso all got tangled up around halfway. Hailu and Afonso both dropped out, with Hailu looking pretty beat up. Johnson finished 12th of 12 in 4:18.92. In an Instagram post, she said she ended up needing four stitches in her thigh, but she’s doing okay. (1500m replay)
It’s understandable that Kenya’s Agnes Jebet Ngetich wanted to take a stab at the 5,000m world record of 13:58.06 in Brussels. Seven weeks earlier, she PRed by 24 seconds and ran 14:01.29. What was three more seconds? But at July’s Prefontaine Classic, Ngetich had Beatrice Chebet to chase the entire way, with additional competition from Gudaf Tsegay. On Friday, she was already in the lead by the mile mark, and racing pace lights just isn’t the same. She fell off pace in the second half of the race and though she lost a lot of ground, she held off the chase pack to win in 14:24.99.
Ethiopians Likina Amebaw (14:31.51) and Aleshign Baweke (14:31.88) took second and third, and Josette Andrews competed well to take fourth (14:33.16). Andrews said afterward that she considered this race good practice for the first round of the 5,000m at the world championships. And she indicated on Instagram that she plans to compete in the Diamond League final.
Spain’s Marta García (fifth, 14:33.40) and Belgium’s Jana Van Lent (10th, 14:37.47) set national records. Weini Kelati (11th, 14:37.77) and Karissa Schweizer (13th, 14:39.30) ran season’s bests, with Schweizer running her best race of the year by far. (5,000m replay)
Meet organizers also tested out a new event, the mile steeplechase, in Brussels. It certainly has the potential to be a highly entertaining event, but I am not convinced that the potential risks are worth it. I understand the math the organizers might have done to determine that they should set the pace lights to 4:25.00, but that proved to be way too ambitious.
Val Constien paced through 400m in 64.9 seconds, and even just watching her try to go fast enough to stay out of Winfred Yavi’s way had me holding my breath a little. Bahrain’s Yavi slowed throughout the race and won in 4:40.13. Running this as a paced time trial was fine, but I think adding high stakes and a pack of runners could make the event really dangerous. People already suffer serious injuries in the 3,000m steeplechase. Plus the steeplechase currently fills the distance gap between the 1500m and the 5,000m.
Because the event is new, I don’t really have a sense of what a good time in the mile steeplechase is, but I was really impressed by Angelina Ellis, who finished second in 4:46.74. (Brussels Diamond League results)
Keely Hodgkinson and Doris Lemngole earn decisive wins on a wet day in Lausanne
Diamond League meets generally provide a great opportunity for the world’s best athletes to run fast, but Mother Nature did not get the memo in Lausanne, Switzerland, on Wednesday evening. Portions of the Athletissima meet took place in heavy rain, with temperatures in the 60s.
Four days after running 1:54.74 in her first race back after a long layoff, Great Britain’s Keely Hodgkinson won the 800m convincingly, running a meet record of 1:55.69. Despite missing most of the year, she will go into the world championships as a heavy favorite. (800m replay)
Behind her, Switzerland’s Audrey Werro ran a strong race to take second (1:57.34), Georgia Hunter Bell was third (1:57.55), and France’s Anaïs Bourgoin was fourth (1:58.43). I expected Botswana’s Oratile Nowe (fifth, 1:58.63) and South Africa’s Prudence Sekgodiso (sixth, 1:58.76) to be two of the top challengers here, but they struggled a bit. Addy Wiley was the only American in the field and she finished ninth of nine, in 1:59.64.
While the conditions were wet during the 800m, they looked truly miserable during the steeplechase. Kenya’s Doris Lemngole, 23, will probably remember her first Diamond League meet for a long time. The University of Alabama junior began to gap the field around 1K in. This should have been a good battle with 20-year-old Sembo Almayew of Ethiopia, but Almayew hung back in the nasty conditions and Lemngole decided she wasn’t going to wait around.
The collegiate season gave Lemngole plenty of front-running experience, and she made this Diamond League race look like the NCAA final, winning in 9:16.36. Almayew closed well and finished second in 9:20.39. Everyone’s times were affected by the conditions, but Olivia Markezich (third, 9:20.73) and Great Britain’s Elise Thorner (fourth, 9:21.74) came the closest to their PRs.
Courtney Wayment took fifth (9:26.89), Gabbi Jennings finished 10th in 9:51.03, and I didn’t see what happened, but Val Constien was unable to finish the race. She was clearly okay, though, as two days later, she returned to rabbit Winfred Yavi in Brussels.
Lemngole’s post-race comments made it sound like she is planning to race cross country for Alabama this fall, despite the fact that she will be getting a late start due to worlds. I hope she gets or has gotten a break at some point. (Steeplechase replay | Lausanne Diamond League results)
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Running Over Time
Last week, I mentioned in an Instagram story that I’ve been thinking about the ways in which people’s relationships with running change over time. A lot of the stories I cover are about the people who are the outliers—people who are at the top of their game, those who are running PRs as masters athletes, and those with unlikely comeback stories. But I’ve been thinking about people who used to be fast (which is a relative term) and now aren’t. Or people who consider themselves to be runners but aren’t able to run anymore.
What’s it like to go from leading the pack to being at the middle or the back of it? Or to continue to love the sport despite not being able to do it? Anyone who is fortunate enough to run for a long time will go through many different phases in their relationship with running. And this is clearly a relatable topic because I heard back from more than 200 people.
I originally thought I might be able to cover what I wanted to write about in one article, but as the responses rolled in, I realized it was going to take some time to do this topic justice. I still haven’t quite mapped out my entire strategy for covering many of the themes that emerged in people’s responses, but I’m hoping it will become clear as I have more conversations.
In the meantime, I wanted to share some of Justine Fédronic’s story. How does one go from being a 2016 Olympian to becoming a “happy occasional jogger” who never races and now lacks competitive drive? Consider this part one in a series.
After stepping away from pro running, Justine Fédronic enjoys the sport her way
Justine Fédronic, 34, first used running as a way to connect with other kids. She was born in Germany to a French-Caribbean father and Hungarian mother. She lived in France until age six, when her family moved to California. No one in her family spoke English at the time, but chasing her classmates on the playground at recess did not require much talking.
During middle school, Fédronic’s PE teachers recognized her talent and encouraged her to go out for the track team. She rarely attended practice, but by eighth grade, she could break 60 seconds in the 400m. A high school coach saw her run and encouraged her parents to have her go out for cross country in ninth grade. He explained to them that college is expensive in the U.S., but running could be her ticket to an athletic scholarship.
Fédronic wanted to play volleyball, but on the first day of high school cross country practice, her parents decided she was going. “My dad actually dragged me in the car, kicking and screaming, and I cried,” Fédronic told Fast Women. She enjoyed aspects of the experience more than she expected, though. Her team became a second family, and as a highly competitive person, winning was addictive.
Fédronic’s success came quickly, but so did the injuries. In her first season of running, she had three bone stress injuries, and that kicked off an injury cycle that would last through the end of her professional running career. “One of the things I was blessed with, which was part of my downfall, too, is that I’m really responsive to training,” she said. “So I get back in shape really fast, and I’d start competing probably before my body was ready. I had a well-meaning high school coach who was really excited to coach us, but I don’t know that we had all the information and guidance that would have been good for my long-term health and development.”
In retrospect, Fédronic believes she was struggling with REDs, but the term had not yet been coined. She was also anemic, but she didn’t have a lot of nutritional guidance, and she had no idea she was underfueling for her level of activity.
In spite of it all, Fédronic had a highly successful high school career and went on to Stanford, where the mix of success and injuries continued. It didn’t help that she had a different coach nearly every year she was at Stanford, and they couldn’t always figure out where she fit into the training as a cross country runner who was also on the 4x400m relay. “At no point in my college career did I think that the situation I was in was not good for me,” she said. “I was just really driven to get better and wanted to trust whatever coaches were telling me to do.”
Sometimes that meant training and racing through injuries. She remembers doing a workout before regionals one year and limping between reps, but her coaches didn’t want her to get an MRI, in case it showed something that would take her out for the season. “As you have some space from your career, you start to digest some things and realize that they were not okay,” she said. “But at the time, you normalize them, because you have to.”
Fédronic also dealt with significant mental health struggles while she was at Stanford, but she didn’t feel like telling anyone was an option. She finds it encouraging that the current generation of young athletes have felt safer opening up about their experiences.
During her fourth year, Chris Miltenberg, who is now at UNC, took over the program, and his conservative coaching style was a good fit for her. “I just needed consistency at that point,” she said. “I don’t think we ever did anything really hard at practice, but the only magic in running, really, is just stacking decent days. I remember at one point feeling like I could beat anyone. And to have someone who was excited by my practice performances and positive had a big influence on me, because some of my previous experiences were more fear-based.”
That spring, she PRed by two seconds in the 800m at the 2013 NCAA Championships and finished third, and suddenly professional running was a possibility. She wasn’t a U.S. citizen at the time, so she began looking into representing France. Soon after, she was racing at the Paris Diamond League meet, where she ran a personal best of 2:00.97.
Fédronic returned to Stanford for a fifth year, and in her final college race, she was hoping to anchor her team to a win in the distance medley relay at the 2014 NCAA Indoor Championships, but she was outkicked by Arkansas’ Dominique Scott and finished second. Few people knew it at the time, but Fédronic was racing with a fractured rib. “They would just slap a Lidoderm patch on me,” she said. “I was in so much pain, but my team was really counting on me. It was a really mixed bag of emotions.”
Fédronic had no outdoor eligibility remaining, so she began running professionally during her final semester at Stanford. While she was performing well, she was still running through injury. And being a U.S.-based French athlete was lonely at times. Her coaches and training partners were often working off of a different schedule, and she attended many meets solo.
After college, she moved to Eugene, Oregon, to join Team Run Eugene, which was coached by Ian Dobson. She enjoyed the training environment, and it’s where she met her fiancé, Isaac Updike, though they didn’t start dating until her pro career was over. But most of the time she was in Eugene, she was rehabbing a torn hamstring. When the physical therapist she was working with got hired by the Brooks Beasts, she began making regular trips to Seattle to work with him.
At the time, the Beasts’ coach, Danny Mackey, also coached some non-Brooks athletes. He offered to work with her, so at the end of 2015, she moved to Seattle. She remembers her last workout before leaving Eugene. She ran 4 x 800m at 6:00 pace, and it was a major struggle.
Mackey and Fédronic had their work cut out for them, but his coaching was a good fit for her. “We did a lot of athletic work and drills and mechanics, and I lifted for real for the first time. No one had ever taught me how to lift before,” she said. She broke 2:00 for the first time, running 1:59.86, finished second at the French Championships, and made the 2016 Olympic team. “That was a really quick turnaround from being in absolutely miserable condition in December to making an Olympic team,” she said.
But the experience was still very lonely at times. When she competed at France’s Olympic Trials, It felt like everyone else was there with an entourage, while she just had her grandmother in the stands, plus members of her club team, who she did not see often. Two days before the meet, her knee swelled up. But by then, she had become a pro at racing through pain.
Fédronic remained injured during the buildup to the Games. By the time she arrived on the starting line in Rio, the longest continuous run she could do was 15 minutes. She finished fifth in her opening round heat, running 2:02.73.
“It was really bittersweet,” she said. “I was also in an unhealthy relationship at the time and experiencing some things in parallel. It was a really difficult period of my life. I think we all build this up in our heads, like if you do the thing that everyone says you should be aiming for, you’re going to be happy, you’re going to be financially secure. But after the Games, I was just exhausted and depressed, and now I had a multitude of other health stuff to heal.”
Nike began sponsoring Fédronic in the summer of 2014, but as a European athlete, she made significantly less than her American coaches thought she would. She was racing in Diamond League meets and some of the contract offers she received were around $10,000. Nike is also known for its reduction clauses, which hit her hard as an injury-prone athlete. Because she was hurt for most of 2015, her contact was reduced by 50 percent. Leading up to the Olympics, she had roughly $500 in savings, which added to her stress.
In 2017, Fédronic had a good indoor season, but Nike chose not to take her option year. “All of a sudden, I was in this position where I was an Olympian, I had PRed indoors, and I had no income from running,” she said.
Though she was training with a Brooks-sponsored team, the brand was not interested in signing her. She had income and support from Roka, the eyewear brand, in 2017, but for the remainder of her professional career, she was unsponsored. She loved the athletes she was training with, but it was difficult and disheartening to train alongside them with much less support.
“My driver was that I still really wanted it and I thought I could do it, and it was worth it because of that,” she said. “But I think that’s where these layers of exhaustion started to come in.”
Throughout her professional running career, Fédronic worked part-time jobs to help make ends meet. She nannied and babysat, coached, worked as a fitness model, worked at a tea shop, was a receptionist at a gym, taught kindergarten STEM and trained adults to do the same, she took on writing gigs, and made commissioned wood art, among other things.
The more she had to work, the harder it was to make her schedule fit with the team’s training. In 2020, while teaching others about design thinking and how if things don’t work, you adjust, she realized she wasn’t doing that in her own life. “I decided to [test out] not going to practice,” she said. “I think it surprised everyone at the time, because I’d actually had a good training block. And I think no one really believed me.”
Once she gave herself permission to step away from the all-encompassing lifestyle of a professional athlete, she felt much lighter. She initially thought she might just take the 2020 season off, while races were canceled due to Covid, but she found that her heart wasn’t fully in it anymore. And then she was rear-ended while driving twice in two weeks and got a serious concussion, which was challenging but “helped rip the Band-Aid off” by forcing her to take a step back.
For a while, she wanted nothing to do with the sport. “I just felt like I had to heal my heart and mind,” she said. “We all love this sport so much and there were some really beautiful times, but it is a rollercoaster of heartbreak and joy. And, for me, not having the resources was exhausting.”
But being in a relationship with a fellow athlete and having close friends who were still competing eventually brought her back. “The first time I went to a track meet again, I walked into the hotel lobby in Eugene, saw all the agents, and had a panic attack,” she said. “I hadn’t told anyone I had retired and people were just confused. They figured I was hurt again. I had to run away and go cry on a random street in Eugene.”
Now she tries to be the support person for others that she wishes she had had during her career. “Isaac has this longevity in his career because he has a much more relaxed approach to everything than I did,” she said. “Sometimes it’s really jarring for me to be with his family and friends in the stands, because they have this unconditional awe and love for him. If he doesn’t make a team, immediately they’re like, ‘Wow, we’re so proud of him for trying.’ And I didn’t necessarily have that experience at all. The expectation was that if you’re going to do this, you have to be world class at it or you’re wasting your time.”
Fédronic estimates that she now runs about eight miles a week and exercises mostly so that she can keep up with her active friends on weekends. She says she never really loved continuous running, so now she often does what she calls “stride walks,” alternating between doing strides and walking for recovery, to satisfy her desire to run quickly.
“I just try to reconnect to how my running felt when I was a kid and I was running on the playgrounds and the joy of having power and strength in your own body and being outside and seeing beautiful things.”
Fédronic retired from professional running partially so she could save her relationship with the sport and enjoy it on her own terms. “There are a lot of versions of running that are all equally valid,” she said. “And I think when we’re deep in it, we sometimes forget that. For so many years, I took great pride in being known as tough, gritty and resourceful, which meant that I often held myself to those standards even when they weren’t in my best interest.
“I think for a long time I conflated pivoting with giving up. I ‘retired’ from one version of my running and pivoted to a version that serves me in a happier, healthier way. Do I still think I had untapped potential? Absolutely. But that’s okay.”
Fédronic also wanted to retire before she did too much damage to her body. Her father was a professional figure skater, which wore down his joints. She wanted to avoid suffering a similar fate. Now she has no desire to push herself through pain, and she’s gone from being extremely competitive to feeling like she doesn’t need to prove herself athletically in any way.
Since retiring, Fédronic has remained involved in the sport professionally. She has worked as an arts and culture coordinator for Janji for several years. From 2023 to 2024, she served as Oiselle’s community and athlete partnerships manager, and most recently, she has taken over as the community impact and partnerships manager for For All Mothers+. She sees it as an opportunity to do better by the current generation of athletes. “We’re creating this new era of sport where an athlete is respected for being a full human being,” she said, “and creating a path that’s more sustainable and empowering than what we had.”
Other News
We didn’t have to wait long to find out who’s planning to run the New York City Marathon on November 2. Defending champion Sheila Chepkirui is back, but so are 2023 champion Hellen Obiri and 2022 winner Sharon Lokedi. The Kenyan trio could also be challenged by Ethiopia’s Gotytom Gebreslase and last year’s third-place finisher, Vivian Cheruiyot, also of Kenya. Emily Sisson leads a strong group of U.S. athletes, which includes Molly Seidel (who will be running her first marathon in two years), Fiona O’Keeffe (who will be running her first marathon in 21 months), Susanna Sullivan (who will be doubling back after the world championships marathon seven weeks earlier), Sara Hall, Annie Frisbie, Amanda Vestri (who will be making her debut), Sara Vaughn, Kellyn Taylor, Stephanie Bruce, and Elena Hayday. Last year’s champion, Susannah Scaroni, is also back in the wheelchair race.
On the latest episode of The Rambling Runner Podcast, Laura Thweatt said that On is creating a new road racing-focused group, which she will help coach. Apparently On posted a press release back in June, but it was not well publicized. Even Thweatt herself did not realize it had been announced until recently.
Keely Hodgkinson recently announced that she had launched a YouTube channel, and last week, she posted her first video. It’s rare that we get that kind of behind-the-scenes footage from the world’s best runners. Around the 13:30 mark, she reacts to some of the clueless comments people have made online recently, including laughing about the rumor that she was serving a yearlong shadow ban.
Foot Locker announced last week that the Foot Locker Cross Country Championships, one of the premier events for high school runners since 1979, will no longer take place. Foot Locker was the event for the top U.S. high school runners until 2004, when Nike started Nike Team Nationals (which became Nike Cross Nationals in 2008). Some believed that would be the end of the Foot Locker meet, especially when the event was expanded to include individuals in 2008, but the event hung in there for a long time. Past Foot Locker winners include Cathy O’Brien, Sara Hall, Jordan Hasay, Molly Seidel, and Weini Kelati, and countless national qualifiers went on to become professional runners. I’ve always had a soft spot for Foot Locker, both because they set the standard and because they were the underdogs in the battle with Nike. I have fond memories of covering the meet in the early 2000s, and I’m sad to see it go. According to Ken Stone, Jorge Torres, Olympian and past Foot Locker champion, is trying to resurrect the event, but the article doesn’t make it sound like the efforts are very far along. The day Foot Locker made its announcement, Sound Running posted in its Instagram stories, “Working on something special…stay tuned”
Last week, MileSplit NJ reported that 1983 Foot Locker champion Janet Smith-Leet, 59, has entered hospice care.
In a blog post, Emily Venters wrote about choosing to make her marathon debut, and she said her goal is to run the fastest debut by an American woman in Chicago.
Registration for Nikki Hiltz’s Pride 5K is now open. Proceeds from the race will go to Point of Pride, an organization that helps trans people get the gender-affirming healthcare they need. The event is mainly a virtual race, which will take place on October 11, but Hiltz has indicated that there will be a group run in New York City that weekend, the day after they compete at Athlos.
Abby Steiner, who won The Bowerman in 2022 coming off a record-setting career at the University of Kentucky, said in an Instagram post that she had a third surgery on her left foot this year, and she’s working on getting her master’s in exercise science at the University of South Carolina while she lets her body heal.
Additional Results
At the Swiss Championships on Sunday, Audrey Werro front-ran her way to a 1:56.29 win in the 800m, shaving 0.96 off the national record she set earlier this season. (There’s a full replay on Twitter, and the results are here.) Between this and her runner-up finish at the Lausanne Diamond League meet, she’ll be one to watch at the world championships.
Australia’s Lauren Ryan, who usually races longer distances, PRed by 4.36 seconds to win the 1500m at the Internationales Abendsportfest in Pfungstadt, Germany, running 4:03.79 in a dramatic race. (There’s an amateur video of the race here.) Taryn Rawlings was second in a PR of 4:04.04, Australia’s Maudie Skyring PRed by 2.77 seconds to take third, and Kayley DeLay PRed by 6.21 seconds to finish fourth (4:04.99). Sage Hurta-Klecker (sixth, 4:05.46) and Eleanor Fulton (fifth, 4:05.16) really went for it here, but the chase pack caught them on the final lap. At the same meet, it was great to see Ajee’ Wilson dip back down into the 1:57s for the first time in three years. She edged out Australia’s Abbey Caldwell to win the 800m, 1:57.98 to 1:58.02. (Results | Amateur 800m video)
Great Britain’s Revee Walcott-Nolan won the 800m at the BMC Record Breaker meet, running 1:59.05, and Colleen Quigley won the 3,000m in 9:00.33. (Results)
Jamaica’s Kelly Ann Beckford edged out Laurie Barton to win the 800 at the Mission Run Baltimore High Performance Meet, 2:01.81 to 2:01.85. (Results)
Elena Hayday won Tracksmith’s Twin Cities Twilight 5000 in 15:52.00 (Results)
In her debut at the distance, Ethiopia’s Mizan Alem, 23, won the Antrim Coast Half Marathon in 1:05:38. Kenya’s Loice Chemnung was second (1:06:06), and Ethiopia’s Senayet Getachew was third (1:06.33). Dakotah Popehn finished sixth in a PR of 1:07:42. She said she split faster than her 5K and 10K PRs before struggling in the second half of the race. (Results)
Kenya’s Veronica Loleo won the Buenos Aires Half Marathon in 1:06.58. Seventh-place finisher Florencia Borelli set an Argentinian record of 1:09:21. (Results)
Dot McMahan won the Crim 10 miler in Flint, Michigan, running 55:47. Jane Bareikis finished five seconds back. The race was celebrating 48 years, which is fitting because its winner is the same age. (Results)
Felicia Pasadyn won the NYRR Grete’s Great Gallop 10K in 32:57. (Results)
Podcast Highlights
It was a very quiet week in terms of relevant podcasts episodes, but my favorite, hands down, was trail runner Jennifer Lichter’s appearance on The Freetrail Podcast. In the first 36 minutes of the episode, she discussed living in an orphanage in Bogotá, Colombia, until a family adopted her and moved her to Wisconsin when she was nine. Though she had discussed aspects of her story with reporters in the past, it’s wild that she’s been a top runner for several years and no trail outlets had really asked her about this part of her life until now.
I had wondered what happened to Australia’s Sarah Billings at the Silesia Diamond League meet, where she finished 14th of 14 in the 1500m, in 4:05.78. She told the story on a recent episode of For the Kudos (Spiked Up #57). It involved a bout of food poisoning and sounded very unpleasant, but at least she is able to laugh about it now.
Additional Episodes: Erika Kemp on The Marathon Podcast | Rachel Tomajczyk on I’ll Have Another
If you’re still with me, congratulations on making it through one of the longest issues of Fast Women yet.
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Alison
Fantastic writeup about Justine Fédronic, as well as a great edition this week. Thanks!
Thanks for the highlight! We love supporting FW, and are always here for the long reads.