Fast Women: Records fall in Boston, Portland, and Sacramento
Big changes to come for Hoka NAZ Elite
Issue 327, sponsored by Runbuk
Doris Lemngole breaks Parker Valby’s collegiate indoor 5,000m record
Last year, Parker Valby won the NCAA cross country title and then broke the collegiate 5,000m record at Boston University’s Sharon Colyear-Danville Season Opener two weeks later. This year, Alabama’s Doris Lemngole did the same.
Two weeks after winning the NCAA Cross Country Championships, Lemngole ran 14:52.57 in Boston, improving the record by a mere 0.22 seconds. Valby ran 14:56.11 at this meet a year ago, becoming the first woman in the NCAA to break 15:00. At the NCAA Championships three months later, she lowered the record to 14:52.79. Valby still holds the outdoor record of 14:52.18.
Given the depth in the NCAA at the moment, it’s no surprise to see Valby’s record fall. Lemngole had to run as fast as she did just to win the race. Her former teammate at Alabama, Hilda Olemomoi of Florida, finished just behind Lemngole, in 14:52.84, which makes her the third-fastest NCAA athlete ever indoors. New Mexico’s Pamela Kosgei (third, 15:00.36) and Stanford’s Amy Bunnage (fourth, 15:00.75) moved to fourth and fifth on the NCAA’s all-time indoor list.
Emily Venters, who finished fifth in a PR of 15:03.54, led through 4K in 12:03.86. It wasn’t clear if the record was still within reach at that point, but Lemngole ran her last 1K in 2:48.56, with her last two 200m laps in 32.84 and 30.66 seconds, to make it happen.
It’s become a tradition for the NCAA’s top runners to go to BU the first Saturday in December and use their cross country fitness to run some fast times and get qualifying marks out of the way. This year’s event did not disappoint. The top 47 women in the 5,000m broke 16:00, with some national records and many school records falling as well. Colorado School of Mines’ Jenna Ramsey-Rutledge ran a 43-second PR and set an NCAA DII record of 15:40.98, taking 0.32 seconds off the time that Winona State’s Lindsay Cunningham ran last year.
First-year pro Bailey Hertenstein ran 8:45.05 to win the 3,000m, and Providence College’s Shannon Flockhart was the top collegian, running 8:45:67 to take second. The top 13 athletes broke 9:00. BYU’s Megan Hunter outran Harvard’s Sophia Gorriaran to win the 800m, 2:02.03 to 2:02.74. Oregon’s Wilma Nielsen and Ali Ince went 1–3 in the mile, running 4:31.94 and 4:32.96, respectively. Nielsen’s time was an indoor PR and Ince’s time was an outright PR.
There are so many high-level indoor track meets in Boston now that I don’t know if I’ve recovered from last year’s indoor season yet. But nevertheless, I spent 12 hours going to BU on Saturday, to take lots of photos and stock up for the year. Because of that, some parts of this week’s newsletter are a little more rushed than I would have liked. But it’s a privilege to have so many fast runners come compete in Boston each winter. (Results | 5,000m replay | 3,000m replay)
Calli Hauger-Thackery holds off a fast-closing Jackie Gaughan to win CIM
British Olympian Calli Hauger-Thackery won Sunday’s California International Marathon in Sacramento, California, in 2:24:28, holding off a late charge from Jackie Gaughan, who finished second in 2:24:40. Both dipped under Paige Wood’s 2:26:02 course record from 2022. Practically everything I know about the race I learned solely from following the live results, but even that was exciting.
Hauger-Thackery jumped out to an early lead. At 10K, she was 63 seconds ahead of the chase pack, and by 25K, she led by 2 minutes, 20 seconds. But starting around 20K, Gaughan broke away from the pack she was running in and began her chase. After hitting halfway in 1:14:19, Gaughan ran the second half of the race in an impressive 1:10:21. (For comparison, Hauger-Thackery’s half splits were 1:12:00/1:12:28.)
At 35K, Hauger-Thackery’s lead was down to 28 seconds. Gaughan split 16:13 between 35K and 40K and cut Hauger-Thackery’s lead down to three seconds. But Hauger-Thackery rallied over the final 2.2K to earn the win. Gaughan took 2 minutes, 28 seconds off of the personal best she set at the 2023 Berlin Marathon.
Seeing that Hauger-Thackery also dramatically picked up the pace late in the race, I wondered if someone had warned her that Gaughan was coming. An Instagram story she posted last night answered my question. “Looked back once [at] mile 23 and I saw the second female charging towards me,” she wrote. “So I fought hard from 5:40s to 5:10s and did everything I could to bag the [win] and [course record].”
Earlier in the week, Saucony announced that they had signed Gaughan, which is looking like an even better investment now. At October’s Chicago Marathon, she struggled, finishing 23rd in 2:38:40, with splits of 1:12:19/1:26:21. That may have contributed to her more cautious start here.
Stephanie Bruce ran a well-executed race, with half splits of 1:14:22/1:14:19, to finish third in 2:28:41 and win the masters division. Bruce was only 54 seconds away from the 2:27:47 personal best that she set at the 2019 Chicago Marathon. It was particularly great to see Bruce run well given the week’s other news. (Read on for more on that.) “You can call me old,” she wrote in an Instagram post after the race. “You can call me past my prime. I am… But I am still on a mission… A mission to see how gracefully I can age in this sport.”
Annmarie Tuxbury finished fourth in 2:30:04, an 87-second improvement on the personal best she set at this race two years ago. And Annie Heffernan rounded out the top five, running 2:30:26, a 4 minute, 28 second personal best. The top 22 women, almost all of them Americans, ran under the 2024 Olympic Trials qualifying standard of 2:37:00. Who knows what the standard will be for the 2028 Trials, but I look forward to the window opening again. (Complete results | Live results)
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Jane Hedengren breaks Katelyn Tuohy’s NXN record
As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t cover high school running much, and that’s partly because I think one of the last things most high school kids need is more hype and attention surrounding their running. The name Jane Hedengren has come up here before, beginning with her breakout mile win at the Brooks PR Invitational in the spring of 2023. And until now, Hedengren has been one of a handful of top U.S. high school runners. But her performance on Saturday at Nike Cross Nationals indicates that she has moved into a class of her own.
Racing in rainy and muddy conditions at Portland, Oregon’s Glendoveer Golf Course, Hedengren won the race by 40.7 seconds, running 16:32.7, and taking 5.1 seconds off the course record that Katelyn Tuohy set in 2018. Hedengren, a senior from Provo, Utah, was making her first appearance at NXN. In 2022, she didn’t qualify, and last year, she had to cut her season short due to injury. She said she didn’t intend to jump out to a lead, but half a mile in she had already started to gap the field. But it didn’t look like she was doing anything reckless; the most remarkable aspect of her run was how relaxed she appeared throughout.
Many considered Hedengren to be the favorite heading into the race, thanks in part to her incredible run at NXR Southwest. Racing on the Toka Sticks Golf Course in Mesa, Arizona, she ran 15:50.0, the fastest time ever by a U.S. high school girl on a 5K course. I don’t put a lot of stock in records that compare different cross country courses, nor do I trust that many of them are measured accurately. But her 41-second margin of victory over last year’s NXN champion Addy Ritzenhein showed that Hedengren was going to be tough to beat in Portland.
Victoria Garces, a senior from Midland, Michigan, was also making her first appearance at NXN. She went into the race undefeated this season and finished second in 17:13.4. And it was great to see Texas junior Elizabeth Leachman run a strong race at the end of a tough season to finish third in 17:13.7. Last year, Leachman went out hard at NXN and she faded to 15th. This year, she hit 1K in 36th place and then moved up steadily throughout the race. Both Garces and Leachman will race at the Foot Locker Cross Country Championships, the other high school cross country national championship event, on Saturday in San Diego.
Fourth-place finisher Keeghan Edwards (17:15.2) of Mountain Vista High School in Highlands Ranch, Colorado, helped her team win the national title, as her simply-named “Denver” squad held off Utah’s Lone Peak, 75 to 107. Ritzenhein, a junior from Colorado, ran only 4.9 seconds slower than her winning time from last year, and she finished fifth in 17:15.3.
Three of the top five finishers are seniors, so next year, Hedengren will join an already-strong BYU distance squad, Garces will run for Duke, and Edwards is headed to the University of Florida. (Results | Replay)
NAZ Elite is dropping eight of their 20 athletes, founder Ben Rosario is also moving on
On Wednesday morning, Runner’s World’s Sarah Lorge Butler broke the news that eight of the 20 athletes who currently run for Hoka NAZ Elite will not have their contracts renewed in 2025. Aliphine Tuliamuk (age 35), Kellyn Taylor (38), and Steph Bruce (40), who helped put the team on the map, are among the athletes who are being cut from the team’s roster.
Lauren Hagans, 38, confirmed on the Women’s Running Stories podcast one day earlier that she would not be with the team or Hoka in 2025. She’s still training with the team until Houston (January 19), and then she’ll be figuring out what’s next. And Great Britain’s Alice Wright, 30, is believed to be the fifth woman who is being cut from the team’s roster.
“It’s basically everybody that’s old, if we want to put it bluntly,” Taylor told Lorge Butler. “It’s literally, there’s nobody older than 28 on the team now. And it’s not necessarily based off of performance.”
Taylor said that she is frustrated by the way the decision was handled; she learned the news via her agent, Josh Cox, after running for Hoka for roughly 10 years.
On the women’s side, that leaves Abby Nichols (27), Katie Wasserman (26), Paige Wood (28), and Kenya’s Mercy Chelangat (27). In a piece also released on Wednesday, Sam McManis of Flagstaff Running News confirmed that Krissy Gear, who was the youngest member of the women’s team at age 25, had already left the team on her own, but she’s still a Hoka athlete.
Also on Wednesday, NAZ Elite’s founder, Ben Rosario, released a statement saying that he, too, is moving on. He told McManis that he’s starting an event management company and he’ll be revealing more details on December 18. Rosario went out of his way to say he wasn’t speaking as a representative of Hoka, but in explaining the company’s thought process, Rosario told McManis, “They are saying, ‘Hey, we want to get better. We want to have an even better next four years than we had the last four years. Are we going to do that with these athletes that, on paper, had their best performances, four or five years ago? Or are we going to [do that with a] new crop of athletes that are, on paper, experiencing an upward trajectory?’”
In response to the piece, Hagans wrote in an Instagram story, “Okay, and then there’s me. NOT a veteran marathoner. Clawed my way to my best performance in Chicago…But I got to the marathon game at 37 years old. I still have much better marathons in me. The article fails to address the clear ageism ALSO going on here…” Coming off an injury, Hagans finished 13th in Chicago in 2:25:47, a personal best.
While Hoka may be looking at potential and assuming that some of the team’s younger athletes have more room for growth in the next four years, looking at their 2024 performances, it’s easy to understand what Taylor, 38, means when she says the decisions aren’t necessarily based on performance. Despite dealing with some serious injuries this year, she had an inspiring run at the Olympic T&F Trials. She went in as one of the last seeds and finished sixth in the 10,000 final, coming closer to making the Olympic team than any other NAZ Elite woman did this year. And then she finished 10th at the New York City Marathon in 2:27:59.
Tuliamuk, who famously won the 2020 U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials, has struggled with hamstring problems since the summer of 2023. On Friday, she said in an Instagram post that she trusted former NAZ Elite coach Alan Culpepper, who was with the team for only 14 months, completely, and the search for team’s new coach, Jack Mullaney, was draining and stressful. Tuliamuk’s agent, Hawi Keflezighi, told Lorge Butler that she’s exploring a new opportunity that she’s excited about, though. “I didn’t see things coming to an end this way,” Tuliamuk wrote in her post. “But I wish everyone the very best.”
Some brands have let their longtime athletes end their competitive racing careers on their own terms, while others have not. It’s Hoka’s prerogative to do what they want, but in making the choice they have, they seem to have angered quite a few fans—especially women over the age of 28. Here’s a sample of the many comments I received in response to the news.
“This may backfire for Hoka. Lots of women run & buy shoes and running apparel. Women who are over 30 and *gasp* 40.”
“These folks generate a lot of goodwill for Hoka—seems like a bad move.”
“My Cliftons gave me a blister today, but it sounds like I should put my money elsewhere anyway.”
On Thursday, Taylor said in an Instagram story that when she ran 2:24:29 in non-super shoes to win the 2018 Grandma’s Marathon, Hoka cut her contract in half the following year. Taylor was the second-fastest American marathoner in 2018. I imagine that other athletes, across a range of brands, have similar stories, but due to non-disclosure agreements and other considerations, many don’t speak up.
I don’t know if Taylor is hurting her chances of signing another contract with everything she has posted on social media in recent weeks, but I appreciate her fire and find the honesty refreshing. I hope that all of the athletes who are being forced to move on get the support they need to continue running professionally, if they choose to do so. But there’s no question that this is the end of an era for NAZ Elite. (Lorge Butler’s story even mentions rumors of a potential name change for the group. For more from Rosario’s move, he also did a Q&A with LetsRun.)
Additional Results
At Sunday’s European Cross Country Championships in Antalya, Turkey, Italy’s Nadia Battocletti became the first woman to win European U20, U23, and senior cross country titles. Last year, running the senior race for the first time, she earned a silver medal, but this year, she ran away from the field in the final kilometers to win in 25:43 on the 7.2K course. Germany’s Konstaze Klosterhalfen was second in 25:54 and Turkey’s Yasemin Can was third (26:01). Great Britain’s Phoebe Anderson pulled off an upset to win the U23 race, kicking to a win in 21:16 on the 6.3K course. Anderson runs for Columbia and two weeks earlier, she finished 26th at the NCAA Cross Country Championships. Great Britain’s Innes Fitzgerald won the U20 4.8K race in 15:47. And Italy won the mixed relay, which came down to a three-way sprint for the medals. Sinta Vissa, who runs for the On Athletics Club, was part of the winning team. (Broadcast replay | Results - both might require free registration)
In her debut at the distance, Amanda Vestri won the OUC Orlando Half Marathon in 1:08:13, which makes her the 13th-fastest U.S. woman of all time. Katie Izzo finished second in 1:10:27. Vestri was supposed to run the Valencia Half Marathon at the end of October, but Jay Holder said on the race broadcast that some piriformis pain derailed her plans. The Orlando Half was plan B, and her run was particularly impressive given that she ran most of the race alone. Vestri said post-race that she plans to run the Houston Half Marathon in January, then she will try to make the half marathon squad for the World Road Running Championships by running the qualifying race in Atlanta at the end of March. (Results)
France’s Floriane Hot (7:08:43) and Marie-Ange Brumelot (7:12:22) went 1–2 at the IAU 100K World Championships in Bengaluru, India. France won the team title, Great Britain took second, and the U.S. was third. Courtney Olsen led the U.S. squad with a 10th-place finish (7:48:21), Nicole Monette was 11th (7:52:00), and Allison Mercer was 12th (7:56:28). (Results)
I have mixed feelings about equalizer races in general, but the one at this year’s Kalakaua Merrie Mile in Honolulu was exciting. In the seven previous editions of this race, the men had always come out on top, which to me says the athletes competing in the women’s division weren’t being given a big enough head start. This year, the women’s field’s head start was extended to 32 seconds, compared to 30 last year. (The World Athletics points tables say that’s still not enough.) And the first five athletes across the line, regardless of their sex/gender, win prize money. This year, Nikki Hiltz was the first athlete to finish (4:28.39), and they narrowly held off Weini Kelati (4:28.49) and Sinclaire Johnson (4:28.54). Hobbs Kessler led the charge for the men and managed only fourth overall. Heather MacLean rounded out the top five (4:28.89). “Fun fact, I actually don’t identify as a woman, I’m nonbinary and use they/them pronouns,” Hiltz said on the broadcast after the race. “So a woman still has never won this race, so let’s get a woman out there next year.” (Results | Race replay)
Led by Great Britain’s Hannah Segrave (2:40.13) and Olivia Baker (2:40.49), Atlanta Track Club Elite swept the top four spots in the 1,000m at the Penn Opener, held at the brand new Ott Center. (Results)
Podcast Highlights
I’ve listened to Lauren Gregory on a number of podcasts, but I really appreciated the level of detail she provided on The Freetrail Podcast. She discussed getting caught up in exercising too much and not eating enough during college, which contributed to a string of injuries. She talked about the pressure that goes with being at a school like Arkansas, where they’re trying to win national team titles season after season. And she said she takes a lot of the responsibility for the unhealthy things she misguidedly did in an attempt to become a better runner. She said at the end of her fifth year of college, she almost joined the Bowerman Track Club. But she wanted a situation where she could focus on both the track and the trails. She decided to take a sixth year and at the end of that, she found what she was looking for. “I just needed one more year for brands to get on board with what I was asking for,” she said. And she said that she chose Ben True as her coach partly because of her injury history. “I just wanted to make sure I was in an environment where we’re not going to burn the candle too hot and bright,” she said.
I really enjoyed hearing BYU coach Diljeet Taylor talk about her team’s growth over the past year, and her own growth as a coach, on the Citius Mag podcast. And it was interesting to hear that Taylor coached BYU recruit Zariel Macchia’s aunt and uncle early in her coaching career.
On the Women’s Running Stories podcast, Lauren Hagans talked about running a PR of 2:25:47 at the Chicago Marathon in October despite not feeling great that day.
Taylor Werner spent a lot of last track season in Europe and is now living and training in Australia. She explains on a recent episode of For the Kudos (Spiked Up #34) how that all came to be. Werner was the first athlete to sign with Puma Elite, but she left the group in May. She’s still a Puma athlete and she said she loved the people, but the training just wasn’t working for her. Werner joins the podcast at the 27:45 mark.
Nia Akins talked about goal setting and discussed why she shaved her head on The Riser’s Hub podcast, which is hosted by her mother.
Rachel Drake was on The Lane 9 Podcast. I linked to a different episode with her last week, and this one focuses more on the big picture. It was interesting to hear how much effort she put into staying healthy after having a baby, and yet she still wound up with a sacral stress fracture. She talked about how supportive her sponsor, Nike, was throughout that process, saying that in her experience, they’ve really turned things around in that regard.
Riley and Whitney Macon, who just coached MIT to a DIII national title in cross country, were on D3 Glory Days. I appreciated that Riley pointed out that last year, with a similar lineup, MIT finished 11th at NCAAs. He said that the biggest change this year has been having Whitney, who was previously a volunteer assistant, coaching full time.
With Shelby Houlihan’s returning to competitive running in just over a month and other news, I’ve been thinking about second chances in the sport more than usual recently. It was interesting to hear from Marion Jones, whose track career ended with a doping scandal, on For the Long Run.
Additional Episodes: Masai Russell talked winning Olympic gold after a rough start to her outdoor season on Citius Mag | Great Britain’s Jenny Nesbitt spoke candidly about her highs and lows in the sport on the Fitter, Faster & Happier podcast | NC State’s Grace Hartman on The Running Effect Podcast
This is the last week of Runbuk’s sponsorship, so if you’re at all curious, make sure to check out the adventures they offer. Thanks to everyone who helps support Fast Women via Venmo and Patreon. I hope you all have a lovely week. I’m off to edit thousands of photos from BU.
Alison