Marathon Mania and the End of Cycling Classics...

Hi All,

We are knee-deep busy with marathon, triathlons, and bike races here in late April, so this might take a bit...

If you haven't read Monday's post which was 100% Boston Marathon you should scroll down and read it, but there are a few little updates that have happened since Monday. The biggest criticism of the women's race was that it was so slow, and apparently Kara Goucher agrees with that. As of Wednesday night, Goucher was still trying to convince her coach, Alberto Salazar, to let her run in the London Marathon this Sunday. She says that she feels as if she "went for a jog followed by a hard 10k". She ultimately has decided not to race, but perhaps Goucher will run another race or two in the near future as she is feeling quite good. Ryan Hall, on the other hand, claims that he won't run for 2 weeks since he is so beat up after his 3rd place finish.

As was mentioned on Monday, the top Canadian runners did stay home from Boston this week (Top Canadian male in Boston was Stephen Drew who ran 2:22, with the top female being Denise Robson who ran 2:48) This was likely due to the fact that Athletics Canada is basing its teams for this summer's World Championship Marathon in Berlin on times and Boston being a fairly tough course to run really fast. So many Canadians are going to be running Ottawa Marathon in May, which is the last chance to run the qualifying times. A lot of fast Canadians also ran in the Montreal 21K last weekend which was the qualifying race for Canada's Half Marathon team, which will compete in October in England at the Worlds. Matt Loiselle ran 1:04 and was Top Canadian to get the men's slot, while Andrew Smith and Steve Osadiuk got the other 2 spots. The bigger story was in the women's race, where Tara Quinn-Smith won and set a National Record by running 1:12:08! Awesome run from Quinn-Smith, who won the race by 3 minutes. Second place went to top Canadian female marathoner Lioudmila Kortchaguina (2:30 marathon this year) while the third spot went to Paula Wiltse.

Special congrats go to Brooks Canada and their sponsorship of Loiselle, Smith, and Quinn-Smith in the Brooks Canada Marathon Project. Brooks has donated $1.5 million over 6 years to provide housing and training for elite Canadian runners, with the goal of developing world-class Canadian marathoners who can compete for Canada. Although last weekend's results are for a half-marathon race, it does show that the project is starting to show some solid results. Many of these same results are also in the selection pool for the Marathon team, which as i stated before, will be decided after the Ottawa Marathon.

While the names Zhou, Dita, Goumri, Ramaala, Mikitenko, and Gharib sound like possible victims of Jack Bauer in the many seasons of 24 (Quick, Mikitenko is getting away with the nuclear device!He's trying to sell weapons to General Ramaala!), these are just some of the names in this Sunday's London Marathon. Both the men's and women's race have several potential winners, and the race could see a new World Record set.

The men's race features the 3-time winner Martin Lel, who might not even be the favorite despite his 2:05 personal best. Sammy Wanjiru, the 22-year old Kenyan who has the Olympic title from Beijing with a remarkable run in the smog AND the current World Record in the half-marathon (58:33), is aiming at the London title and a shot at the World Record. The race organizers have hired two pacesetters who are hopefully going to take the lead pack to 20 miles at 2:04 pace. Then the real race will begin. The two top Kenyans will be challenged by a ridiculously deep field that includes Abderrahim Goumri, who has twice run under 2:06 but has never won a marathon! The field also includes the Silver and Bronze medallists from Beijing marathon (Morocco's Gharib and Ethiopian Kebede) with several new marathoners (highlighted by Eritrea's Zersenay Tadese, who has won both World XC titles and the World Half Marathon titles) expecting to challenge as well. Lel is the odds-on fave, followed by Wanjiru and Kebede, but I'll go out and pick Wanjiru to win but just miss the world record by 30 seconds or so...

The women's race is just as deep. We have the Olympic champ (Constantina Dita), 2 top Ethiopians (Geta Wami and Berhane Adere), a bunch of top Asians (Chunxiu Zhou, 3rd at Olympics, won 2007 London), two very fast Russians (Petrova and Zakharova), plus the consistently great Catherine Ndereba (aka Catherine the Great), who is 36 but won the Silver medal in Beijing. Then of course we have last year's winner Irina Mikitenko, who blew away the field last year and then ran sub 2:20 in Berlin last fall. So she's the fave, but there are 5 or 6 fast women who can break 2:25 (remember, no one broke 2:32 in Boston) and potentially steal the win.

Of course, the big name missing is Paula Radcliffe. Radcliffe, who has battled injuries the last couple of years, finally had bunion surgery this spring to fix her right foot. She fractured a toe while training this year, and it seems like her bunion problem was the cause of her stress fracture from last year as well. So she should be fixed soon, and is still hoping to take a shot at the Worlds in August. All of London hopes she'll get better for another shot at a world record on this very fast course!

In honour of Paula and Kara and their connections to Nike, I have added a Bikey Three-Pack of very good Nike running commercials. Check them out, and then we have real Bike-Y news after the third video.







A big week of cycling concludes with Sunday's Liege-Bastogne-Liege. This is unofficially the last race of the spring classics season, and the last chance for many riders to get that big victory that has been eluding them so far. This race comes on the heels of last Sunday's Amstel Gold Race and Wednesday's Fleche Wallone. Amstel Gold was won by Sergei Ivanov, who outsprinted Karsten Kroon and Robert Gesink for the win, with a favorite-heavy pack only 8 seconds back. The much better race was Wednesday's Fleche Wallone, which ends with an epic 1.2 climb that averages over 9 percent and has one section that reaches 25 percent. As expected, a large peloton reached the bottom of the final hill together, with all the faves at the front. Here's the video (only 3 minutes).


As you can see, despite the game efforts of Cadel Evans, the race was won by Italian Davide Rebellin, who has now won the race 3 times. Rebellin won by 2 seconds over Andy Schleck and Damiano Cunego, with big names like Sanchez, Evans, Lovkvist, and Valverde in the 4-7 spots! Ridiculous how one climb can eliminate everyone but the big names! Ryder Hesjedal was top Canuck in 25th place (34 seconds back).

Before I take off (and yes, I need to recap some triathlons...maybe later today?), I wanted to include the video of a skinny Texan on that final climb of Fleche Wallone way back in 1996. Enjoy!