Leading off...a new World Record! I talked last week about Zersenay Tadese asking for pacesetters for a world record attempt in the half-marathon during last weekend's race in Lisbon. He went out so fast that his pacesetters only lasted 9k, but he broke through 10k in 27:53, then sped up for next 10k and broke the 20k barrier in 55:21 (that makes 27:28 for his second 10k, 25 seconds faster than with his pacesetters in the first 10k!) before closing out the race in 58:23, good enough for a 10 second improvement on Sammy Wanjiru's 3 year old world record. A ten second improvement is a huge accomplishment, and vaults Tadese into the discussion of best-runner-on-the-planet. He will actually get a chance to further his legacy when he races against Wanjiru and an elite field at the London Marathon in late April.
Last weekend's other big half-marathon was in New York, where Haile Gebrselassie was expected to showcase his immense skills on the streets of New York. Lately, Geb has either thrilled his fans with epic performances with world record/near-record results or he has disappointed with less-than-stellar results. Unfortunately, New York fell into the lesser category, as Geb just stopped around 15k after falling off the pace of race leader Peter Kamais. Geb resumed running after a minute or so, but later dropped out again, later claiming that asthma was the reason. Kamais ended up running 59:53 to win the race. But the big story was Geb and his "excuse" for dropping out. That list is getting longer, as he has now blamed poor results in the last few years on excuses such as "missing a water station", "slippery cobbles", "too cold", "too hot", "too windy", "too polluted", "didn't sleep well", etc. It's quite a list - but since he almost always run to try and set some sort of World Record, anything but a record might disappoint him and his fans. But he does need to be careful to not always sound like he's complaining...
This weekend ahead has a race of different type: the World Cross-Country Championships. Now, American and Canadian fans probably won't get too much to cheer about, since Kenya and Ethiopia dominate the event so thoroughly that the top 12 places might all be from those 2 East African nations. It is actually such a problem that the IAAF has now decided to hold the event every 2 year (instead of annually) and some people think their domination is "killing the sport". Regardless, the event does highlight up-and-coming runners, and the future of marathoning might be in the race. A 19-year-old Kenyan, Paul Tanui, is among the favorites in the men's race while the women's race could come down to Linet Masai (Kenya) versus Tirunesh Dibaba (Ethiopia). Canada is well-represented in both junior races (6 male and female runners) but only brought one senior runner. Good thing for us it's Simon Bairu, who's won 6 Canadian XC titles, and is prepping for his marathon debut in 2010. Can he finish in the Top 20?
Good news - I have a few more running stories to get to - but with this weekend's recap and lots of big marathons in April, we'll have plenty of time to get to them...
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