Thoughts About the 2009 Boston Indoor Games

Ok - let's start with a quick quiz:

Including the youth relay, there were 20 running events contested at the 2009 Boston Indoor Games; how many of those events were 1 mile races? (Answer at the the end of this post)

For the second year in a row, the best RACE of the night was the junior boys 1M.
It seems that almost everyone in the race thinks he has a shot to win. The race doesn't need rabbits because there's always someone who tries to win the race from the front -- a far more common occurrence in a high school race than a professional race. This year's race featured a fantastic final straight from the fortuitously-named Mac Fleet, who came from nowhere (well, 4th, actually) to overtake three runners in the final 40m and pull out a narrow win (4:09.06) over Andrew Springer (4:09.16), Patrick McGregor (4:09.41), and Drew Butler (4:09.62).

Here are video highlights of the race:



I also enjoyed the (open) women's mile, and seeing Lindsay Gallo surprise herself and everyone else by overtaking Mestawot Tadesse and Sarah Jamieson in the last lasp and win in 4:27.90. She described it as a breakthrough race for her and the biggest win of her life.

Sitting in the stands along the backstretch gave us a wonderful view of the pole vault. It was a real treat to watch, first, Olympic silver medalist Jenn Stuczynski vault to an American record and make three attempts at a world record. Then the men got started and we got to watch Steven Hooker clear 6.06 (19-10.5) and take three attempts at 6.16 (20-2.5), which would have eclipsed Sergei Bubka's long-standing indoor world-record.

Of course, we also got to watch the compulsory neurotic interactions between the vaulters and their coaches. I find it somewhat mystifying that only a few moments after these athletes catapult themselves so far into space, they are meekly approaching their coaches, looking like they're expecting a tongue-lashing or some small bit of encouragement and technical advice that might help them clear the next height. Watching this process repeat itself with each vaulter, I kept thinking about the athletes as marionettes, and the coaches as puppet-masters, tucking in an arm her, adjusting an angle there. I mean, these guys are amazing but I'm glad no one is micro-managing my races like that.

Was it my imagination, or were the best races the ones that didn't use rabbits? The professional distance races all used rabbits to ensure a fast pace and a shot at a record of some sort. And this approach was fairly successful. Nick Willis came within a few hundredths of a meet record in the mile, Shalane Flanagan sliced 20 seconds off the American Record in the 5K (but lost by a couple of inches after Sentayehu Ejigu happily ran in her slipstream for half the race and pulled barely ahead by 0.005s in the final straight.

Of course, I'm not so old-fashioned to say that distance races shouldn't ever use rabbits. Slow, slow races decided by ridiculous kicks have their own problems. But it was striking how much more exciting it was to watch, say, the college men's mile compared to the professional men's mile. And the men's 3k, although very fast, had the feel of a time trial from the beginning.

By the way, one of the stranger post-race quote of the night goes to Galen Rupp, who, after finishing second in the 3000m, commented:

"I was just trying to focus on my form and not falling apart," said Rupp. "Whether I was going to get him or not was kind of irrelevant."

"Irrelevant?" Not the word I would have chosen.

A final thought: it seems that the field events can work when there's only one really great athlete in the field. (It took Stuczynski one jump to win the competition; Hooker two.) The running events, however, need multiple potential winners and a cast of characters that includes:

The promising upstart
The mercurial and inconsistent talent
The legend trying to reclaim former glory
The confident Olympian
The guy with the big kick that everyone else wants to drop


And even then, the story has to play out in just the right way. It's not a guarantee; it never is. I'm always amazed that races can go completely against form for apparently no reason.

I'll say one think, meet organizers have realized that staging a LOT of good races increases the chances that at least a few of the races will be really special.


Quiz Answer: SIX of the twenty running events were 1M races: Masters, Boys and Girls juniors, Men's and Women Open, and College. Apparently, the 1M is by far the most popular race distance. BTW, there were three races at 200m, and two each at 60m (flat), 800m, and 3000.