USATF Men's1500 Final and its Aftermath

If you like races where runners push the pace from the start and run personal and seasonal best times, you probably HATED the men's 1500m final at the USATF Championships, Saturday. If, on the other hand, you like races full of tactics and tension that can be resolved only by a fast, furious finish, the 1500 was the race for you.

Of course, you already know that baby-faced Matt Centrowitz did the unthinkable, holding off -- no, pulling away from! -- the seemingly invincible Bernard Lagat. You know that Leo Manzano closed brilliantly, outleaning Andrew Wheating and Will Leer for third. Wheating, it must be said, didn't actually run a bad race (he had positioned himself in third with 100m to go), but he didn't fully appreciate a basic principle of tactical races: everyone is fast in a tactical race, and if you leave it to the last 100m, you better be sure you have the best acceleration. Wheating didn't, and he paid the price. By the way, watch the race video a few times and tell me how Will Leer accelerates so quickly in the last 40 meters...and how he manages not to lean at the tape, thereby losing fourth to Wheating...



So Wheating, who had skipped the 800 to focus on the 1500, finished in the worst possible position -- fourth -- but wait! Bernard Lagat, who had already made the team by winning the 5000m, announced he would not compete in the 1500m, opening up a spot on the team for Wheating.

So it's Centrowitz, Manzano, and Wheating, right?

Not so fast. None of the three qualifiers has met the "A" standard of 3:35 yet, and they have only until August 8th to do it. While I am no expert in USATF selection procedures, this opens up many possibilities.

If Centro meets the "B" standard (3:38) but not the "A" standard, then I believe he is the only guy who gets to go. If Centro meets the "A" standard, but Manzano doesn't, then I think Centro and Manzano go, and Wheating is left off the team. if Centro and Manzano get the "A" standard, then Wheating is all set, since he has already met the "B" standard.

And what if Centro doesn't get the "A" or "B" standard? I think that means the he doesn't go, and the other chase the standards. That could, conceivably, lead to Manzano, Wheating, and Leer going.

Anyway, the one thing we can be sure of is that -- unlike the championship finals -- in their next 1500m these guys will be running fast from the gun. That's the only way to ensure they can make it to Daegu for another tension-filled tactical race.

Another Myth Busted: 10% Rule Bites the Dust

I knew it!

I knew that venerable training rule that a runner should increase mileage by no more than 10% per week was bogus. In her Personal Best column, Gina Kolata of the New York Times cites one large study that finds no evidence that the 10% rule makes any difference in injury rates compared to a more rapid increase to a similar peak mileage and to a program that began with four weeks of other kinds of conditioning.

When Running Up Mileage, 10 Percent Isn’t the Cap

While one study can't be considered definitive, the fact that no one seems to know where the 10% rule came from and no one seems to have any evidence for its efficacy in preventing injuries suggests we should take the rule with a whole shaker of salt.

One of the weaknesses of the 10% solution was always that it flew in the face of two common-sense observations: first, it doesn't say anything about your starting point. If you start by running more than you can handle, you'll be in trouble no matter how gradually you increase from there. And second, you can't keep increasing forever or even for very long before you are running higher mileage than you can handle.

For example, if you run 30 miles a week and increase 10% each week, in fourteen weeks you'll be running over 100 miles a week. That can't be right!

Here's another example: I recently had to take several weeks completely off from running. When I started up again, my first seven days I ran about 15 miles. My second week, I ran about 25, a 67% increase, and that was fine for me. "But wait," you say, "that's only because you are a trained runner used to running more miles, and different rules apply..." Fair enough, but doesn't everyone bring some level of training to the game? I mean, if your baseline is 0, then 10% of that is still 0.

The math just doesn't make sense. If your baseline is a mile a day, it will take you 9 weeks to reach 2 miles every day. That's an entire cross-country season to go from one mile a day to two. Ah, but seven weeks after that you'll be running 4 miles a day. Seven weeks after THAT, you'll be running 8 miles a day, and by the end of seven months, you'll be running almost 16 miles per day, or 110 miles a week.

To continue my own example, after that 25 mile week I continued to increase my mileage, and now, fifteen weeks later, I'm running about 45 miles per week. That works out to about a 5% increase per week. Had I followed the 10% rule, I would be running 86 miles per week now, more than I've ever done in my life. So in my case, I used a fairly rapid increase in the first few weeks, followed by a much flatter curve as I approached what I believe is optimal mileage for my age and experience.

As a symbol of progression and gradualism, the 10% rule has some value, I guess. But as the article and the study it cites make clear, it's probably not something you should take too literally.

US Track and Field: What Are We Good At?

The USATF Championships begin today in Eugene and continue through Sunday, with the meet serving as the selection process for the World Championships in Daegu, South Korea later in the summer.

The selection process itself is a little complicated. Athletes who won world championships in 2010 are automatically qualified for Daegu provided they compete in some event -- any event -- in Eugene. Hence, Alyson Felix, the reigning world 200m champion, is qualified for Daegu in the 200, but will run the 400 only in Eugene (and decide later whether to attempt to do both in Daegu). Trey Hardee, the reigning decathlon champ, has to compete in at least one decathlon event to punch his ticket to South Korea.

(Defending 400m champ LaShawn Merritt is in a strange position, since he is is currently serving a suspension that will keep him from running in the U.S. championships but not preclude him running in Daegu... at this point it seems it is up to USATF to decide whether to bend its rules that an athlete must compete at an event in the U.S. championships to be eligible.)

Other than those few, the top three in Eugene will go to the world champs, proving they have met the Olympic "A" standard. If they haven't, well, I won't attempt to explain what happens. If you are interested, you can read about it from the Eugene Register-Guard, which provided this handy guide:

Who Advances to Daegu?

This talk about about "A" and "B" standards always makes me think about where the U.S. is strong and where it is weak in Olympic events. You never hear anyone talk about the standards in the 100, 200, or 400. That's because the U.S. typically has dozens of athletes in those events with "A" standards. There's essentially no chance that a "B" standard athlete will finish in the top three.

But in other events, we are weak by world standards. At this moment, the U.S. men do not have a single runner who as met the "A" standard in the 1500m, and only two women have met the standard.

Where is the U.S. strongest? In the sprints. The U.S. is fairly strong in ALL running events. The lack of 1500 "A" marks is balanced somewhat by the large number of "B" standard athletes in that event. In all other running events, we have quite a few athletes with "A" or "B" marks already (and, of course, athletes who need them can chase "A" standards after the tactical U.S. championship races are behind them).

Where is the U.S. weakest? The walking events are a disaster, reflecting the dwindling popularity of walking in the U.S. and the lack of opportunities for youth athletes to compete in walking events. Surprisingly, except for the shot put, the men are weak in the throwing events. The women fare slightly better.

The most surprising weaknesses to me were the lack of U.S. women who had qualifying marks in the high jump and triple jump (no "A" or "B" marks in the women's triple! Is that a reflection of how much time NBC spends showing the triple, or the reason?)

Anyway, here are unofficial lists of qualified athletes from T&F News. Decide for yourself!

U.S. Men With WC Qualifying Marks
U.S. Women With WC Qualifying Marks

Tanzania Journal - Day 9:Lions as Role Models

Lion couple near Lake Nduto

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Running Log, 1/1/11 -- 25 minutes in and around Lake Nduto Tented Camp

In late December 2010 I traveled to Tanzania with my wife and son to visit my daughter, Joni, who had lived in and outside of Arusha in 2004 and 2007 and who, at the time we visited, was working in neighboring Zambia.

I started writing about the trip several months ago, and those earlier posts can be found under the "Tanzania" label. In my last post, I described my final run of 2010 -- a 25-minute jog around the campground where Joni had met lions three years earlier. Although that was the end of my "year of running dangerously," we were only halfway through our trip...

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After my final run of the year, I joined my family for dinner in an enclosed pavilion at the campground where we sat at metal tables and toasted the coming New Year with two bottles of wine. Rob had squirreled them away for the occasion, another one of his many thoughtful gestures. In spite of festive atmosphere, we had no real desire to stay up late, and instead retired early, falling asleep to the boisterous sounds of revelry from a group of German campers who continued to laugh and sing long into the night.

Waking up to the new year, we were, for once, not in a hurry to leave our camp site. We had another day of driving and game-watching ahead of us, as the plan called for us to work our way South to Lake Nduto, where we would have the luxury of staying at another tented camp.

My online sources tell me that the name "Serengeti" is taken from the Maasai word serengit, meaning endless plain. Entering the Serengeti Park from the North, we had not been aware of the breadth of the Serengeti. The terrain had instead seemed full of variation with rolling hills dotted with acacia and fever trees, and areas of low vegetation that provided habitats for a wide variety of wildlife. It was only when we left the Seronera and headed South that the real expanse of the plains opened up to us. The trees and low bush fell away, and the grassy plains stretched in every direction like an ocean.


Four of the roughly four million zebras we saw everywhere on the vast plains...

Here and there, the uniformity was broken by a large outcropping of granite called a kopje ("small head" in Afrikaans). In the Serengeti, kopjes rise out of the surrounding grasslands like islands, providing a distinctly different habitat that supports numerous birds and animals. For this reason, kopjes are a popular destination for the Safari vehicles. At one particularly magnificent kopje we were one of about a dozen Land Rovers parked to watch a leopard with her two cubs sunning themselves on a high shelf of rock.





Aside from the kopjes, the plains are home to hundreds of thousands of herbivores, huge herds of wildebeest and zebra, as well as smaller bands of Thomson gazelles and other migrants who feed on the short nutritious grass covering the land. These animals are part of the great East African migration, a seasonal movement of game over a 1200-mile route in search of water and nutrition.

At this point in our trip, we had begun to view the animals through the filter of our human values and to see them as representing human qualities. We had started identifying our favorites, and we all started taking sides in their endless everyday struggle for existence.

It was, for example, easy to root against the hyenas -- they seemed like gangs of thugs always slouching around plotting some new atrocity. Rob tried to put their behavior in context for us, but our prejudice got the better of us. So, too, it was easy to root for the elephants, those calm and imposing matriarchs and patriarchs surrounded by happy extended families, seemingly untroubled by our presence or the presence of predators.

I admit that at the beginning of the trip, I didn't have much respect for the wildebeest (or bearded gnu). Silly looking, I thought, and probably not too bright. But then I saw them running, single file in long dusty lines and I changed my mind. The wildebeest impressed me as the true endurance athletes of the Serengeti, running for days at a time with a steady distance-runner's gait, guided by the mysterious and crucial ability to find water in this dry land.



As for the lions, well, we all had different opinions about the lords of the Serengeti. Thanks to the skill of our guide, we had many opportunities to see lions "in action." Most of the time, this meant seeing them sleep. They sure did a lot of sleeping, at least while the sun was up. At Ngorongoro Crater a few days later, we would have our most impressive and bracing encounter with lions when three of them ambled slowly out of the grass and came straight toward our truck. It turned out that they only wanted to lie down in the shade of the row of Land Cruiser that had stopped by the side of the road.

And then there was the lion couple that we saw at Lake Nduto. When we first drove up, they were lying lazily on the ground, ignoring the gawkers and apparently doing nothing.



After a few minutes, the male rolled over, hauled himself to his feet, circled the female once and then mounted her. This sequence took about 30 seconds total, and did not appear to impress the female very much. In any case, both lions were soon snoozing again. Rob explained that this was typical and that it would go on all day, with the male waking up every 15 minutes, initiating copulation, and then going back to sleep.

My son -- who, by the way, had been growing a reddish, lion-like beard on the trip -- remarked that his search was over; he had found his role model.

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After a full day of wildlife viewing, we were ready to rest. We drove through a dry wilderness around Lake Nduto, a maze of scrub forest with dried-up watering holes and dust everywhere. We arrived at the Lake Nduto tented camp around 5 p.m. and were grateful to get out of the Land Rover and smell the familiar charcoal smell of cooking fires. We dumped our bags in the tents, and the others went to get drinks.

I had decided to run -- to start the year off with a run before breaking my streak, so I changed into shorts and running shoes and began my usual routine of circling the perimeter of the camp. It was very dusty, and the charcoal smoke burned my throat, but I was pretty happy to be running anyway. I felt good, and felt that after 372 days, I would appreciate a day off.


Running at Lake Nduto -- the final day of the streak

When I was done running, I prepared to shower. The large, apartment-like tents at Lake Nduto were constructed with an ingenious contraption for hoisting a bucket of hot water up on a pole and then connecting it via a PVC pipe to a shower head that sprayed water down into a small shower stall within the tent. "Preparing to shower" meant telling the camp personnel in charge of heating up water, to bring a bucket to the tent and raise it up into position. Not for the first time, I felt a little uncomfortable to be the recipient of such lavish personal service, but I did enjoy my hot shower very much.

NEXT: Olduvai Gorge, Ngorongoro Crater

Lampron -- 4:05.99!!

It's safe to say that Mansfield junior Josh Lampron was not among the favorites in the boys mile at the New Balance Outdoor Nationals Saturday.

Lampron was not among the 11 H.S. boys who ran sub-4:10 at the "Dream Mile" a week ago in New York -- the race where Lukas Verzbicas broke four minutes. In fact, his best mile of the season had been a 4:15, run over a month ago at the Weston Invitational. Since then, he had competed in and won the 800 in the Division and State Championship meets, but hadn't focused on the mile.

However, on May 14 he had run a 1500m in 3:50.03 at the New Balance Twilight meet, the second fastest time in the country at that point (roughly equivalent to a 4:08 mile) and a performance that didn't get as much attention as it should have.

As the seeded heat of the mile got underway on Saturday, Lampron settled into fourth place and held that position behind better known runners such as Jantzen Oshier and Daniel Everett. With 100m to go, Lampron was still in fourth, more than half a second behind. But Lampron had another gear, and he bolted on the outside catching the others and going ahead of Oshier with about 15m to go. Oshier responded and the two runners crossed the line at almost the same time. A few moments later it was announced that Lampron had won, 4:05.99 to 4:06.00. He had covered his final lap in 58.36.

Sub-4:06 as a junior, and now we're all wondering whether he might eventually join Verzbicas in the sub-4:00 club. Amazing!


Results - Boys 1M - NB Outdoor National Championships

Chris Cogliano Does the Right Thing

On Saturday morning, the first event on the track at the New Balance Outdoor Nationals was the 4x1600 relay. After a single heat for the girls, the first of two heats for the boys stepped on the track.

After two legs (3200 meters), Christian Brothers of New Jersey had the lead at 8:40.85, five seconds ahead of second place with Pembroke, MA, in fifth. At the back of the field and 13 seconds behind the leaders, Bishop Guertin's Chris Cogliano received the baton to run the third leg. The officials were about to do something wrong, but he was about to do something right.

After 800 meters of leg 3, officials put the anchor runners on the track. As the leg 3 runners came into the exchange zone expecting to run their final lap, they found their teammates there to take the batons. As instructed by the officials, they made the exchange and disqualified their teams. All of them but one.

Chris Cogliano kept running, completing his four laps before handing off to anchor Jeff LaCoste. It must have been a strange sight seeing Bishop Guertin, whose team ran the full 16 laps, come in dead last in that heat, 54 seconds behind the second to last team. I wonder what kind of applause they received?

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After the race, meet Director Jim Spier acknowledged the mistake made by the officials and decided to award medals to the top six teams in the first heat -- the ones who had run 6000 meters instead of the proscribed 6400 -- AND to the top six teams that had run the full distance. That included five teams from the second heat and Bishop Guertin, whose time of 17:50.63 placed them second, just ahead of a fine performance from Lowell.

I have no idea why Chris Cogliano didn't stop running after three laps when every other runner in the race did as he was told. Maybe it was because he was so far back that a coach or official told him to go ahead. But I like to think it was because he knew he wasn't done yet, and so he ran through the remnants of the chaos to finish his leg.

It just goes to show that the world is full of well-meaning people telling you what to do. Unfortunately, some of them are wrong. In this race, the officials were wrong and Chris Cogliano did the right thing anyway. Good job, Chris.

Congratulations also to All-Americans Lowell (3rd in full race) and Pembroke (6th in the short race).


Results of Boys 4x1600 Relay (lap short)
Results of Boys 4x1600 Relay (full distance)

MA 4x800 Teams (L-S, Wachusett) Place at Nationals

The Lincoln-Sudbury girls and Wachusett boys 4x800 teams made the podium at the New Balance Outdoor Nationals on Friday with blazing fast times, well beyond anything they had run previously.

The girls race was first and L-S (Megan Broecker, Marika Crowe, Sarah Mepham, and Andrea Keklak) were up. Broecker ran a 2:19, but that was only good for 13th at the exchange. Crowe ran 2:13 on the second leg, bringing L-S up to 8th. Mepham's 2:21 kept them in about the same spot, and Mass State Champ Andrea Keklak took the baton in 9th. The Princeton-bound senior proceeded to catch all but three teams, running a 2:06.67 split -- second fastest of the night - and bringing L-S home in 9:01.78.

In the boys race, Wachusett looked a little over-matched on the first leg, as Hayden Frechette-McCall's 1:57 split was only good for 14th out of 18 teams. However, Alex Jagelsky had the leg of the night for Wachusett, splitting 1:51 and moving his team all the way up to 2nd behind eventual winners Long Beach Poly. From the second exchange on, it was a battle every step of the way. Third leg Jeremy Bennie split 1:55, and brother Colin ran a 1:53 anchor to bring Wachusett home in 5th in 7:36.37. Has any Massachusetts HS team ever run faster?

Girls Results
Boys Results

Wednesday June 8 @ Cold Spring Park.

For the past several years, the Newton Summer Running Project (NSRP) has provided a loose structure for getting together with friends for steady runs during the summer months when most of us are busy building a mileage base for Fall cross country (or marathons).

Our routine has involved meeting at Cold Spring Park in Newton on Monday and Wednesdays at 6:15, and then departing for a run at 6:30. Different folks do different runs. There's usually a group of guys running 8-10 miles at sub 7:00 pace. I can't do that anymore, so I usually run 5-7 miles @7:00-7:30 pace, but I'm usually happy to go slower. If someone shows up wanting to ruhttp://www2.blogger.com/img/blank.gifn 4 miles at 8:00 pace, I'll join you.

Because of my schedule this summer, I don't know whether I'll be able to commit to regular runs from Cold Spring, but a few of us are planning to get together THIS Wednesday, June 8th, for a run. If you're around and looking for training partners, you should consider coming by.

Meet at 6:15. Run at 6:30.

Map to Beacon Street Entrance of Cold Spring Park, Newton

NN Girls Repeat as State Champions; Boys are Third

The Newton North girls track team won their second straight outdoor state title on Saturday scoring 39 points, four ahead of Andover and seven ahead of Lincoln-Sudbury.

Unlike L-S (three wins) and Andover (two wins), the Tigers didn't win a single individual event or relay. Instead they scored in three field events (22 points), three running events (12 points), and a relay (5 points). By my count, the Tigers had nine athletes in the meet; eight of them scored individually or as part of the fourth-place 4x800 team, and the ninth -- Meghan Gentile -- came within five inches of scoring in the shot put.

Despite its depth, the championship didn't come easily for North. They didn't have the defending state pole vault champion (Stephanie Brown) or a key leg of their 4x400 team (Maddie Nadeau) due to injuries. And in a strange twist, they prevailed in spite of the fact that their best relay team did not run, and their best athlete never set foot on the track.

Carla Forbes didn't run a race, but accounted for 14 points by placing second in the triple jump (39-08.5) and third in the long jump (18-05.5). Tatiana Froelich and Ellen Goldberg placed 3rd and 6th in the discus for another 8 points. On the track, Kayla Wong finished 2nd in the 100m hurdles, running 14.81. Margo Gillis placed 7th in the 800 (2:19.06) and Evie Heffernan ran 5:07.77 for 7th in the mile.

And that brings us to the relays. With North missing Nadeau in the 4x400, Coach Tranchita moved Gillis from the 4x400 to the 4x800. Gillis led off (2:20), followed by Meghan Bellerose (2:25), Maggie Heffernan (2:28), and Evie Heffernan (2:20) to finish fourth (0.01 behind third) for the 5 points that would win them the meet.

A final thought about the 2011 North team. It might be eclipsed by the 2012 North team. Of those 39 points, only 11 were scored by seniors.

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On the boys side, Mansfield was racking up points on its way to a dominant victory, but the NN boys were always in the hunt for second place.

Swardiq Mayanja placed 3rd in the shot put with a throw of 53-06.5, and took 6th in the discus with a mark of 145-06.

In the 400m, Isaiah Penn battled Waltham's Nathan Pierre Louis, finally settling for 2nd in a time of 49.04. In a very competitive mile with no clear favorite, Ezra Lichtman placed 5th in 4:21.78, behind Wesley Gallagher's 4:19.24 win.

North's final event was the 4x400, and the Tigers (Clark, Lichtman, Hart, Penn) placed 7th in 3:27.80. Their 23 total points left them behind Mansfield (49) and Acton-Boxboro (29), and tied with Andover.