Welcome to the first issue of The Blue Line - your fortnightly digest of everything track and road racing in Australia and beyond. This is a Grattan House production (just like For The Kudos), so you know it’s going to be full of swearing informative, fun, and unlike anything else out there.
If you’re not aware, the blue line represents the most direct route on a marathon course. Just as the blue line on the roads should guide you, think of The Blue Line as your guiding light in all things running and life (yes, a cult! Very cool!).
Who are we? We’re definitely not Brett and Joel. No way. We’re…um, we’re Rhett and…Bowl. Fuck.
We are lucky to have two amazing writers on hand to break down all the most important happenings in running. As for me? Hi! 👋🏻 I’m Chris, I’m the admin bot.
Elise Beacom comes to us with experience as a journalist, a writer for the United Nations, and of course, a runner. Elise has logged miles in A-list locations such as Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, and North Korea - even taking a podium position in the Pyongyang Half Marathon (we assume Kim Jong-un won the race in ~15 minutes).
Fraser Darcy is a character from Pride & Prejudice an outdoor athlete and writer living in the Flinders Ranges in South Australia. He runs a lot of trails and will play a key role in needling Brett and Joel about how hard trail running is compared to road running.
Let’s jump into Issue 01, shall we? PS if you have any feedback on this issue, you can direct it to Jordy Williamsz.
by Elise Beacom
Athletes traditionally associate going longer with getting slower, saving their step up to the marathon for later in life when their top end speed is dwindling. But the rise of young women nailing the distance is flipping the script, the latest being Yalemzerf Yehualaw 🇪🇹 who became the youngest woman to win the London Marathon earlier this month. The 23-year-old Ethiopian ran a scorching 2:17:26 to break the tape, despite falling arse-over-tit at a critical moment in the race (watch the fall here). On the same day on the other side of the world, friend of the podcast Izzi Batt-Doyle 🇦🇺, 27, became Australia’s fastest marathon debutante, clocking an impressive 2:28:10 at the Melbourne Marathon.
In a cute twist, Berlin Marathon saw spectacular results on both ends of the age spectrum. Twenty-five-year-old Ethiopian 🇪🇹, Tigist Assefa smashed the course record, logging the third fastest women’s marathon time e-v-e-r in a phenomenal 2:15:37 (hello 19-minute PB 👋🏻). On the other end, Lisa Weightman 🇦🇺, 43, was on pace for the Australian record through halfway. She fell short but finished with a PB of 2:24 flat, shooting Lisa up to third place on the all-time Australian women’s list.
One might say that the twilight years inspire a nothing-to-lose kind of risk taking, and we all know winning requires taking risks. Among our Aussie girls, we can’t go past Jess Stenson’s Commonwealth Games Marathon win 🥇 in Birmingham this year, aged 35. Eloise Wellings, 39, has run about a thousand* (fact check) marathons since she debuted 12 months ago. Her best finish came fist pumping over the line at Nagoya in 2:25:10 in March. And of course there’s Sinead Diver, 45, who continues to throw down exceptional performances – not least her 10th place finish in the marathon at the Tokyo Olympics.
Whether it’s the recklessness of youth or the wisdom of age that enables bravery in the marathon, the results are the same. They show us that success is as possible for a 20-something newbie as it is for a 40-something mum. There aren’t many other sports in the world where rivals two decades apart are on equal footing in competition, which makes the marathon bloody special.
Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this post listed Lisa Weightman as 44. She is 43. Our apologies to Lisa.
by Fraser Darcy
NYC, baby! The last of Tony Abbott’s World Marathon Majors of the year is taking place on November 6 (Monday, November 7 for us Aussies) and what should TBL readers be on the lookout for? Well, covering off our patriotic biases first, we have Jess Stenson and Eloise Wellings toeing the start line. Both have a family connection with the race, Jess’s brother Jack (former AFL captain at the Melbourne Demons) is running his debut marathon (and raising money for the Little Heroes Foundation) while Eloise was actually born in the Big Apple. Aussie women have a good history with New York too, Lisa Ondieki won the heckin’ thing in 1992 and set a course record and our fifth fastest time ever of 2:24:40. Interestingly, New York features in our top 100 fastest women’s times 10 times while it only features in our top 100 men’s times once.
In the men’s field, look out for US athlete Galen Rupp who is running his first NYC marathon and is looking fit according to our inside sources. He goes in with the sixth fastest seed time but has a resume stacked with top 3 finishes at big marathons so you know he’ll be tough to beat.
PS, remember when Rupp wore this face mask in 2011 before they were cool?
Another thing to tick off your bingo card is hearing people talk about NYC as the biggest marathon in terms of participation. To effectively control the 50,000 or so runners, there are various start times, corrals and start ‘colours’. It’s almost a choose your own adventure for the first 8 miles with three slightly different course options depending on what start ‘colour’ you are assigned.
Unfortunately for some runners, their course along either the Verrazano Bridge may leave them at the mercy of other runners who decide to urinate right on top of them…It’s such an issue that the New York Road Runners (who control the race) have written into their Rules of Competition “…Anyone who is seen urinating or defecating in a corral may be disqualified and/or suspended from NYRR events.”. 😱
Finally on your bingo card, if the weather is nice and the elites are feeling strong, the course records to keep an eye on are: Men’s: 2:05:06 (2011), Women’s: 2:22:31 (2003).
by Elise Beacom
The nominees are out for the World Athletics Athlete of the Year and it’s a super stacked field, including Faith Kipyegon 🇰🇪, Sydney McLaughlin 🇺🇸, Tobi Amusan 🇳🇬 and Shericka Jackson 🇯🇲. We’re jumping the gun and tipping who we think will take the chocolates KFC… And the winner is…
Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce 🇯🇲 (if we’re being accurate, SAFP is now known as The Honourable Dr Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce OJ, CD after recently being awarded the Order of Jamaica). The Jamaican pocket rocket has so many gold medals she can’t keep track of them. “If I’m being honest, I can’t find two,” she told the Citius Mag podcast. The 10x world champion, 3x Olympic gold medallist and 4x Diamond League final winner dominated the 100m this season (the sexiest track event, sorry middle-distance nerds). Shelly ran sub-10.70 an unbelievable seven times, including a world lead of 10.62. At 35 (and a mum), her ceaseless progression is mind blowing. She credits her championship mentality, hatred of losing and constant thirst to tackle the next big thing.
We love Shelly as much for her spirit as for her talent – Shelly travelled to the World Athletics Championships in Eugene this year with a bag of 10 coloured wigs. But even the best-of-the-best have bad hair days: “The hair I wore on the first day wasn’t the hair I wanted to wear… the girl who did it kind of messed it up.” Shelly also had to readjust her turquoise wig mid-way through her 200m heat, but still managed to qualify easily for the semi-final. A nervous flyer, when travelling she sheds the colours to go somewhat incognito.
Back home in Jamaica, Shelly gets spotted regularly, but there are perks. “When I go to KFC in Kingston, there is a huge line... I park my car, I pay the security to order my chicken… so I always get my KFC on time.” Now that’s winning.
Check out the full list of World Athletics Athlete of the Year nominees here.
by Fraser Darcy
If you’re a running content junkie and can’t survive on your dose of FTK or TBL, get yourself over to YouTube. There’s a plethora of good, bad and average content just waiting for you. If you’re already watching things on YouTube chances are you’ve fallen down a wormhole before so to help keep you on the straight and narrow and to also guide the newbies, here are some suggestions:
Good person-specific channels to sample from:
Allie Ostrander (American elite runner who has endured battles with her physical and mental health. She’s refreshing and honest - there’s a lot of workout videos here as well)
Vo2maxProductions (Sage Canaday is a professional trail runner - his channel is a mixture of tips, race reports, and good humour)
Stephen Scullion (recent Olympian, not as much content as the others but he’s just started a Road To Paris vlog which will be great)
Top Documentary Style Channel to watch: Total Running Productions. Focuses on running doco’s and analysis of famous races or runners. Very informative.
Best Pure Race Highlights Package: Boston 2018. Watch Yuki Kawauchi 🇯🇵 surge, then fade, then surge again, then fade again, much to the amusement of the commentators. He surges a few more times and finishes… no spoilers… This is just pure running footage, no Masterchef style emotional back story at all.
No.1 Feature Film: Unbreakable: The Western States 100 ⛰. Follows four athletes battling it out on the OG American trail ultra. Kilian Jornet 🇪🇸 features as a fresh faced 22 year old.
Off Broadway (the video quality is not so great and they’re both a little off beat but the actual content is still primo):
Option 1 is Yiannis Kouros - Forever Running. This bloke was the GOAT of ultra running in the 80’s and 90’s and even lived in Melbourne for a bit.
Option 2 is Leadville Trail 100 - Race Across the Sky. This is the race featured in the early parts of Chris McDougall’s Born to Run. It’s half a doco on running an ultra, half a race highlights package.
by Brett Robinson
My Win of the Week this week is that finally, everyone can be an Olympian… Well at least 20,024 people can run in the Paris Olympic Marathon in 2024. Organisers recently announced that they will be adding a mass race to the Olympic schedule that will start shortly after the Men’s Olympic Marathon on August 10th, 2024. The lucky 20,024 runners can enter by completing challenges to gain entries into a ballot to be drawn in early 2024.
Running 42.2km through the heart of Paris, chasing down the elite runners all while being cheered on by the same crowds that were just cheering on the Olympic race is a once in a lifetime opportunity for people. I think this is so exciting and something that should happen more often when roads are closed, infrastructure is set up, and the atmosphere is high - why not give as many people as possible the opportunity to be a part of it?
Closer to home, World XC in February 2023 is doing the same thing. The day before the World Championships races there is a series of mass participation races where runners have the opportunity to run on the exact same course that athletes will battle it out on the next day. To make it even better, the top 7 athletes in the men’s and women’s open event can come back the next day and participate in the World Cross Country which is pretty wild. Imagine winning a local 5k and then getting to compete against the best in the world.
Hopefully I’ll see you there 😉
In a shameless piece of cross promotion, we want to give you (and only you) the scoop on what’s coming up on For The Kudos. You might have heard the boys mention an upcoming partnership with Movember 👨🏻 - we’re all really excited for this, mainly to see the 3 facial hairs Joel can conjure up over the month 🌱.
We want to let you know that coming up during the month of Movember we have Dave McNeill 🇦🇺 and Stephen Scullion 🇮🇪 on the show (separate episodes) - if you want to submit a question for Stephen you can do so by emailing us here.
Speaking of Movember, the boys have launched their own For the Kudos Movember Team. So if you want to get on board and either donate a buck, or raise a buck yourself, you can create a profile and be part of the For the Kudos #squad. Join the team here.
Who else is on your team, you ask? None other than Jack Rayner, the owner of the greatest Aussie moustache since David Boon. Better yet, Jack has said that when his MoSpace page hits $7,777 in donations (7 is his favourite number) he will shave the moustache off on a livestream. You can donate to Jack here.