A week is a long time in the world of running. We started with so much hope before last weekend, as we always do before any race (let alone three big events), that everything magical was going to happen. There were dreams of PB’s, victories and sunshine. Some of that happened, some of it didn’t and while you probably already know the majority of what happened here’s a recap with it all in the one document so you can reread and relive it once more (and then print it out and pass it around the lunch room at work!).
Main Show #76 & #77
Claudia Hollingsworth, winner of the Ondieki 3000m at Zatopek and an On athlete, featured on episode #76.
Joel is on the up and looking to jump in a marathon in the next week or so while Brett did jump in a marathon and came 7th with 2:08:29.
Chasing Paris #10 & #11
Gen covered her final week and prep (including her carb loading plan) in great detail while Andy was too scared to hop on his leg in the pre-Marathon episode and never revealed his true diagnosis.
The Valencia marathon then actually continued to the Gregson’s Airbnb for Gen who jumped straight on the mic after her race before recapping it with anyone else. She is the real MVP (Most Valuable Podcaster) of FTK.
Live, Laugh, Love & Run, with Jack, Joel and Brett
You could probably put Number 13 down as a Missing Persons podcast if it wasn’t for Jack interrupting with his training week.
Hot Takes hosted by Riley Wolff and Elise Beacom (with special guests) is coming out soon on Patreon following the completion of Chasing Paris. Boy I hope they ask me about the trail running news!
First cab off the rank in this week’s review of everything that went down last weekend is the On Track Nights Zatopek:10. Andrew Corscoran won the men’s race in 27:56 (not fast enough for the IR sadly) and Jacky boy won probably the talking point of the race by beating Pat Tiernan to claim his third in a row Australian title. Jack’s 27:57 was actually his second fastest 10,000m ever as well which emphasises just how good Cosi was to beat him on the night.
The Women’s 10,000m was the last race of the night and early on it looked like it might push some of the Little Athletics fans past their bedtime the pace was that slow. Without a pacemaker no-one was willing to do any work. The drizzle then set in and the crowd thinned (along with the amount of livestream viewers, 1150 on Youtube at the peak of the men’s race to around 800 watching). Was this the racing spectacle that was supposed to cap off the first On Track Night?
Lauren Ryan didn’t think it was so she took off with 16 laps to go. ‘She wouldn’t have come back from the states for … not a serious race, she wants this race’ was the call from special comments man Brady Threlfall. Holly Campbell matched her move and the two put a good 40m lead on pre-race favourite Rose Davies. With 11 laps to go Rose was back on and the pace dropped enough for Caitlin Adams and Cara Feain-Ryan to join as well. Tara Palm, who had been running even paced laps, made things interesting when she arrived to make it a party of five. Instead of sitting on the back Tara kept the metronome ticking along for a bit, dragging the reluctant others with her, before Rose decided to play her first move with 8 laps to go. This was championship racing and the crowd both in the stadium and at home were getting a racing spectacle.
With 5 laps to go, it was a race of three between Rose, Lauren and Holly. At 600m to go the fireworks kicked off and Rose turned the screws again. Then things got a little silly on the last lap behind the Peking Duk tent (which made life extremely difficult for anyone watching so I hope those patrons at the end got their value out of the DJ’s performance). Lauren Ryan emerged from underneath the Dream On bridge with a great kick to leave Holly and Rose in her dust. An elongated celebration put the icing on the cake for the athlete who earned her first national title.
And that was just the 10,000m races. Athletics Victoria, On and Athletics Australia no doubt sat around on Monday picking apart the event. If they happened to be interested in what this observer thought of it, here’s some take-aways in the form of a traffic light review.
Green (good work, keep it up):
The quantity of media hype before and after the event and social media drive was impressive.
If you compare the infrastructure from 2023 to 2022’s December event or the Maurie Plant meet the arena definitely looked like it was hosting a big spectacle. The local sign makers must’ve made a fortune off On. (Side-note: Did you see that Jake Wightman is coming to visit for the Maurie Plant meet this year 😲. Get tickets here).
The actual racing was excellent quality with great finishes across the main Open events. Shoutout to Matt Ramsden who dragged himself out of the oven to win the 3000m by 0.1 second.
Orange (not sure about this, further explanation or exploration required):
The crowd looked a little bigger than 2022 but having them off the track this year made the atmosphere look more sedated. Maybe that’s the price you pay for wanting to ensure the advertising boards show up on the livestream and post race photos. The atmosphere certainly didn’t match the Maurie Plant meet from last year from where I watched (my living/athletics streaming room for both events).
The weather was mentioned several times by the commentators and pre-race media (Mitch Dyer nice to meet you) so maybe that had an effect on the crowd but it’s hard to say. If the product is good enough, spectators should want to come anyway no matter what the weather is right? (And before anyone asks who are you to comment on why people didn’t go if you didn’t go yourself I live a 4hr drive from the nearest airport and 12 hrs from the actual stadium so you may complain about my non-attendance only if you had a longer commute and still made it).
Red (please stop this or change it for next year):
Can start lists be added to the pre-event hype?! Yes we know who we expect to be running and can speculate as much as we want but instead of posting the same generic ‘On Track Nights Zatopek:10’ graphic can we get start lists with PB’s and some personality from our competitors for each event?! Elite sport is more and more about following individual characters rather than just attending events. Tell me as a fan what I will be seeing, not just give me some text on a green background.
The Peking Duk tent made for difficult race viewing and the ‘beer tent’ looked like it didn’t add anything at all (I was watching the livestream so maybe I’m just jealous I couldn’t buy a beer from said tent). The post-race socials of Peking Duk’s performance looked great so maybe it was worth it but if the stage isn’t being used during the event does it need to be in the infield at all? What about hosting the concert in the car park or do what the AFL does for the pre-game concert and wheel something temporary on and off? Is it a cost thing?
All that being said and done, for a first ever On Track Night in Australia it was successful. A few tweaks, some more international competitors maybe and given fans now know what to expect from some of the innovations the event might match the hype next year.
Christmas is officially in a little over two weeks but for Australian marathon fans Christmas was last Sunday. Santa’s first present was delivered by Sam McEntee who walked us in the back door of Japanese TV to provide the Fukuoka stream.
Brett’s 2:08:29 for 7th place was the fifth fastest Australian time and gives him a better two-run time average than Rob De Castella. He still has a few more sub 2:10’s to notch up to match Deek’s (7 sub 2:10’s) and Mona’s (5) record but Brett is certainly getting a handle on the marathon now. What was most impressive about Brett’s performance was that he dropped off at the 28km mark initially but was able to stem the bleeding, let others fade past him and nab 7th position overall only 1:21 behind winner Michael Githae. Highlight of the stream had to be when Japan’s own Kyohei Hosoya dropped off the lead pack very late in the piece and the commentary team would amp up each time the camera was on him. It was the closest thing we’ll get to a Japanese game show on our screens for a while unless we can figure out how Sam McEntee uses VLC media player to bootleg Japanese TV.
Another notable Australian performance at Fukuoka was Ed Goddard’s 2:19 after being on pace for sub 2:12 (which would’ve been a PB). Matt Fox, who’s been producing some great Japanese running culture content lately with Sweat Elite, fell off 2:20 pace around 33 km but managed another low 2:20’s time. Quite an impressive, ‘reverse Yuki Kawauchi’ record he’s setting there, not that he probably wants that.
FloTrack gave us present number two with a FREE Youtube stream of Valencia marathon, with English commentary! Maybe they felt bad about that time the stream cut out…Although the stream was great it wasn’t much use to Australian viewers. The app was where the action was at and if you’d told me that all four Aussie girls would be on 2:23/2:24 pace for 90% of the race I’d have told you Christmas is supposed to be realistic, not fairytale land, not everyone gets the present they dream of.
At the front of the race on the stream Sisay Lemma set the fourth fastest time ever with 2:01:48 to outlast a series of highly fancied competitors while Worknesh Degefa led home an Ethiopian 1-2-3 in the women’s with 2:15:51 (7th fastest all-time). Joshua Cheptegei’s debut marathon chances were tempered early by the commentary team who prefaced that he’d only been doing 90-100 miles a week (160kms) and he was still going to focus on the 10,000m at Paris, this marathon was more a testing of the waters. He was on pace with the leaders through halfway before fading badly in scenes reminiscent of his blow-up at the Ugandan edition of World XC in 2017. Australian Thomas Do Canto wasn’t too far off Cheptegei in the end (2:08:59) posting his own PB of 2:11:52, an improvement by 2:39 (almost a kilometre in front of old TDC).
Returning to the women in fairytale land, Gen Gregson and Izzi Batt-Doyle continued their excellent run to finish in the Top 10 with, I know you already know these times but they’re such big PB’s they deserve to be the wallmark to this edition, 2:23:08 (Gen) and 2:23:27 (Izzi). 3rd fastest and 5th fastest times ever by an Australian female. Gen’s Patreon recap covered where she felt she made a decisive move at the 30km mark (her fastest km was number 31) but it was really her last 5km’s that made all the difference.
Lisa Weightman came in next with 2:24:18 and razor blades in her throat so while she was disappointed the next time sometime tells me they won’t be running well because they’re sick I’ll tell them ‘Lisa Weightman ran 2:24 when she was sick so toughen up buttercup!’. Eloise Wellings was the final elite Australian female over the line to cross in 2:25:47. While still under the Olympic standard, Eloise eloquently described how being on the wrong side of the fine margins cost her, and her eyesight in the end, going faster. Despite that, we had all four girls go under the Olympic standard out of 41 females in total on the day (in comparison to 33 men, so maybe Gen is right and the men’s standard is tougher).
And that was Christmas day in the world of marathoning. Unlike actual Christmas day you can relive some of the highlights on Youtube forever as well in your own version of 50 First Dates. When it comes to Olympic selection, Gen moved up to number two Australian and Izzi became fourth behind Sinead (first) and Lisa (third with her 2:23:15 from Osaka). Ed’s run was obviously not enough to shake things up in the men’s standings and neither was TDC’s (4th fastest time this year, 5th fastest in the selection period when you count Brett’s 2022 Fukuoka). It’s still only December though so things are far from assured, which all the girls know, and if you remember what happened amongst the 1500m girls with the 2022 Commonwealth Games/World Champs selection you know anything can happen (OK, not anything, Joel’s not a chance for Paris). Second issue in a row it’s been mentioned but geez, wouldn’t this year be a great year for a trial?!
Ky Robinson set a new AR in the Men’s Short Track 5000m with 13:06.42. Short track means 200m laps by the way and is usually a synonym for indoors but doesn’t specifically have to be.
Marine Ponton set a new AR in the Women’s 50km with 3:15:46 (3:54/km, 2:45 marathon pace) beating the old record by a little under two minutes.
Reece Edwards ran 2:26.52 for 9th place in the Singapore Marathon which he described as ‘brutal’.
Pat Tiernan is looking at a January marathon so keep your eyes out for the next sighting of the third place Zatopek finisher.
Some of the country’s top trail runners are in Thredbo at the moment racing the snowy mountain’s version of UTA (called UTK, Ultra Trail Kosciusko). The 100km and 100 Mile events started today (Friday 8th) while the 27km and 50km were yesterday. Follow along here.
The depth of Australian marathon running is anecdotally incredible at the moment and this week’s fact proves it.
If you take the Top 20 best times (essentially the twenty fastest males and twenty fastest females over a marathon) for each of the past six years and calculate the average amongst those groups of runners you find that 2023 was the fastest year ever by almost two minutes for the men. 2:16:46 average compared to the next best year in 2019 with 2:18:26.
For the women, as a collective they smashed their previous best year (2022, 2:37:11) by 2:51 to have an average of 2:34:20 which is miles in front (almost ten minutes faster) than most of the last six years. Without doing the sums for every year before 2018 at a quick glance it’s enough to believe that 2023 was our best ever year of marathon running.
December 8-11: The school event of the year is in Perth for the Australian All Schools Athletics Championships & National Schools Challenge. 1200 athletes, livestream, future stars.
December 18: Monday evening group run followed by a live show at Runner’s Paradise. Tickets will be available next week. Patreons will have early access.
February 10: Adelaide Invitational (next Chemist Warehouse Open event)
February 15: Maurie Plant Meet. Australia’s only ‘World Athletics Continental Tour Gold Meet’. Buy tickets here.
Updated information: Albie Thomas Mile has been moved to March 28.
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