I invite you to take a second and reflect on the fact that in the past fortnight alone there has been distance results of note in the 800m, 1000m, Mile, 3000m, 5000m, 10,000m and on the trails to discuss. Domestic marathons are around the corner, World XC is late tomorrow night and the most anticipated National Championships of the last three years is in a fortnight! Settle in then, to read about all of it and more in Issue 28…
Spiked Up
#04. Sarah ran another 90 odd km’s including a race while the rest of the episode focused on Rose after another solid 145km week. It didn’t take long either for Sarah to help reveal Rose had a break from running when she was younger … ‘I used to cry on my way to races because I was so anxious to race, because I was so scared of what the outcome may be’ LOOK AT YOU NOW ROSE!
#05. Rose’s training week was highlighted by her quest to run a sub-60 400m to match her training partner’s Sienna feat. She failed but she was happy with it ‘it wasn’t the 59 I was hoping for…’. For Sarah’s week, she had a PSA for anyone who runs at Wattle that they actually do the full lap now so they actually run 500m now, with a hill too (... so wait, they’ve been lying about their splits before this???) and another PSA, both of them do gym guys!
FTK
#90. The FTK Memes page finally got the spotlight it deserves. Joel ran some fast 400’s (not a standard week?) and Brett got all a bit tied up at the Pulse session with Nelson (who got his punishment several days later).
#91. Despite some continuous wobbly leg syndrome affecting his threshold ability this episode marked Joel’s 10th consecutive week of 100 km’s by my count. Brett meanwhile complained a bit about some abdominal discomfort, changed to two sessions a week, took Nelson to the vet and ran 163 km's for the week.
Chasing Paris UK
#08. If you’ve ever trudged your way through a warm-down then this episode has all the evidence you need to stop doing them. Phil and Marc are not afraid to challenge the status quo of whether doing a warm down is needed, and in Marc’s case, not even doing the full 25 minute Bowerman warm-up. Also, the answer to when Marc received his first GB vest was in 2010 for the Youth Mountain Running Challenge as a 16 year old… 10 years younger than Phil was when he got his first so no wonder the Yorkshireman was a bit nonchalant about it!
#09. Phil is certainly back training but isn’t looking at his splits just yet in his preparation for pacing at London. Marc threw down a big session with help from various training partners and his brother. Here’s some more info on Andreas Almgren for the running nerds to help contextualise what Marc and Phil were saying about him. Good luck to Marc who’s racing this Sunday at the Gloucester Half.
Hot Takes
#10. Riley’s Rant on London Marathon, Elise’s Exposure on LSKD and Deep Dive on Data with mentions of Lauren Ryan and Rayner’s Record Runs also thrown in.
Ask Us Anything
#09. Brett and Joel asked their own question to start off with ‘someone made a doof stick so if that was you and you’re a Patreon send us a message’. Dr.Joel then made a brief re-appearance to help a listener with knee pain while also predicting the future career of Archer Gregson ‘to be honest, I reckon he’s going to be a conductor’.
LLL&R
Number Twenty-Three. 52 minutes of commentary and analysis of Jack’s 10,000m record (replay here). Some out of place snippets from Jack: ‘I was in bits… I had a terrible sleep… grilled chicken… lap counter… the gym must be doing reno’s’
Who is the fairest of them all? For this fortnight’s results update instead of trying to work out how to keep my excitement within a self-imposed word count I’ve devised a way to bring you not only results from the past fortnight but also educate you as to which Australian athlete has had the best track season this summer. If the Australian athletics season was similar to F1 this is maybe how we’d crown our overall National Champion. But we’re not, so instead, it’s just a playful experiment to highlight our top track runners this season.
Using the World Athletics scoring tables and Road to Paris ranking system as a guide, I calculated the average of the top three results scores for the top Australian athletes so as to provide recognition to the athletes who have had the most consistency across the summer and not just been a one-hit wonder. The additional place scores from each event were not included (as they are on the actual Road to Paris rankings) as those scores are not included on the results on each athlete’s World Athletics Profile. The time period was from Zatopek in early December to last weekend’s Sydney Track Classic. Here’s the results.
Jess Hull coming out on top is no surprise. Her win in the 3000m at the Sydney Track Classic wasn’t even counted in her average score as it was only a lowly 1183 points compared to the big 1240’s she recorded in the US. Lauren Ryan will be returning to Australia for the National Championships in my view, as per these stats, as the nation’s second best performing athlete this season. A 10,000m National Record and 94 second PB will do that for you on top of her 5000m and 3000m PBs. Her 25 laps at The Ten are available here.
Pic of lauren ryan (or rayner further down?)
Next on the list we have the men’s winner from Sydney’s 3000m National Championships, Cam Myers. Despite not being in the position he wanted (right behind the pacer) Cam still came home with the win last Saturday night. Similar to Hull, his result wasn’t good enough to bump up his average given his 1500m and Mile performances this season have been on another level.
The difference in points between the next several places is a lot tighter than the top three. Claudia Hollingsworth’s unbeaten summer puts her at the top of the 800m/1500m domestic food chain while her On teammate Jesse Hunt is right behind her. Hunt’s 1500m in Bankstown score of 1193 significantly improved his average and earned him 5th spot on the table after his impressive Maurie Plant & Adelaide races. His win in the Mile was icing on the cake for his season before Nationals but not a big enough score to improve his average.
Jack Rayner would’ve been higher on the list if not for his Zatopek score of 1135. Compare that to The Ten race last fortnight where he scored 1211 and the benefit of nice conditions and a deep field has on your result is clear. It’s ironic that Catriona Bisset is ahead of Abbey Caldwell on the table given Abbey has had Catriona’s measure domestically this season but Catriona’s World Indoor results were a step up of what she’s been capable of on home soil. Linden Hall separates the two off the back of possibly the most eclectic set of results (3000m Champs, World Indoors 1500m and Vic Milers). The new kid on the block this season, Peyton Craig just snuck in the top 10 with the lowest average score of all the major distance event winners this season indicating the depth hasn’t been there in the Men’s 800m.
Lastly, Georgia Griffith’s barnstorming run in the 3000m at the Sydney Track Classic earned her 11th position and a worthy inclusion in this table so I could put more emphasis on the Women’s 3000m from Sydney. A debut of 8:37 from Griffo is an incredible performance given before the race (as per Fraser’s Fact from Issue 27) only three Australians had ever broken 8:50 in Australia. Last weekend that number jumped up by seven! Excluding Jess Hull, the top twelve finishers all recorded PB’s! If you watch the race back again and follow where Griffo is the whole time it’s a lesson to never panic that you’re at the back, as long as you’ve got a kick like Griffo that is.
Pic of sydney womens 3000m field
In terms of who’s missing from this list as we approach Nationals: Stewy McSweyn only had two results to his name so far this year so didn’t pass the criteria and Rose Davies’s 1090 at Zatopek hurt her. If I was to include Izzi Batt-Doyle’s Valencia result as her third result she would’ve easily made it into the table but this is a track focused analysis so sorry to Izzi, Brett Robinson and most hard done by of all, Lisa Weightman. Lisa’s average from Valencia and Osaka is 1187, placing her THIRD on the table off only two results. To explain how good that is in terms you may understand, that average score is the equivalent of running 8:36.83 on the track in a Women’s 3000m. Sorry for blowing your minds with all those stats but hopefully you have a more informed idea as to who are the real big dawgs this summer in Australian athletics and who is the fairest of them all.
Over twelve months ago we had the World Cross Country Championships in our own backyard of Bathurst. As it was a delayed edition, it’s somewhat a blessing and a curse to have the 2024 Belgrade edition only a year later. Don’t get sucked into thinking we’re on a yearly cycle with this event because the next one isn’t until 2026. For that reason here’s what not to miss when the racing kicks off late Saturday night eastern time, or prime-time in WA.
Global athletes to watch:
Jacob Kilpimo and Joshua Cheptegei. The Ugandan 1-2 punch. Cheptegei won in 2019, Kiplimo won in 2023 so together, they hold the last two titles. Cheptegei also ran 26:53 in Laredo recently while Kiplimo ran 26:48 in Valencia in January to show a return to form after he missed some action due to injury last year.
Ethiopia’s Berihu Aregawi is the best hope to spoil the Ugandan party and ran 27:15 for 10km at the end of last year to compare against Kiplimo and Cheptegei. Aregawi is also the World Record holder in the 5km.
The Kenyan women’s team has so much depth that ‘It’s not inconceivable that Kenya could replicate their perfect 1-2-3-4-5-6 finish from the 2017 World Cross’ according to this preview. Beatrice Chebet (who we featured in Issue 22) is the headliner of the Kenyan women but only finished 4th at their trials behind Agnes Ngetich who ran 28:46 for 10km in Valencia. That’s almost two minutes under the Olympic standard! Kenya has won the last 8 titles in the women’s race too so if anyone but Kenya wins, there should be a riot.
The Kenyan men’s team doesn’t match the depth of their women’s but Sabastian Sawe (World half marathon champion) is probably their strongest competitor.
Aussies:
The men’s team will consist of Patrick Tiernan, Haftu Strintzos, Liam Adams, Zach Facioni, Ed Marks, Andre Waring. If you take Tiernan’s 2017 result of 13th, add in his NCAA title from 2016/17, throw in a ‘he was in the lead pack of the 10,000m in Tokyo’, with a dash of ‘he’s now a 2:07 marathoner’ there’s a lot to like about his chances of going top 10. An Australian hasn’t finished in the top 10 since Collis Birmingham finished 8th in 2013. This will be Liam Adam’s 9th team as well joining level with Shaun Creighton and Rob De Castella for the second most appearances while also making him our third oldest ever representative at 37 years old.
The women’s duo of Paige Campbell and Melissa Duncan are both returning to World XC for the second time after representing us in 2019. In that edition, Campbell finished 29th and Duncan 26th. Older, wiser, better this time around? At Bathurst five Aussie women made it into the top 30 so hopefully we can sneak one in there again!
The Junior team is more than half Queenslanders and has a few returnees in Jack Coomber, Charli-Rose Carlyon and Gabrielle Schmidt. Full team is here.
Miscellaneous:
It’s easy to think that without a full strength Australian team or even a full women’s team we shouldn’t care too much about this event. Being an Olympic year though the big hitters at this event are likely to feature in the 10,000m around Paris’s Stade de France so the closer you look now, the more informed you will be come August and thus, the more impressed your mates will be when you rattle off the fact that Kiplimo dominated the World XC earlier in the year (my not so bold tip) so of course he’ll dominate the 10,000m.
The course features a hay maze again like Bathurst, is mostly grass and is a 1887m loop. Prizemoney is available for the top 6 individuals and teams but only the top 4 in the relay race. Individual winners will receive $30,000 USD.
If you thought it was strange there was no mention of Euro’s or Americano’s in the global athletes to watch it’s because they, like us, aren’t sending their strongest. It continues a downwards trend in the percentage of competitors from Europe and North America. In 2023 there were only 11.3% and 15.2% respectively from those two continents. 2024’s entry list is projected to have slightly more Europeans competing (close to 20%) but way down on the numbers achieved in the 1980’s-2010’s of 40-70%.
On numbers, there are 12 teams entered into the mixed relay, down from 15 at Bathurst, but up from 9 in the first edition. 3 out of the 4 Kenyan’s who won in Bathurst are on the team sheet again while Ethiopia, the second placed team, has a much different team this time around.
There are only 5 of the 16 athletes who have qualified using cross country results for the 10,000m at the Olympics who are actually competing in the World XC Championships. The other 11 men and women should have a good hard look at themselves. What’s the point of winning a XC event and not competing in the World Champs? Perhaps it should be a condition in the next qualification period that if you choose to qualify in that manner, you must race at the World champs.
The Australian Mountain Champs held in Orange were won by Steph Auston and Ben St.Lawrence. Shout out to Leo Peterson as well who came 4th at that event and 3rd the day prior in the kunanyi Mountain Run (kMR) 25 km in Hobart. To make that clear, Leo ran 25km’s around Mt. Wellington in Tasmania on Saturday morning and then 11km up a mountain in western NSW on Sunday morning. The travel alone would’ve been tiring enough. The winners of the kMR and Golden Trail National Series Race #2 were Tait Hearps and Maggie Lennox. In the last set of major results on the trails, arguably the pinnacle event at the Buffalo Stampede the 42km SkyMarathon (and one of three local qualifiers for the World SkyRunning team) was won by Anna McKenna (guest on Q&A 29 with FTK) and Billy Curtis. In an all too common occurrence in supposedly high end trail events, the leaders in the men’s field went the wrong way after 12 minutes in and only Charlie Hamilton (2nd) from that group went on to finish despite running an extra 3.5km’s. Reece Edwards and World Champs representative Bastien Missud were in that group but sadly recorded a DNF (or more like a CBF finish).
The Wayne Crandell Memorial Athletics Festival was on Sunday March 24th. If you missed it I can understand why, it was basically just a javelin competition which has only had one other event across the domestic season. Kathryn Mitchell voiced her frustrations at the scheduling and promotion of the javelin in this article which also had the organiser, Bruce Crandell, put Athletics Australia’s neck brace stocks on high alert with this quote… ‘it’s not just going to turn heads - it’s going to snap necks when you’re talking high up at Athletics Australia’.
Five runners finished the Barkley Marathons including the first ever female finisher Jasmin Paris of the U.K. This race is everything that UTMB and other major commercialised trail races isn’t. A 2014 documentary sheds more light on the race but if you’ve never heard of it, the tidbits to know are: the race starts when the RD lights a ciggy, you’re not allowed a watch and there’s random pages of books you have to tear out corresponding to your bib number. It also only costs $1.60 to enter.
On the opposite spectrum of running, there was a plethora of global results from the March 16/17 weekend. The highlight was a fast 10km in a Spanish city (not Valencia, not Barcelona but this time, Laredo) that was won by Yomif Kejelcha in the 3rd fastest time ever of 26:37. The top women didn’t make it under the 30:40 Olympic standard despite being on track at halfway. Konstanze Klosterhalfen was first in 31:07 for a PB and bragging rights though.
If you haven’t seen Stewy McSweyn in an Irish sandwich, watch this replay of the Box Hill Burn to see Andrew Coscoran, Stewy and Paul Robinson race in the 1000m from last Thursday. Wave lights also made their debut in Australia at this event.
Finally, in last night’s Australian Mile Championships Abbey Caldwell held off Lauren Ryan and a host of others in the Women’s Mile. There was the tiniest bit of theatre with Jess Hull, who was first in the Women’s 800m with a PB on the same track but in a different race. The Women’s 1500m at Nationals in a few weeks between Caldwell, Hull and others should be terrific given everyone seems to be in form. Peter Bol returned to the track for the first time this domestic season in finishing second to Luke Boyes in the mens 800m. Jesse Hunt and Jack Anstey were almost as inseparable as two lightweight boxers for 3 minutes and 59 seconds of the Albie Thomas Mile. Hunt, vocally supported by On teammates at the top bend, won by 0.17 seconds ahead of Anstey and earned himself $3,000 and a fancy boxing-like belt!
I could’ve gone with another fact for the second fortnight in a row regarding the Women’s 3000m at Sydney but if you’re a committed reader you already know how good that was. Cam Myers becoming the youngest ever national champion in the 3000m was also an honourable mention but again, not good enough (or obscure enough) for this fortnight’s Fraser fact. The Cam Myers result led me down the rabbit hole though of figuring out who has won the most national titles of a single distance event, man or woman. Considering he’s started young, maybe Cam has the opportunity to break that record?
Well, he has his work cut out for him as Tamsyn Manou won eleven consecutive 800m titles across her career! The best male effort is from Michael Hillardt who won eight 1500m titles including seven in a row. Both of these runners also hold the records for the most gold medals in distance events with Manou picking up seven more in the 400m and 400m hurdles (18 total) and Hillardt getting two more in the 800m (10 total) to share the title with Shaun Creighton.
March 30th: World XC Champs. The timetable of the events is here and if there is a stream or radio coverage available it will be posted on this page.
April 7th in Australia: Hobart Airport and Canberra Marathons.
April 7th in Melbourne: Sydney Marathon x FTK Run Club long run. Register here. Will Brett go the right way this time? Also, reminder that if you register with the FTK team for the Sydney Marathon you’ll have access to exclusive merch.
April 7th in South Korea: Daegu Marathon. The Gold Label event has the worlds highest prize money and arguably the best landing page of any marathon. It’s missing the entry list but the course map and prize money information is terrific! Good luck to Jess Stenson!
April 11th - 16th: National Athletic Championships. Prepare your minds to be blown by the quality of racing on offer in the most anticipated National Championships in a few years.
This division of Grattan House welcomes any and all reader feedback. If you want more or less of something or want something investigated please enquire at theblueline@grattanhouse.com. For complaints specifically about The Blue Line, please address your emails to the editor, Fraser Darcy, who can be found at the above email address.