Because I haven’t… sorry to get your hopes up!
With the Olympic Marathon announcement expected any day from now this issue of your favourite free fortnightly running newsletter looks deeply into some of the finer details of the Olympic Marathon course and weather that those who are selected will be challenged with. Good luck to them is all I’ll say… If marathons aren’t your interest (what the hell are you reading this for then?) there’s also DL results to update you on, a plethora of track meets to add to your calendar and that was about it right, there was nothing else impressive from the last fortnight? I guess the Bendigo Bats had a poor start at Jells, not that that’s newsworthy, but now that I think of it, there was some reason behind that actually…
FTK
#96. Gifu Half Marathon Recap. 24 degrees celsius and only three trees on the whole course made for tough conditions as Bretty-boy ran 63:42. Timothy Kiplagat is the Kenyan who now has some doubts about what he’ll run in Paris if he makes it up from the bench…‘what do you reckon you’ll run in Paris… you sure? It’s a pretty tough course, you only ran 62 today…’. Joel barely even ran 62 minutes for the week but made up for it in the dynamic energy he brought, giving the Unofficial FTK Memes account page plenty of content.
#97. If this happened to be someone’s first ever episode of FTK I’d like to know their thoughts. In the fishing world, Rambo the crazy skipper took Brett, Joel and other fisho’s out looking for a ‘bust-up’ where upon they all dropped lines over and Joel put an extra rod between his legs. In the running world, Brett ran 135 km’s the week after Gifu and they both enjoyed prime Albert Park weather for once.
Spiked Up
#09. Rose recapped her 14:47 for 5,000m at Suzhou which continued the trend of Spiked Up hosts notching Olympic qualifiers. Other highlights were: ‘sue me... I don’t know what a blue sky looks like here…it’s freaking gorgeous…the only time I get out of my robe is when I have to leave the room’ and of course the pair’s confessions. We’re still yet to see if Sarah will ever get a DL start again…
#10. Claudia Hollingsworth special. We found out that strides are called ‘skills and drills’ with the On squad which sounds a lot more fun, Claudia loses her watch regularly and she wasn’t prepared for how serious the Maurie Plant meet was (in a good way). On top of that, Rose still remains locked out of her laptop.
Hot Takes
Riley and Elise dissected the Diamond League, gave Ballarat Marathon the attention it deserved (lots) after a successful first event which Elise attended and rounded out the episode looking forward to Riley’s Copenhagen Marathon. Not afraid to go out swinging, Riley ran 3:09:17 after a 1:26:59 halfway split. It’s ‘on to the next’ one from Riley now.
Ask Us Anything - #10
The top three questions were:
What is your greatest achievement?
Who would win out of you two in a UFC fight?
When you get married will there be a Patreon option to attend your weddings?
And there were a few that were outside the boys’ scope but they still answered them anyway.
… oh yeah, that’s why the Bats weren’t flying at Jells Park, Andy ‘The Bendigo Bat-man’ Buchanan was out cleaning up the streets of Hamburg for a third year running (plus Brady was in Ballarat). If you want to take a trip down memory lane briefly, Andy debuted at Hamburg in 2022 with 2:12:23. The next year, 2023, he ran 2:10:20. He shaved those two minutes by evenly pacing the race just a smidge faster when you dive into his Strava stats. Was that his modus operandi this year with another two minute shave needed to get close to 2:08:10?
It certainly started out like that. After the first 5km’s this year he already had 28 seconds in the bank on 2023’s race. The next 5km’s were 10 seconds faster and by 20km’s, just before his halfway split of 63:49, he was exactly 1 minute up on his time from last year.
The next 10 km’s were much the same for Andy but if there was a 2023 hologram of himself out there it would’ve been slightly catching up. If he were to maintain the pace he held up until 25-30km’s we would be talking about our third Australian qualifier for the Men’s Olympic Marathon. Unfortunately though, the Batman’s wings were clipped and he wasn’t able to make up any time on his 2023 splits in the final few 5km segments. He takes up the commentary on his performance here:
We had a pacer through to 30k which kept the pace pretty even. Around 32k the German (Sebastian Hendel) started pulling away from me. I wasn’t sure if he was running faster or I was running slower. He gradually pulled away from me over the next few km as I realised I was slowing down and the effort level was increasing. It was a bit of a slow death to the finish but happy that my slowest km was the 42km in 3:12 so while it felt like a slow death it wasn’t that bad. - Andy Buchanan.
So while he did drop off past the 32km mark, his finishing time of 2:08:58 in any other year would be viewed as an incredible success, which of course it still is especially given his recent injury history as documented on Chasing Paris last year.
This year though, with our ‘Olympic coloured’ coloured glasses on there is a collective ughh, you were so close Andy… about his result. Please, if you haven’t already, put those glasses down a smidge and put on your ‘May 2022 coloured’ glasses and you’ll see we haven't had any Australian male break sub 2:10 for over 18 years. Now, two years later we have Brett, Pat Tiernan, Liam Adams and Andy Buchanan in that elite group. They haven’t been invented yet but perhaps if we pretend to look through the ‘May 2025’ coloured glasses we’ll see Andy pushing out those last 10 km’s to go sub 2:08 or faster.
Joining Andy in Hamburg in the end was only Ellie Pashley and Ryan Gregson after Ed Goddard was a late DNS (but returned to full health to win the Runaway Sydney Half last weekend) and Liam Adams was MIA. Ellie’s race didn’t go as romantically planned with her inability to get on the required pace early in the race not looking good on the tracker. Flying across the world with one outcome in mind, in your second marathon attempting it, must be brutally exhaustive and you’d have to imagine the self-talk as Ellie passed through halfway in 72:54. A negative split of 70:low, very close to her half marathon PB of 69:14, would have been a miracle and got her name in the mix for the Australian team but in the end, it appeared to all catch up with her as she clocked 2:29:58 for her fourth sub 2:30 marathon.
Ryan’s race was run in a very similar theme to Andy, with his halfway split of 66:17 putting him on track to shave two minutes off his Melbourne debut time of 2:14. In the finishing stages, if not right on the finish line, of his debut Ryan suffered some hamstring cramps which came back to haunt him late in Hamburg. An eventual finish of 2:18:53 is respectable in only his second race and must really put the pressure on him to find a solution to rectify his cramping issues which have been a 2/2 from so far. With both Ryan and Ellie’s results not as fast as hoped it is disappointing but, in a sadistic way, it makes what Andy has been able to do three years in a row at Hamburg look all the more special.
Despite the special result of Andy’s, once he fell off 2:08:10 pace it was never going to be enough time wise, or points wise rather, to earn him a spot in the supposed ‘Top 80’ quota. Or more like the ‘Top 70 quota’ that is actually just the 70 athletes who hit the standard.
Say what now? Top 70? Yes. News dropped yesterday that World Athletics was awarding 11 extra ‘universality’ places to athletes and countries who were their country’s highest ranked track and field athlete and their country had no representation in track and field quota’s. It appears to be a rule designed so that World Athletics can keep more countries engaged with the Olympics and broaden the audience to every country however a slight change in the rule this year has caught most people off guard by the quantity of places allocated under it. The catch with the rule is that these ‘universality’ places can only be awarded in the 100m, 800m and Marathon. Unfortunately for Liam Adams and a host of other athletes on the cusp, their ambition to qualify using the accumulation of World Ranking points in lieu of hitting the standard has been in vain. No athlete in the men’s or women’s Marathon will end up qualifying via the quota system even though the system was designed to fill 50% of the field (with the other 50% hitting the standard). That’s the summary of this Let’s Run article that examines the effect of the rule on the USA’s ability to qualify three spots.
So even though Liam Adams’ extra 70 points from winning the Oceania Championships at Gold Coast last year with 2:08:39 significantly boosted his average points score to earn him a spot in the Top 80 he has not, at time of writing, been allocated a spot by World Athletics. Was his decision to not run in Hamburg based on the confidence he’d have enough points to qualify already given? Was he secretly fist-bumping when Andy slipped off 2:08:10 pace all but assuring at that point in time that he’d claim the third spot. They’d be interesting answers to discuss in a month or so’s time but in the immediacy of this revelation, it’s too soon to talk about it. Simply put, at the time of writing, it appears Australia will not have 3 males representing us in the marathon for the first time since 2008. Liam and Andy are still in contention for the two spots Australia has earned (using the same loophole that the USA had planned to use to offer spots to athletes with a sub 2:11:30 time) but the selectors would have to be incredibly brave and bold to not select Brett and Pat. Who knows though, if World Athletics can be brave enough to seemingly award 11 spots to countries on the basis that their country is not good enough to qualify an athlete on it’s own merit, anything can happen in sport right? *Question’s everything I know about sport being a meritocracy*…
When the selectors do eventually announce the teams we can stop worrying about who’ll be picked and start worrying about how those who are picked will actually be training for the Paris Olympic Marathon. An Olympic marathon is of course a championships marathon (translation: hot temperatures, slow start, fast finish) and studying the data from the 2008-2021 Olympics you can be confident in a few things.
Firstly, the weather at the start or during the race will be somewhere around 24-25 degrees celsius. That’s been the case for every Olympic marathon in the period being analysed except for the 2012 London Women’s edition which only reached 17 degrees celsius. As a result, the winning time in that race of 2:23:07 is the women’s Olympic record and Lisa Weightman’s top Australian result of 2:27:32 is the best across the 2008-2021 period as well. Even looking at Paris’ average climate data for August lists the maximum daily high temperature as 25 degrees. With little shade in Paris’ notoriously low city skyline expect a good ol’ fashioned hot race.
Secondly, only two or three men will go sub 2:10. Even when Sammy Wanjiru ran the Men’s Olympic record of 2:06:32 in Beijing (2008 Olympics) only two other men joined him to finish faster than 2:10. In London three men made it under 2:10 while Rio and Sapporo only had two each.
Thirdly, out of the Australian performances there will be a few who have a cracker, maybe even a blinder like Sinead Diver’s 10th place and highest finish of the last few Olympic cycles at Tokyo/Sapporo while sadly someone will have a big stinker. Jack Rayner’s DNF after doing everything possible to try and race through an injury springs to mind followed next by former record holder Benita Willis’ final ever marathon at London (2012) where she finished in 100th position with 2:49 to her name.
So if that’s what we can expect to stay the same on August 10th for the Mens, and breaking with tradition, a day later and after the men’s, August 11th for the women’s what things will be different this time?
The hills. Purely and simply.
Brett’s talked about it already on his podcast, Phil gave us his thoughts on Chasing Paris and friend of the show Charlotte Purdue uploaded a very concerned selfie to her Insta story after her reconnaissance of the course.
With good reason. This course has 436m of elevation gain and 438m of elevation loss with a maximum gradient of 13.5% at one point. Again, this course has 436m of elevation gain and 438m of elevation loss with a maximum gradient of 13.5% at one point. I say that twice so you can fully appreciate how hilly it is.
It is almost twice the elevation gain of Sapporo’s course (268m elevation gain) and far hillier than both Rio and London’s relatively pancake flat looped courses. Even the hilly 2022 Commonwealth Games route had only 307m with some very late lumps and bumps in the second half being described as ‘absolutely brutal’ by Liam Adams. If Liam is picked, I hope he has improved his course checking skills considering before his race at the Comm Games he ‘didn’t have a clue, I (he) was just guessing the whole way’.
To put that 436m of elevation gain into comparison with other major marathons, Boston only has 248m of gain and 388m of elevation loss. New York has similar gain (246m) and equal loss (251m). Perhaps the closest major comparison is Sydney’s 2023 route which had 365m of gain and 405m of loss and was run on a day where the temperature at the start line was in the realm of 25 degrees. If you need a reminder on that day, Brett was the top Australian in 2:23:05 and Sinead was the top female in 2:31:27. Interestingly, only two men finished under 2:10 that day too, further confirming Sydney 2023’s apparent likeness to an Olympic marathon course.
While the numbers suggest Paris is a hilly course it’s actually a flat course, then a hilly course, then a flat course. It’s also continuing Sapporo’s method of having a single loop course (Rio and London were both multi-loop courses) but won’t have runners finishing inside the main stadium which last happened in Beijing. But let’s not get too stuck in the weeds of where the runners will actually be going through Paris, I’m not a Lonely Planet travel expert so I won’t stick my neck out and offer advice about the fancy buildings they’ll go past.
Instead, here is the breakdown of the hilly section of the course thanks to Clayton Young’s strava. Clayton is representing the US and ran Miles 9 to 20 (Km’s 15 to 32) last month.
The data above shows that the first rise starts occurring around the 15km mark and climbs for several km’s before the runners will pass through halfway just before the peak. After that first peak, there is a cruisy descent into the final big climb at the 29km mark. That’s where you can expect, if it hasn’t happened already, there’ll be absolute fireworks like a Tour de France stage in the Alps. Get a lead established on the uphill, blast away on the steep down and hold on for the final 10km sprint. That’s how I’d do it at least if I had the ability of Eliud Kipchoge.
What are the takeaways then if you’re reading this as an Australian marathoner at the 2024 Olympic Games? Find a 17km hilly loop that has at least 400m or so of climbing and loss in it, run that thing a bajillion times and every time you do go sit in the sauna afterwards like Phil and Marc discussed as a part of their heat acclimatisation strategy. Do that and you’ll be ready for the middle part of the course only. There’s still of course the 15 km's before the hilly section and 10km’s afterwards.
For everyone else who’s reading, or specifically for Robert de Castella and Lisa Ondieki, your respective Australian Best Performances of 2:11:09 (for 5th in 1984) and an incredible 2:25:53 (for 2nd in 1988) respectively will most likely be safe. Those times may have not been set in the ‘super shoe’ era but they didn’t have to deal with 436m of hills either… So, congratulations to those lucky Australian’s who will be tying the laces on their super shoes over the next few months trying to ready themselves as best as possible for one of the toughest Olympic marathons in recent memory*.
*At risk of opening a very large can of worms I want to acknowledge that any Olympic marathons that started at night and where athletes didn’t have supershoes, didn’t have gels or any drink mixes were probably tougher all put together than what the modern athletes will face in Paris. Hence, this can of worms was contained by only comparing Paris’ marathon to marathons within the last 20 years…in other words, older readers I did think of you and your toughness and I couldn’t deal with it. So you are tough. We are not. End of story.
The Suzhou DL left us with another Olympic Qualifier from a Spiked Up host. Rose Davies 14:47 is the headline act that has already been covered in their Episode #09. Other talking points to emerge from the middle distance world were:
What’s happened:
Maudie Skyring’s 15:12 in the same 5,000m race at Suzhou. Similar to Rose it was a massive 10+ seconds PB for Maudie and her fourth best WA points score. This sentiment can be applied to Rose’s PB as well but most Australians* seem to set their SB’s a fair bit deeper into the European season. It feels maybe inappropriate to expect Maudie to drop another twenty seconds to hit 14:52 but at the very least it means when she does return home to potentially race on the roads she will not be taken as lightly as she might’ve been before.
Morgan McDonald (13:18) and Jack Rayner’s (13:19) results were strong from a times perspective in their 5,000m race but what impressed me more was their placing in the race. Morgan finished 7th, or ‘2nd’ in the second chasing group of the race and Jack finished 9th, or ‘4th’. Matt Ramsden was a DNS in this race but is reportedly racing in LA along with a plethora of Aussies (more on that below).
In other major track news, this time from the US of A, Olli Hoare ran a 3:51.28 mile and placed second in the race. Similar to Andy’s marathon result it was just off the Olympic Standard (0.88 seconds) so it’s again ugghh, Olli, you were so close! But it was his best WA points score since he paused his career in June 2023 and his second fastest Mile time ever. Now’s a good time to circle back to the *same point I made earlier. With the May 5th cut-off now passed for marathon standards, we can now all focus on our middle distance athletes improving their points score’s and hitting standards all before the end of financial year June 30th (soon to be renamed the end of Olympic standard year).
What’s about to happen:
The Seiko Golden Grand Prix meet (May 19th) in Tokyo is where we’ll next see Izzi Batt-Doyle pop up as she looks to improve on her 15:06 at Suzhou. Joining Izzi in what will be their 13th 5,000m race together is once again Rose Davies who has the second fastest PB in the field. Having now hit her qualifier will Rose run tactically for the win? Or will she help pace her airport lounge host and friend Izzi to her own qualifier? The head-to-head count is an interesting 6-all not that either of them will be really considering that stat.
Lastly, even though your attention may be on the Doha DL’s Youtube stream where the only Australian’s running of note, and all in the Women’s 1500m, are Georgia Griffith, Jessica Hull and Abbey Caldwell (no Sarah Billings… the plot thickens…) this weekend, next weekend there is the already mentioned Seiko Golden Grand Prix in Japan happening along with the USATF’s LA Grand Prix to consider too. The LA meet features over fifteen (!) Australian’s on the start lists with an incredible 7 names in the 3,000m SC alone including Ed Trippas who was last seen crutching his way out of the SA Athletics Stadium in mid-April. Even though there’s fifteen-plus names already on the start list there is word Olli Hoare, Jesse Hunt, Cam Myers, Matt Ramsden and Stewart McSweyn are all set to be added to it as well. That’s a Hollywood worthy start list in LA.
The Sydney Marathon sold out! I didn’t think this could happen but it did! 24,000 entries makes it the largest field in Australia ever and puts the pressure on those runners who like signing up at the last minute. If you missed out and are just hearing the news for the first time, well too bad, but there is a waitlist to sign up too if you now want to join in because you realised it’s cool to run in Sydney.
Ballarat Marathon was conducted very successfully by all reports. Put this down as your ‘Autumn’ marathon for 2025 if you haven’t already. The MVP performance was a toss-up between Thomas Do Canto’s 2:17 first place (after a 65 minute first half), Brady Threlfall’s more even paced 2:19 PB and Zoe Buckman’s female Mile/5km double. A bit more depth at the top-end in 2025 and the time bonuses of $1,000 in the marathon might be under threat.
The second Golden Trail World Series race was completed in China a fortnight ago and I was mesmerised by the scenery of the livestream for a few hours. The race itself was won by a pair of Kenyan’s (Patrick Kipngeno for the second time this series in the men’s and Joyce Njeru in the women’s) with everyone but Patrick taking over 2 hrs for the 22km course with 1530m of climbing. Sounds not too bad? Well the course hovered around 3,400-4,500m of altitude and the pretty scenery? Yeah, that’s some bad ass 6000m+ mountains. And I’ll remind you, this race is FREE to watch, is available on YOUTUBE and is being recorded by amateur trail runners with GoPro’s simply running back and forth along the course. They make the production look easy so I wonder if I’m just naive about how difficult it is to record a livestream or whether it is literally that simple as a few GoPro’s, wi-fi and badda bing badda boom!
The announcement of Kenya’s Olympic Marathoner’s confirmed Kipchoge will have the opportunity to claim a third consecutive gold medal. To do that he’ll have to right the wrong against countryman Benson Kipruto who, as reported in Issue 27, has a 3-0 head to head record. The male team is made of the 1st, 2nd and 4th runners (with Timothy Kiplagat in 3rd as the reserve) while the female team is made up of the 3rd, 9th and 55th ranked (according to the Road to Paris rankings) Kenyan’s in the quota period so how’s that for evidence of countries not simply picking the top 3 fastest…
Michael Johnson’s new track and field league has recruited the now former editor of The Lap Count to be their new Director of Athlete and Racing. I am taking the news positively in that having Editor - The Blue Line in my resume and Insta bio may lead to a significant recruitment in future years at more than just a running store…
Jakob Ingebritsen commented on his chances in the 1500m in the Olympics with this gem ‘If I don’t get injured and I don’t get sick, I think it’s going to be a walk in the park’ on this 17 minute long Ignite podcast put together by European Athletics. Josh Kerr didn’t bite back when asked about it in a follow-up interview but expect some more barbs closer to the Olympics.
Finally, our own mega famous pin-up boy of running in this country, Nedd Brockmann (who else could it be?), announced he’ll be targeting the 1000 miles record of Yiannis Kouros on October 3rd this year. The record is currently at 10 days, 10 hours, 10 minutes and 36 seconds or a little faster than 10:00 km’s non-stop. Kouros’s time is over 1 hour faster than the second fastest time ever recorded so Nedd has his work cut out for him. Long time readers of The Blue Line will remember a doco featuring Kouros’s accomplishments was referenced in Issue 01.
Sometime in the next fortnight we’ll know if Lisa Weightman will be the first Australian female Track and Field Olympian to make five Olympic teams and the first Australian Olympian to have the opportunity to notch five marathon finishes to her name. She already holds the female record outright for marathon finishes and is tied with only Benita Willis when all other track events are taken into account (there’s a couple of other women who made 4 teams but didn’t technically finish their events).
Robert de Castella and Steve Moneghetti are both tied on four marathon finishes, where Lisa of course currently sits, and have very little chance of extending their record so if Lisa gets picked, she’ll have the opportunity to claim the overall record! Over the course of Lisa’s four marathons, her performances have remained consistent with 2:34 three times and 2:27 once.
If she wants to match the overall world record though Lisa will have to qualify for 2024 AND 2028 AAANND hope that Mongolia’s Ser-Od Bat-Ochir has officially retired. Bat-Ochir has qualified in 78th spot in the quota for his sixth marathon at Paris 2024 at the age of 42 so he’s even got three years on the older Weightman!
May 10th: Doha Diamond League. Program. The Women’s 1500m starts at 2:34am AEST Saturday morning so it’s probably something to watch over breakfast.
May 10th: Judgement day for the Marathon selectors. Expect an official announcement later in May after time for appeals has been allowed for.
May 12th: Sydney Long Run x Runner’s Paradise x FTK x Mad Rabbit Crew. Register for free at this link.
May 18th: Night of the 10km PB’s. Start Lists. Leanne Pompeani is throwing her hat in the ring for the 10,000m. Can she do a Lauren Ryan and take a big chunk off her PB (31:45) to hit the standard (30:40)?
May 18th: LA Grand Prix. There’s over fifteen Aussies on the start lists including: Peter Bol, Abbey Caldwell (800m) Sam McEntee, Jenny Blundell (5,000m), Ben Buckingham, Ed Trippas, Liam Cashin, Matt Clarke, Amy Cashin, Brielle Erbacher and Stella Radford (3,000m SC)
May 19th: Marrakech DL. Program.
May 19th: Seiko Golden Grand Prix. Great Ocean Road Marathon.
May 25th: Eugene DL. The Prefontaine Classic.
This division of Grattan House welcomes any and all reader feedback.
If you want more or less of something or want something investigated then please enquire at theblueline@grattanhouse.com with an email starting with ‘Dear Fraser Darcy’.
If you simply want to do a good deed for the day and get that out of the way nice and early, send this newsletter to five of your friends and Joel will leave you a voicemail addressing you as a sweet little prince or princess.