Issue 42
42.195km for a marathon and 42 Issues for The Blue Line.
As Melbourne Marathon drops onto our proverbial doorsteps, this Issue of TBL brings to you some insights into what to expect across the different distances. There’s also a tidbit here and there on other Major marathons happening (Berlin, Chicago and PERTH) but the biggest news is my news. It’s ironic that this drops on Issue 42.
Grattan House will not be publishing The Blue Line as a fortnightly newsletter in the future. Instead, Patreon’s will be rewarded for their loyalty and support with more regular editorial updates on their Patreon feed. Please scroll further throughout Issue 42 to receive the full marketing spiel I came up with to convince you to sign up to Patreon. It’s pretty good.
FTK
#116 ft. Riley Wolff. Bretty-boy bumped things up to 116km’s this week with some improvement in his sessions while Joel also improved, managing to run a continuous threshold and overcoming wobbly calf syndrome. Riley Wolff then jumped on to give all the listeners on the free-to-air network an introduction to the big part of the Grattan House tripod. Riley’s early morning work habits, recent training week and several rants carried this episode into 5-star territory.
#117. Go with the flow Brett and Roofing Apprentice Joel split the G in 2.5 gulps, as opposed to Brian Fay’s 6. Brett’s five by a mile Tuesday workout provided some hope he’s going to be confident enough to race on Sunday while Joel visited three physios to manage a locked up hip.
Spiked Up
#27 The girls are in their glow-up era and are back for Season 2! Sarah manages some calf tightness as she returns to running following her break whilst Rose completed a session without Scotty (who was MIA in Broken Hill). The girls premiered their new segment, a slight take on the famous TWHSOITWTWASA. Sarah has been off in Broome all week so expect some travel highlights featuring her new 1080’s by the pool on the next episode.
Race to the G
#6. Alice’s Butler. Tess’s Crane’s. Legality of swimming at a closed beach. Doing a long run on a Saturday. Brett telling Tess to relax at Pulse Tuesday’s. How Alice plans to taper. It’s all there in the penultimate pre-Race to the G episode. There’s still time to binge listen to all episodes of this series before race day if you sign up to Patreon within the next 24 hours.
Nike Melbourne Marathon Festival Live Show
An in-depth show that may still have some gems in it if you’re only hearing about this episode now. If you’ve already listened you’ll know that; the origin story of Brett’s Pink Flamingo’s was covered, someone was reassured their femur won’t snap their femoral artery and Tess covered off how to recover after a bad race.
Q & A Session Sixty Six: Carel Wildenboer
The man with the best South African accent returned to discuss different movement patterns, helping with Comrades marathon and the link between different athletes mental states and their performance. The sequel is just as good as the original with Carel.
For Melbournians it must feel like you spend all year hearing about or travelling to every other capital city's big marathon festivals. Finally, after 10 months, a long winter and a windy start to Spring your opportunity to step into the national running spotlight is here. Have you taken that opportunity? Well it’s hard to apportion the quality fields and optimal weather forecast to the collective Melbourne running community but if you want to take some of the credit then go for it. For there are probably the best fields we have seen in the Men’s Marathon and Women’s Half Marathon all year at our countries 5-star events.
First up in running sheet order, at 7am the Marathon starts. In the Women’s field Gen Gregson and Sarah Klein are in the hunt for first place and $25,000. If Gen is primed and ready there’s even Sinead Diver’s 2:25:19 CR from 2018 that could be on the line. Having gone into dark mode on Strava and without featuring on a podcast to discuss her build it’s hard to know exactly what her motivations are with this race. What is very cool though is it raises the possibility of a wife-husband winning combination because…
Ryan Gregson is racing as well. Second last year in his debut to Reece Edwards and slightly slower at Hamburg this year this race, this 3rd marathon of his career, could either raise doubts about how the former 1500m record holder is transferring to the marathon or it could be the vindictive result that yes, the man and his hamstrings can finish off a marathon well.
Racing against Grego is defending champ Reece Edwards, champion of our hearts on Race to the G and 3-time half marathon champ at Melbourne, Jack Rayner, and champion of high mileage Kaleb Laker. It’s a champion field.
Half an hour after the marathoner’s step off the start line the 10km kicks off. Word on the street is Nike athlete Cam Myers might be racing considering it’s Nike’s biggest Australian event or maybe that’s the best rumour I’ve heard all week. A large group of RunAsOne contenders and pretenders will be there and you can expect some local Melbournians such as Dale Carroll to run too.
Around about the time the 10km’s are finishing, the crescendo of the women’s racing starts with Jess Stenson, Izzi Batt-Doyle and Leanne Pompeani all running in the Half marathon. Leanne has the fastest half PB (69:07) by twenty seconds over Izzi who has set new PB’s in the 5000m, 10km and Marathon since her 2023 Marugame result of 69:27. Jess has a slower PB, was second to Leanne in Gold Coast over the half (in her Paris build mind you) and was second to Izzi at City Bay (by only twenty second) BUT recently travelled to the famous running area of Orrorro last weekend (it’s like Iten but better).
The Men’s field may or may not have as many Olympians in it with Asics latest signing, Andy Buchanan (62:25) a confirmed starter and Brett still on the fence. Seth O’Donnell is going to be there, 28:low man Haftu Strintzos is lining up as is QLD’s Eric Hipwood doppelganger Liam Boudin. Either way, from 9am Melbourne time you need to whip out your phone for the livestream for the best twenty minutes of distance running in Australia you’ll likely to see all year. The winners of the halves and the full marathon will all be coming through in that window and if they’re faster than any of these times listed below, then damn Melbourne, it might take all year to get to your event but it’s certainly worth the wait.
Whilst Melbourne is the big focus it’s easy to forget what else has happened in this past fortnight. In Berlin, the site of many Eliud Kipchoge victories and former WR run, the men’s and women’s races were markedly different. The men raced in a big pack of 8 for pretty much the whole race. Milkesa Mengesha (2:03:17) was first in the end with the top four all within sixty seconds of each other. Kibiwott Kandie ran 2:06:46 in the end which is a poor conversion from his former WR in the half of 57:32.
The women’s winner, Tigist Ketema (2:16:42) won by almost two minutes, controlling the race out in front for the majority of it. Lisa Weightman returned to the marathon for the first time since Osaka and ran 2:24:40 for 12th position overall making it her third 2:24 time in a row. The majority of the field were on pace for a minute or two quicker until about 25k’s when a consistent slowing down trend emerged. Tara Palm managed to hold off this slowdown just enough to record a 3 second PB (2:32:22).
Slightly less prestigious but still with a couple of East African’s at the front of the race, the Perth Marathon took centre stage last weekend. A $10,000 prize for first place enticed Paul Eyane (2:16:43) and Fridah Too (2:42:13) to make the trip across. Matt Ramsden popped his head up for a 65:24 half marathon for his first race since his achilles injury that derailed his Olympic ambitions.
With those two big races out of the way the compatriot race to Melbourne, Chicago Marathon is also on this weekend. This time last year Kelvin Kiptum broke the WR and that is a sad reminder of the events at the start of the year that led to his death. The lead seeds aren’t near Kiptum’s quality but there is still 2:02 man Birhanu Legese on the start list. The race for first American male is always interesting and notable names Zach Panning and CJ Albertson are both down to start. In the women’s field Ruth Chepngetich is back for a fourth year in a row. 1st in 2021, 1st in 2022 (2:14:18), 2nd in 2023 (2:15:37) and a big favourite in 2024. Potentially five minutes down the road will be the race for the first American female out of big name contenders Keira D’Amato, Betsy Saina, Sara Hall and Lindsay Flanagan. The race starts Sunday night at 11:30pm Melbourne time (7:30am Chicago time), perfect for those kicking on after Melbourne Marathon!
This article best sums up the mood of many towards Kenyan runners and another recent drug bust. If you missed it, Emmaculate Anyango, second fastest woman over 10km, got done for EPO.
These fields got dropped a while ago but the Valencia half marathon fields are out and will be more relevant to you in a fortnight's time when the race starts (October 27th).
After Melbourne there’s a week ‘off’ elite racing in Australia before back-to-back weekends of racing at Burnie (10km) and Noosa (5km). Jack Rayner swept the men’s field at both races last year and if someone was to do the same they’d pocket a nice $5400 collectively. With Jack very likely to not be running them could any of the ‘rest’ do the double? Isaac Heyne, are you reading this? What about Leanne Pompeani?
The news at the start might have hit you like the news of Brett having to drop out of the Olympics. I don’t have a stressy from putting together The Blue Line each fortnight, that’s not why TBL is dropping out of your email inbox. Instead, in an era where Grattan House’s Patreon members are continuing to show their support, the brains trust wish to reflect that support by offering more Patreon specific content to add to the early access, merch discount and special series currently on offer. Going behind the paywall will be a loss for the free-loaders within the running community however I have defied the saying ‘there’s no such thing as a free lunch’ long enough.
If you have enjoyed the content for free perhaps this is the nudge that you need to sign up to Patreon. If you haven’t enjoyed the content for free and are still hate-reading to this point then seriously consider your priorities in life. You can also sign up to Patreon to continue hate-reading it though, I don’t discriminate against hate-readers! Tailoring the content to Patreons will also provide me with a bit more free reign in the estimated bi-weekly updates. I’m not saying I will be recreating bird noises alá the first few episodes of LLL&R but there may be a bit more secret herbs and spices shared. You’ll have to sign up to Patreon to find out if I’m all talk though…
What else would you spend $16.50 a month on anyway? New shoes? Coffee? Mortgage repayments? How trendy are you if you don’t have a FTK Patreon to match your FTK hat/shirt/mug/sticker/jumper/trampoline?
October 13th: Melbourne Marathon.
October 13th: Chicago Marathon.
October 27th: Valencia Half Marathon
October 27th: Burnie 10.
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,’.Ah screw it, there is no cool down, it’s the last issue of the season.
Thanks for your continued readership and support. I look forward to providing more regular updates on Patreon!
Nice work Fraser. Little did I suspect Orrorroo was like Iten only better!