By Peter Vigneron
Something weird is happening this morning: U.S. outdoor nationals were this weekend, and we're finding ourselves strangely compelled to open this the column with something about the Western States Endurance Run.
In fact, we're going to do it, and not just to make a point about how terrible USAs were (they were quite enjoyable). The men's race at Western States was just more significant. In terrible ultra running conditions (it was above 90 degrees on some parts of the course), Alaska's Geoff Roes won in 15:07:04, taking 29 minutes off Scott Jurek's 15:36:27 course record. Running Times blogger Anton Krupicka was second in 15:13:53. The race pre-event exceeded expectations, which were high—both Roes and Krupicka brought strong 100-mile resumes into Saturday's event, and both delivered. A couple of further points: 1) 29 minutes, even in a race that lasts over 15 hours, is a massive margin by which to cut any record; 2) Scott Jurek is about as good an ultra runner as the United States has ever seen, and his best time on a course that helped make his career was just blown out of the water. We claim no real expertise in ultra running. Can anybody tell us why this isn't by far the best run of the weekend?
USAs weren’t all bad, and, as is often the case, it was the presentation of the meet, not the athletes, that soured things in our eyes. We're jumping on this bandwagon late, but the television coverage was disgraceful. It was insulting to American distance running and to actual American distance runners—ESPN's announcing crew repeatedly misidentified athletes, including one series of mistakes in which they showed pictures of Jenny Barringer in place of Bridget Franek. The worst offense, of course, was cutting away from the men's 5,000m for a long intro to a no-hitter in progress on Friday night. The coverage was so outrageous this time around that we're actually beginning to wonder if somebody at ESPN has a thing against distance running. We hate to whine, but we're not sure that we could find worse television coverage of a sporting event if we tried. Again, if we're missing something here, we'd love to know what it is.
The races themselves were tactical masterpieces, fine examples of championship racing. Lopez Lomong's win over Leo Manzano in the men's 1500m on Sunday, after the race crawled for the first 1,000 meters, was stirring. Lomong won in 3:50.83 after a tremendous duel with Manzano, who was second in 3:50.91, over the final 100m.
Likewise, we were thrilled with the brazen moves in the women's 5,000m and 1500m, where Jen Rhines and Erin Donohue tried to steal wins over fitter runners with big mid-race surges. (Rhines ended up fourth in the 5,000m; Donohue came quite close to winning the 1500m but just lost to Anna Willard at the line, 4:13.65 to 4:13.87.) Bernard Lagat's tactical 13:54.08 win in the men's 5,000m was pretty much forgone, but Aaron Braun and Tim Nelson kept it honest for far longer than we expected.
Steeplechase results were surprising on the women's side, where Franek led and then faded badly over the final 600m, giving way to a very surprising and resurgent Lisa Aguilera in 9:53.59. Dan Huling was the favorite in the men's race and won easily in 8:27.87. For those who missed Thursday's 10,000m races, Amy Yoder Begley and Galen Rupp sat-and-kicked to victory over Lisa Koll and Ed Moran, which, considering the match-ups, was probably both the smartest and most entertaining strategy.
The race of the meet, though, was the women's 5,000m, which Lauren Fleshman took in 15:28.70. Coming off a two-year injury hiatus, Fleshman got the jump on a great 5,000m field with 600m to go and surprised everyone: the women she beat, and, we assume, everybody who watched it too. Full results are here.
Otherwise, it was a slow weekend. Kenyan Jynocel Basweti won the Seattle Marathon in 2:18:19 and Andrew Letherby and Mari Ozaki the Seattle Half Marathon in 1:04:55 and 1:10:52, respectively.
There was also some good mid-distance action in Zhukovskiy, Russia, and Kenyan trials for the African Championships later this summer.
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