track and field memorial day weekend listicle
10 Things You Need To Know Now (!) About Last Weekend In Track and Field!
“Hell yeah, kid… OH MY GOD!” (Very Nice Track Club)
I spent Memorial Day Weekend drinking Topo Chico Hard Seltzers (they are very mild and taste just fine) on the beach in Galveston, then forcing my friend Raven (a runner friend, but not a runner friend who follows track) to watch the Portland Track Festival livestream with me (her new favorite runner is Lopez Lomong) and we successfully stayed awake through all four Pacific Time heats of the 5K on Saturday night (hello Austin’s own Alexandria Cruz in the hunt!) which feels like a pretty good review for a non-championship, non-Diamond League track meet.
By the time you’re reading this, it’s Wednesday morning, it’s Global Running Day (get your instagram ready) and we’re officially 16 days out from the U.S. Olympic Trials for track and field (hooray!). I don’t have any new freelance pieces to plug this week (coming soon… *eyes emoji*) so we’re going to do a little mid-week recapping of this past weekend’s action.
Hobbs Kessler celebrates his 3:34.36 1500m with Very Nice Track Club teammate Mason Ferlic. Photo by @OttoHoriuchi | @GoTrackTownUSA
Boy among men Hobbs Kessler breaks every record in the 1500m
It’s still hard to fathom exactly how fast 18-year-old Hobbs Kessler ran in the 1500m at the Portland Track Festival. The senior from Skyline High School in Michigan ran 3:34.36 to place fifth against a field of top pros, slash four seconds off Alan Webb’s national high school record and break Jim Ryun’s American junior (Under-20) record, which stood for 55 years.
Kessler actually ran faster than the newly minted collegiate record in the 1500m, 3:34.68 per Yared Nuguse of Notre Dame, and he not only qualified for the U.S. Olympic Trials (his stated goal) but he met the Tokyo Olympic standard of 3:35.0. He’s the third-fastest American this year and seems to have as good a shot as anybody at making the Olympic team. For the past few months, all the buzz has surrounded college studs Nuguse, Cole Hocker and Cooper Teare potentially locking up the Olympic spots and now a 3.5 lb baby (??) might shock them all!
One of the most interesting things about Kessler, a former competitive rock climber, is his unique training setup with world-class coach Ron Warhurst and professional training partners in Olympic medalist Nick Willis and Mason Ferlic, who has been running as well as anyone in the U.S. this year. Kessler is committed to Northern Arizona University, but these are the types of credentials that get you an early contract and he’s already in a potentially ideal training situation. Willis works in athlete management for Tracksmith, so maybe the niche brand will pick up its first fully funded athlete — he did break the record(s) in their kit. Representing Tracksmith would also leave him free to pick up an additional shoe sponsor.
Erriyon Knighton breaks Usain Bolt’s World U-18 Record in the 200m
Erriyon Knighton is even younger than Kessler at only 17 years old, and he’s proving why it was no mistake to turn pro after his sophomore year of high school. At the American Track League’s Duval County Challenge in Jacksonville, Knighton ran 20.11 in the 200m to beat out Trayvon Bromell (an Olympic favorite in the 100m) and break Bolt’s World Youth Record. The Jamaican had previously set the record for U-18 athletes at 20.13.
What are his Olympic chances? His time is faster than the Olympic standard (20.24), and ranks seventh-fastest in the U.S. and ninth-fastest in the world this year. He’ll have to get well under 20 seconds to have a shot at top three in Eugene, which might be too big an ask, but he is certainly the 2021 edition of Noah Lyles and Michael Norman, who took the U.S. Olympic Trials by storm as high schoolers in 2016 and have developed into medal favorites for Tokyo.
Mid-d queen Athing Mu breaks the collegiate record for 400m
Texas A&M freshman Athing Mu added the 400m NCAA record to her growing list of accolades with a 49.68 on her home track to win the NCAA West Prelims, the first round of the NCAA Outdoor Championships. The previous record was 49.71, set in 2016 by Courtney Okolo of Texas four months before helping Team USA win Olympic gold in Rio. Not a bad path to be on…
The 800m is arguably Mu’s best event — she set the collegiate record earlier this year in a ridiculous 1:57.73, which is still the fastest time in the world. But she’s opting to compete in just the 400m at NCAAs before focusing on the 800m at the Olympic Trials. I do hope that she considers doubling in both events at the Trials as I think she could easily make the Olympic team in two events. No other American has run within a second of her 800m time and no one has run under 49.9 in the 400m this year. There’s no way she gets left out of the 4x400-meter relay pool, where she’s basically guaranteed a medal in Tokyo, if not gold.
Elle Purrier reminds us that you can’t let shit get you down
As someone who recently attempted (and barely completed) a time trial on an uncomfortably humid Texas morning, I appreciated this quote from Elle Purrier after getting out-kicked in a slow 800m on a cold day in Boston:
“I’m super excited, I’m feeling really fit and happy with where I’m at. I’m not going to let a shitty, rainy day in Boston [get me down].” (Letsrun)
With American record holder Shelby Houlihan MIA recently (pulling out of the Portland Track Festival at the last minute doesn’t look good, but rumors online say she ran a 3:57 time trial so who knows), the 26-year-old Purrier is starting to look like the woman to beat in the 1500m come Eugene in two weeks, especially with her recent sub-4 1500m and sub-2 800m PRs. A 2:03 loss to Julia Rizk isn’t the ideal way to lead into the Trials, but getting out-kicked now in an off-event is better than a bad race in Eugene.
Purrier is also doing a great job at parlaying her background growing up on a dairy farm into real-life sponsorship dollars, as she recently announced her partnerships with Cabot Cheese and literally, milk! More of this, please!
Odds and ends
Amy Cragg retires The 2016 Olympic Marathon Trials champion and 2017 World Championships bronze medalist officially announced her retirement from competitive running last week. She’ll leave Bowerman Track Club to join husband Alistair as coaches of the new Puma training group in North Carolina. It will be fun to follow her friendly rivalry with former BTC teammate Shalane Flanagan, who has transitioned into an assistant coaching position under Jerry Schumacher in the past few years. (Runner’s World)
The Olympic Trials 10K will have a two-section final So it’s not on the scale of the 450+ women who qualified for the Olympic Marathon Trials, but 50+ women hitting the Olympic Trials standard in the 10K is still quite a lot. The distance is too long to make people run prelims, so instead we get a two-section final. Inevitably, some bigger names will get slotted in the slower heat (Keira D’Amato, the feel-good story of 2020, is probably in this situation) which ultimately makes their path to the Olympics that much harder and negatively impacts the storyline potential of the event. It’s cool that more people will be able to say they raced the Olympic Trials 10K, but USATF should have just made the standard faster. (Runner’s World)
Dalilah Muhammad vulnerable? The women’s 400m hurdles have become a marquee event, thanks to the friendly rivalry between world record holder and world champion Dalilah Muhammad and young prodigy Sydney McLaughlin, who’s always just a half step behind — so far. McLaughlin has been focusing on shorter races so far this season, improving her 100m hurdles PB to a world-class 12.65, but Muhammad finally raced her first 400m hurdles in two years this weekend with a 55.01 in the slow heat at the ATL meet in Jacksonville. After the race, she said she’s coming back from a hamstring tear one month ago — “I’m just getting back into the rhythm of working out. It’s definitely a bit close to USAs, but I think we can do it.” Shamier Little, who has stood out all season, won the A heat with a world-leading time of 53.12. Her flat 400m season’s best of 49.91 also makes her the second-fastest American in that event this year behind only Mu. Could 2021 be the year of Shamier? (Track and Field News)
Damien Warner moves to No. 4 all-time in the decathlon Canada’s Damien Warner came dangerously close to the 9000-point barrier with a new national record of 8995 points to win Götzis. He is now the fourth-best all-time in the event. Kevin Mayer of France set the world record of 9126 points in 2018.
Don’t sleep on Allyson Felix The 35-year-old sprinter is the most decorated Olympian in track and field history for a reason. With baby in tow, Felix has quietly improved in every race this season, mostly recently winning the ATL 400m in 50.66, taking down young U.S. star Wadeline Jonathas (51.00), who was fourth at the 2019 World Championships. At the very least, you can bet that Felix will make that relay pool for Tokyo.
Molly Seidel with one of the best Strava posts of all time Maybe 18,000 followers on Strava doesn’t make as much of a financial impact as 80k followers on instagram, but it would be awesome if more professional runners used Strava as religiously as Molly Seidel. The 2021 Olympic marathoner ran 32:02.19 for third place in the 10k at Portland Track Festival, but the result sheet only tells a small portion of the story, as she actually was pacing her friend Makenna Myler (who went viral for running a 5:25 while 9 months pregnant just last fall) to the Olympic Trials standard (got it!), and about 90 minutes before the race, she warmed up with a five-mile tempo run at 5:19 pace.
With shakeouts and warmups and cooldowns, she put in about 20 miles total for the day. Don’t try that one at home unless you are also running 125 miles a week and are in low 2:20 marathon shape.
Happy Global Running Day and I’ll see you next week with some new stories!