[email protected]

From: Alison Wade Sent: Monday, March 2, 2020 3:00 AM To: Camille Estes Subject: Fast Women | March 2, 2020 | Issue 61

View this email in your browser

Fast Women, March 2, 2020, Issue 61 Presented by UCAN

Aliphine Tuliamuk (left) and , with trailing, on their way to making the 2020 U.S. Olympic team. (Photo: @TaFPhoto)

Aliphine Tuliamuk, Molly Seidel, and Sally Kipyego earn spots on the U.S. Olympic marathon team

1 On Saturday in , Aliphine Tuliamuk, Molly Seidel, and Sally Kipyego ran their way onto the Olympic Team by going 1–2–3 in the U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials.

I thought Sarah Lorge Butler put it perfectly in this article for Runner’s World, when she called the top three “completely unexpected and utterly logical at the same time.” I still think Seidel making the team is slightly illogical, but I’ll explain later.

There were so many excellent marathoners in contention, it was inevitable that some excellent runners would be left off the team. But for , , , , Des Linden, and to all be left off, that’s the surprise.

How it went down

The race went out slowly, relatively speaking, with most of the 444 starters right together through the first mile, which the leaders hit in 6:13. The biggest development in the first mile, as far as I know, is that Kaitlin Goodman went down and got trampled. She got back in the race, but her injuries ultimately took her out of the race shortly before halfway, and it’s frustrating that she never got to test her fitness on this stage. (Her eye looked even more dramatic a day later.)

Up front, there was a large pack for much of the race. The first favorite to drop off the pace was Hasay, who was 3 seconds behind the leaders at mile 12, and 21 seconds back by mile 13. She was never in contention after that, but she stuck it out and finished 26th in 2:37:57.

A pack of 14 runners, led by Thweatt, hit halfway in 1:14:38. Thweatt led most of the middle miles of the race, from about mile 8 to 19, and later told reporters, “I probably was a little too aggressive early in the race, but it’s the Olympic

2 Trials and I wanted to make it tough and I wanted to really try and go for it.”

Lindsay Flanagan was off the back of the pack by mile 17. Julia Kohnen was the next to fall off, by mile 18. Kohnen, who had a seed time of 2:31:29, was the only non-sub-2:30 marathoner still in the lead pack at that point, aside from Molly Seidel who was making her marathon debut.

At mile 19, there were still 12 great runners contending for three spots: Thweatt, Taylor, Seidel, Tuliamuk, Kipyego, Huddle, Sisson, Hall, Linden, Nell Rojas, , and Steph Bruce. Just when I was starting to imagine it coming down to a 12-way sprint finish, the race started to break open.

By mile 20, Hall, Rojas, Huddle, Bruce, and Sisson had been gapped slighly, with Bates fighting to hang on. Bates later told Flotrack that as they were going up a hill into the wind, Seidel, Tuliamuk, and Kipyego began to push the pace. Seidel told Flotrack that the move wasn’t a conscious decision on her part, just a matter of her wanting to run the pace she wanted to run, and focusing on her own race.

By mile 21 Tuliamuk, Seidel, and Kipyego had a 5- to 6-second lead over the next closest runner, and Tuliamuk and Seidel gapped Kipyego by 5:16 for the 22nd mile. After that, their lead would only grow.

With four miles to go, there were two major questions remaining: Who would win the race, and could anyone catch Kipyego to grab the third spot on the team?

As they ran side by side, Tuliamuk and Seidel appeared to be working together to maintain their advantage, rather than trying to run each other into the ground, which they confirmed at the post-race press conference. Though they’re not teammates, they’re friends who sometimes train together in Flagstaff.

3 Just before 24 miles, Seidel looked like she was beginning to struggle ever so slightly, and she tucked in behind Tuliamuk. In the last 2K, Tuliamuk put eight seconds on Seidel, and won the race 2:27:23 to 2:27:31.

Back in third, Kipyego looked vulnerable. She would say after the race, “Those last three miles, I was basically surviving, and that was hell.” Linden rallied a chase pack to go after her, but they were never quite able to get close enough.

Kipyego finished third in 2:28:52, Linden fourth in 2:29:03, Thweatt fifth in 2:29:08, and Bruce sixth in 2:29:11. Each of them ran an excellent race, but unfortunately we can send only three to /Sapporo. (Results)

Thanks to UCAN for sponsoring this month’s newsletter

"UCAN is a great addition to our household. I use UCAN before my runs and it helps fuel me while being easy on my stomach. I also fed two of my three children while training and living a busy lifestyle and my afternoon UCAN shake helped me sustain my blood sugar and gave me the energy I needed to be a new mom, runner, and businesswoman. Plus my son loves it too!" -, Olympian, Mother, Broadcaster

UCAN delivers steady, long-lasting energy for runners with no spikes and no crash. Fast women like Sarah Sellers, Alexi Pappas, Taylor Ward, Carrie Tollefson and 25+ U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials qualifiers fuel their training with UCAN to finish stronger.

Learn more about our one-of-a-kind energy, powered by SuperStarch®, and save 25% on your first order with code FASTWOMEN at generationucan.com/fast-women.

Follow ups

4 Des Linden was clearly disappointed to not make the team, telling reporters, “I’m trying not to think about my emotions right because I know my emotions will pour out of my eyes.” But she also showed genuine enthusiasm for the runners who made the team and was able to look at the bigger picture, saying, “Honestly, it was just a ton of fun to race today. To be in that field, to watch the next stars come up and just the potential around me, was really incredible.” Next up: the Marathon.

Kellyn Taylor told reporters after the race that her calf “just kind of blew up” and that her whole right leg has been bothering her, but she tried to push it to the back of her mind. Now she’s off to Disney World to rest up for what she called “the new Road to Tokyo,” a.k.a. the Olympic Track & Field Trials. She expressed her excitement for her teammate Tuliamuk’s performance and said she hoped she could be a part of her Olympic buildup.

Julia Kohnen ran a great race to take tenth in 2:30:43. She was the first finisher, other than Molly Seidel in her debut, to run a personal best on the hilly course with a wind so strong it was knocking down barricades. She also got engaged post-race. And if you’re wondering who she is, here’s a good Runner’s World article, or read this, if you’re over your limit on RW articles. And here’s a pre-race TV segment.

Sarah Sellers had a great race, and set a personal best by one second, running 2:31:48 for 11th. She also closed better than almost anyone in the field. The only two people who ran from mile 23 to the finish faster than she did were Tuliamuk and Seidel.

Jordan Hasay told Flotrack that she was proud to finish the race, and that she didn’t want to drop out because she withdrew the night before the 2018 , and dropped out early in the 2019 Marathon. But she admitted that she’d been struggling with her hamstring all winter, and while that was fine on Saturday, she had developed a low back issue during race week.

5 She said, “My back is sore, I’m afraid that it’s [a bone injury].”

Molly Huddle dropped out after mile 21, and told Runner’s World that she and her coach had a plan that if things were going very poorly, she would drop out and start recovering so she could get ready for track season. She’ll have a strong shot at a spot on the Olympic 10,000m team.

Instagram updates: , Steph Bruce, Sara Hall, Emily Sisson, and Roberta Groner (who ran with the leaders through 12 miles and dropped out at 15).

I have relied heavily on Flotrack’s post-race interview footage in my reporting, and you can access them all here, but they’re behind a paywall.

The team

After the race, Aliphine Tuliamuk and Sally Kipyego, who became U.S. citizens in 2016 and 2017, respectively, talked about making the team as a way to give back, after this country has given them so much.

Kipyego said it was helpful to go into this race under the radar. The fact that she finished almost three minutes behind Sara Hall in her last marathon contributed. But Kipyego moved way up my list of contenders when I read this quote from her two days before the race, “I handled really well and at no point in the race did I feel like I went to the well, at no point in that marathon did I feel uncomfortable. I was in complete control for the entire race, and I just wanted to run that time, run a qualifier and have a solid race.”

Until that point, I had interpreted her Berlin run as an all-out effort. We’ve known since her Tech days that she’s an outstanding runner, and she owns an Olympic medal, but she struggled mightily (Runner’s World link) after giving birth. It was more of a question of how far she had come back from that.

6 Kipyego talked about that in the post-race press conference, saying, “Today I was victorious. I was victorious because of where I’ve come from. I was victorious because of the challenges I’ve gone through to be back here. And I’m just so grateful that I’m going back to the Olympics again...as a mom...I almost felt like quitting so many times.”

Post-race, I feel like I’ve been able to find the least information (thus far) about Tuliamuk, who said her victory still didn’t feel real. I was pleased to see that her win was good for her beanie business, though she might need to teach some of her HOKA NAZ Elite teammates to crochet, so she can keep up with the demand. I also loved that she had superfans on the course.

Molly Seidel, on the other hand, is getting most of the coverage, including articles in the New York Times and USA Today. It helps with the clicks when the headline can make it sound like she just decided to try this whole running thing for the first time on Saturday. Her story deserves the attention, but I also hope her teammates ultimately get more, too.

The most remarkable thing about Seidel making the team, in my opinion, is how unplanned it all was. Many of the women in the race have been targeting a spot on the team for years, while Seidel only decided to run the marathon trials in December, when she ran 1:10:27 at the San Antonio Rock ‘n’ Roll and qualified. Prior to that, she was planning to make her marathon debut in . Instead, she dropped down to the half there, ran another big personal best of 1:09:35, and targeted the Trials.

While I believed that Seidel had the fitness and speed to hang with most of the women in the field for a good chunk of the race, the chances of her actually making the team seemed pretty low, since she’d have to get past so many experienced marathoners to pull it off. On the other hand, she probably had less pressure on her than anyone else in that lead pack (other than Julia Kohnen).

7

Her success is all the more satisfying when you know where she’s come from. If you haven’t listened to her Running On Om podcast episode, it’s excellent. Flotrack also did a post-race interview with Seidel’s parents, which was fun. Her dad joked of their aggressive spectating, “We got about 25 miles in. One mile short of her.”

The event (and how it was covered)

I still haven’t had time to process everything that happened on Saturday, or look at all of the content that came out of it. I don’t want to waste too much space here talking about how poor the TV coverage was. But one of NBC’s biggest mistakes, other than missing the whole breakaway in the women’s race and deciding to put three men in the booth, was failing to really dive into the significance of this particular Trials race for the women.

It’s clear, even from afar, the Atlanta Track Club really delivered a first class event, that the fans really showed up, and that Saturday was a historic day for women’s running. I can’t speak to what it was like to be there, but I’ve never seen so many people so enthusiastic about, and so invested in, a marathon trials race before.

It’s apparent from on-course reports that Rachel Hyland and Lauren Philbrook running together near the back of the pack at 27 and 33 weeks pregnant were a crowd favorite. (Runner’s World link). I would have loved to see more of that kind of storytelling during the race. The only time we got to see mid-pack footage was when the camera dropped back to get a shot of Megan Youngren.

Most of all, from afar, the whole weekend felt like a major celebration of women. Sally Bergesen tweeted, “You can feel women changing and lifting the culture of sport.” But I did not feel it on that TV broadcast!

8 Oh yeah, three women also ran under the previous 3,000m American indoor record last week, too

It’s comical that this is coming so far down in the newsletter, but they just picked the wrong week…

On Thursday night, I went to Boston University, fully expecting to watch run under ’s American 3,000m record of 8:33.25. I did see that, but it was so much better.

This event got so little hype, you had to be a close follower of the sport to even know it was happening. The crowd wasn’t large, but it was loud. And the meet atmosphere was as intimate as it gets. People could walk in and go wherever they pleased.

The 5,000m was up first, and I was so busy taking photos that I wasn’t watching the clock. (I used to be better at multitasking, but I’m out of practice.) The only way I knew that and Vanessa Fraser were running quickly was by who they were pulling away from. Klosterhalfen ran solo the entire way and finished in a European record of 14:30.79, which is also the fourth-fastest indoor performance of all time.

Fraser finished well back but still ran 14:48.51, less than a second off of Flangan’s American record of 14:47.62. It was nice of her to spare her coach, because Flanagan’s 3,000m record was about to be decimated. finished close behind, in 14:51.91, the first personal best she’s run since having hip surgery on the last day of 2018. It was so much fun to watch the two of them celebrate their success. ran 15:02.91 for fourth, but wanted more.

Though she missed the Olympic standard by less than a second, it was rewarding to see run 15:10.98 for fifth, a huge improvement on her 15:47 season opener. And she had a nice video recap of the race, as

9 usual.

The only other women’s event of the evening was the 3,000, and I’ll admit I was feeling kind of meh when I saw that there were four Bowerman women in the race, counting rabbit , and no one else. I feared it would be a replay of the 3,000m at the USATF Indoor Championships, only faster, with them all running in a line and not changing their order. Fortunately had other plans.

Grace took it out hard through about 1900m. She went through 1600m in 4:31, with Houlihan, Schweizer, and right behind her. With five laps to go, it looked like Houlihan might just lead the rest of the way, but with four laps (800m) to go, Schweizer made a surprise move into the lead. With about three laps to go, they started to gap Quigley. With one lap to go, Houlihan took the lead again, and I think most of us watching expected to see her kick to victory, but Schweizer stayed right on her, made the pass coming off the final turn, and won the race.

It was a great race, regardless of what the clock said. But the clock said that not only had Schweizer broken the American record, running 8:25.70, but Houlihan (8:26.66), and Quigley (8:28.71) had also run well under the previous record. And again, it was so fun to see them celebrate with their Bowerman teammates.

The whole evening was such a cool event, and it completely exceeded my expectations. I’m thrilled that the pros have finally caught on, en masse, to how fast the BU track is, because it’s fun to have access to events like this so close to home.

The following day, less than 24 hours after her quick pacing job, Kate Grace ran a 2:35.49 1,000m. Heather MacLean ran 4:05.29 to win the 1500m, and high schoolers Roisin Willis and Sophia Gorriaran ran 2:03.05 and 2:03.98,

10 respectively, in the 800m to break several records. But later that day at a different meet, Juliette Whittaker, a sophomore, ran 2:03.01 and topped them both. I am running out of superlatives for this week, but that’s incredible. (Results)

Quick news/links, in no particular order

 Molly Seidel’s Trials race on Strava

 Stefanie Slekis ran 3:14:00 at the Trials, 30 days after giving birth.

 Cool piece from the New York Times on the women’s Trials field, and we have to talk about those race demographics soon, and the lack of diversity in the field. Not surprising, yet terrible.

 Fantastic pre-Trials piece from Ashley Higginson and Liam Boylan-Pett

 Rena Elmer had one of the most dramatic stories in the Trials field. (Runner’s World)

 Alysia Montaño’s baby arrived!

 Carly Caulfield became the ’s first female race director.

’s 2:14:04 marathon world record was finally ratified last week.

’s Lonah Chemtai Salpeter won the elite-only in a big course record of 2:17:45.

 Camille Herron won Sunday’s USATF 50K Road Championships in 3:25:18 and qualified for the World 50K Championships team. Trisha Steidl finished second in 3:41 and won the masters title.

 Brooke Rauber won the U20 race at the Pan Am Cross Country Cup and the U.S. senior women finished second to Canada.

11 Quick podcast roundup

 Lindsey Hein talked to ⅔ of the women’s marathon team last week. It was interesting to hear teammates Aliphine Tuliamuk, Kellyn Taylor, and Steph Bruce all together on this episode. And although the audio was a little rough in places, it was fun to learn more about Sally Kipyego in this episode.

 Elle Purrier was on the the Ali on the Run Show and C Tolle Run. Both were worth a listen.

was on the Keeping Track podcast, and they had a good discussion that relates to those race statistics I mentioned above, and why so few black children are steered into distance running.

 Sara Hall was on the Clean Sport Collective podcast. (And Colleen Quigley is up next, but I haven’t had a chance to listen yet, because it just came out.)

 I loved this pre-Trials Ali on the Run episode with former training partners Veronica Graziano and Alex Bernardi.

Things that made me laugh, smile, or cry

 The Olympic Marathon Trials. Particularly seeing that sea of women at the start, seeing how many people turned out to cheer them on, and watching Steph Bruce and Kellyn Taylor congratulate Aliphine Tuliamuk at the finish.

 I didn’t cry while watching Karissa Schweizer set the American record in person, but I did tear up watching this video of her family cheering from home.

---

Whew, that was quite a week. And I don’t think it’s just the competitors who will be going through Trials withdrawal. If you want more Trials-related content, head over to the Fast Women Twitter feed. Also, a huge thanks to Meg Reilly

12 for providing Trials coverage for the Fast Women Instagram account, and to everyone who contributed content. It’s saved in the story highlights, and we joked that she did a better job of capturing the breakaway in the women’s race than NBC did, because she kind of did.

Thanks to Sarah Lorge Butler for editing this after flying home from a long weekend of work in Atlanta. Thanks so much to UCAN for sponsoring this month’s newsletter and to all of you who support this endeavor on Patreon.

Also, the buildup to the Trials and race day wouldn't have been nearly as fun without all of you. Thanks for sharing and spreading the enthusiasm!

Alison

Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list.

13