Some amazing results this weekend at the high school, college, and pro levels.
Running Lane/Garmin now has a national championship 5K XC for high school runners (as if we don't already have NXN and (fomerly Footlocker) now Eastbay championship. So I'm now a little confused by it all. Anyway, the RunningLane meet is in Alabama on a super-fast course, where three kids from the same school (Newbury Park, CA) ran under the old "all-time" record of 14:10 set by Datan Ritzenhein some 21 years back. Natalie Cook (TX) ran 16:03, 5 seconds off the record that was set last year. Kind defeats XC if they are going for fast times but that's kind the deal these days, esp. at the high school level where times and power rankings are where it's at now.
Another change (I think this one is better) is that many college teams are allowing runners to extend their season a couple weeks, and the distance runners are entering competitive indoor meets to get their qualifier out of the way. Makes sense, to use their fitness now then they take a break and focus on the racing in February and March, not chasing times to get into nationals. Lauren Gregory of Arkansas ran 15:32 on Friday, but was upstaged by Whitney Orton (15:12) and Courtney Wayment (15:15) (both BYU) and several other collegians going under 15:30 the next day in Boston. Nikko Young (brother of two the kids who ran 14:05 in the HS xc race) and Abdihamid Nur of Northern Arizona both ran 13:22 (pro runner Ollie Hoare ran 13:09 in that race, breaking the Aussie indoor record). In the women's 3000 Katelyn Tuohy, former HS phenom, ran 8:54 for an American U20 record and new star Celi McCabe (West Virginia?!) ran 8:52.
On the pro front the big news was today in South Carolina and Sacramento. They had the USA half marathon championships in SC, and Kiera D'Amato won that in 1:07:55, with BYU's (now pro) Conner Mantz winning in 1:00:55. And in Sacramento, perhaps the biggest story and surprise of all was Sara Vaughn, known as the mom/realtor who ran the 1500 in the 2019 world championships moved up to the marathon to win in 2:26:50! She just ran a couple low key halfs at altitude this fall (1:17 in Sept, and 1:15 last month on a very tough course). 2:26 is just insane.
