Wednesday Weekly Worldview With Wjake Wkrong: Cheruyiot, Willis, Kournikova

In case you haven't noticed, if it isn't American male distance running, it probably isn't going to get written up by ben or Jeremy. (Excepting, of course, easy-on-the-eyes female runners of any discipline... RRRRarrr... "discipline"....) So in an effort to broaden our coverage, we are pleased to give you urbane traveler-of-the-world, Jake Krong, of Lets-Krong.com, and his "WEDNESDAY WEEKLY WORLDVIEW WITH WJAKE WKRONG." We swear that picture of him will change to coincide with the nation he's reporting on... but given what follows, safari-style dress, continues to be appropriate.

When a major marathon is on a Monday, everything gets pushed back a day. Plus, for all I know, its Wednesday on the LOST island. [Challenge for LOST fans: figure out if that is true]

This week I'm adding another "W" and bringing you the first Weekly Worldly Wrapup. I'm not out on assignment right now, but there is still plenty of news to report. Here are the three most important items, spanning the globe from Kenya to New Zealand to Russia / Florida.

Kenya - Cheruyiot's "Meat is the new bread" nutrition plan proves to be successful once again
at L: RC taking down the second biggest name in the Boston elite field

All of the international running attention is on Kenya this week, as Robert Cheruyiot successfully dodged the competition to win his 4th Boston Marathon. I was more impressed by RC's post-race comments than his actual race:

"For me, it was better to kill them before. When the lion wants meat, he has to kill."

Not always true (sometimes they are fed candy through cages), but he raises a good point - American runners are too friendly. Even if they actually like each other (it really seems to be quite an incestuous circle among the elites), they should at least make the effort to throw some trash talk out there (Alan Webb is the one exception).

New Zealand - Not much going on there, but the previous quote made me think of Nick Willis
We all know that Buster Mottram is distance running's Charles Barkley when it comes to soundbytes, but Nick Willis is beginning to make his own mark as a somewhat politically incorrect wordsmith:

"It would be fantastic for me to get his scalp"

"It's really important for me to get some scalps of the best guys in the world."

He's really driving the point home by mentioning scalping foreign competitors twice in the same article. That's meaty!

In other admittedly random New Zealand running news, I loaded the new Flight of the Conchords album on my iPod this afternoon (not fantastic running music due to the high potential for constant laughter). In one episode last season, Bret used "having to go jogging in the morning" as an excuse to NOT have sexual relations with Lisa.


Russia - Anna K runs sub 30 4-miler
The former tennis bombshell dropped a 29:59 at the South Beach Triathlon. Luckily for us, she was born in Russia, which is not part of the United States. And that gives me a perfect excuse to link these photos.

Anna knows that is she is going to break 29, she's going to have to keep working on her "cucumber hidden in the quad" a la Ryan Hall.

Jake Krong is a LTOB columnist and the creator of Lets-Krong.com