This Weekend in Running: 4 Fearless Predictions

We here at Less Than Our Best are concerned with very little. One of those few interests is discovering stuff white people like. The other is acting like we have some expertise in predicting things. Since we have yet to meet anyone who knows how to correctly predict the future with any reliability, we will assume that we are the only ones who have that kind of insight. And, just as we do after every weekend no matter what we wake up in/next to, we will not hold ourselves accountable. After the jump, five things that WILL happen this weekend:

1) Ladies (who are we kidding), just gentlemen, your qualifiers for the U.S. Distance Team (in the events we care about) at the IAAF WORLD INDOOR CHAMPIONSHIPS (we figure if we capitalize and italicize, someone out there just might get excited about a world indoor championship in an Olympic year):

Men 800
Christian Smith
Nick Symmonds
**conventional wisdom has Khadevis Robinson running away with this one, but we are not conventional, and we like beards**

Women 1500
Jenelle "Deathberry Pie" Deatherage
Sara Hall
**get you a slice!**

Men 1500
Steve Scheirar
"The Angel" Gabriel Jennings
**has VHI hybrid reality show written all over it: Where/Who are they Now?**

Women 3000
uuummmmmmmm.....thought they canceled it due to lack of athlete interest

Men 3000
Christopher Solinsky
Matthew Tegenkamp
**they finish, hand-in-hand, quietly walk to the nearest Panera Bread, and order a turkey sandwich, enough said**

2) Come Sunday, as news reports from Indoor Nationals slowly leak out, humans will finally put to bed the age old question: If a track meet is held but no one knows because there's no promotion, does it make a sound?

3) One of the two LTOB crew gets arrested for running, sans shorts, on the school rec center's new Alter-G Anti-Gravity Treadmill. When reached for comment, we only will have this to say: "it's like climbing the rope in gym class, with air pressure...and without shorts.

4) Adam Nelson's inevitable domination in the shot put at Indoor Nationals prompts whispers that he's still getting a little special help:

C'mon Tyson - share the wealth!

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What They Didn't Tell You: Feb. 19th

I'm trying a new thing out today. It's a little feature called "What They Didn't Tell You" which I'll be putting up the first day of each week. Or the first day following a weekend of big racing. In it we'll sift through the storylines from the weekend that aren't getting the ink they deserve... until now.

Big weekend: Presidents' Day, USATF Cross Nationals, the Tyson Foods Chicken Invitational, and some meet over in Great Britain, no doubt spelled with extra "U"s following the "O"s, fish and chips, bad teeth, and what have you. Find out what they didn't tell you about the weekend, after the jump...

Oregon TC Elite DOMINATED Men's team race at Cross Country Nationals. Perfect score 1-2-3-4. Saying no one cares about the team race at Nationals is taking the easy way out, Lazybones.

Two thirty year-olds placed in the top 6 on the Women's side (Katie McGregor & Blake Russell). No one over 30 in the top 20 on the Men's side. Logical conclusion? Old runner men were scared of the inevitable post-race trip to the San Diego beaches, where they'd be shown up by the superior physiques of the young runner men.

As you probably know, the Razorback DMR took 3rd behind Texas and LSU at the Tyson Invitational, earning a public tongue-lashing from Hall of Fame coach, John McDonnell. What you probably didn't know is that the Razorback throwers ran down the boys from Texas in the Fat-Man-4x2 to save themselves the same indignity.

Adam Nelson threw down in winning the Shot Put at Tyson. But there was an insidious side to this story, as he did it by, in the week leading up to the meet, exclusively eating baby-fed-chicken provided by the event sponsor.

Presidents' Day was canceled this year. Yup. I didn't know it either until this morning when my boss fired me and when I asked why, he said because I didn't come into work yesterday, and when I said "It was Presidents' Day" he said, "Oh, that was canceled this year. You're still fired." Go figure.

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