Fearless Predictions: NYC Half Edition

Less Than Our Best is concerned with very little. One of those few interests is pretending to give a shit about the election. The other is acting like I have some expertise in predicting things. Here's a few things that will LITERALLY happen this weekend:


Aviva London Grand Prix

Men's 1 Mile
Alan Webb is on the starting list, just like last week in France. Fool me once, Alan, shame on you. Fool me twice and I will send someone to your house to beat you with the rusty bottom of my Zoom Milers (j/k?).

With or without Webb, the London Mile is chock full of milers NOT from Africa. Baddeley, East, Sullivan, Mottram, Lukezic, and Webb. That's one pale, poor dancing group of guys headed to the start line.

Lagat will win followed by Mottram, Korir, then Webb (I still believe), Sullivan, and Baddeley. Those six will all run between 3:49 and 3:51.

Men's 3000 meters
A random smattering of runners make up this field. As always, Alistair Cragg will start out bravely with the leaders and slowly fade over the last 600 meters. One of these days the guy is going to hold on, today is not that day. Ed Moran, fresh off his front row seat to watch Jorge Torres make the Olympic team, can stake his claim at US distance running A-list status if he can hang with the pack in this race. 7:42 will do well to get Moran mentioned closer to your Rupps and your Torreses and farther from your Carneys and your Rohatinsky's. Sean Quigley and Tim Nelson, solid c-listers, get some valuable "European experience" (read: prostitutes picked up in Piccadilly circus after the race).

New York City Half Marathon

Three Truths: Dathan Ritzenhein is still supposed to start. Patrick Makau is going to win. Adam Goucher will be there, which means so will Kara Goucher (hopefully) which means More "The Gouchers" news for LTOB!

Makau will take it out super fast, like he did at the Healthy Kidney, and it will quickly turn into a race for second. Ritzenhein has run two of his three best American soil races in NYC, becoming the Healthy Kidney 10k record holder and getting 2nd at the Marathon Trials (the third was his domination at US Cross this past winter). He will be second in 1:01:20. An amazing feat over guys like Limo, Kipsang, and Ramaala. It will be one of the finest US distance performances of the year, way to go Ritz!

Second best American honors will go to Fernando Cabada followed by Fasil Bizuneh. Adam Goucher will come home in 30th place in 1:06 with a huge smile after hearing one of the spectators yell "you're ALL winners" at mile 10 and getting confused.

Somewhere a bit later in the pack, your humble narrator will flail his way to the finish in what Mary Wittenberg will call the "fuckin' ballsiest race ever run on the streets of this city." Thanks Mary, but I don't do it for the accolades.

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What They Didn't Tell You: We'll Always Have Paris...

What They Didn't Tell You - Paris... and more!

At the Gaz de France in Gay Perry (name that movie, win some props), Alan Webb did not make his scheduled appearance to defend the mile crown from the 2007 edition of this meet. Why, you ask? Well, some people would have you believe he was too busy eating Egg McMuffins and lost track of the time. But actually, they're called Oeuf McCrepes over there.

Also in Paris, Shannon Rowbury barely missed breaking 4:00 in the 1500, and was just tenths away from taking a sizeable scalp in Maryam Yusuf Jamal of Bahrain. While the dual near-misses had to have stung, the PB and strong placing in one of Europe's biggest meets are worth savoring, and later that evening, Rowbury was seen out on the town celebrating.

Jeremy Wariner finally took the measure of Lahawn Merritt in a significant manner, hanging half a second on his rival. But, unfortunately, Wariner's adidas uniform? Still hideous.

It may have been a smaller meet than Gaz de France, but the weekend's other big meet wasn't lacking for excitement with an 8:00 flat steeple, a hot 5k and Webb finally making his appearance, to clock 3:35. What they didn't tell you, though, was that Houston hosts a big-time track meet. Crazy, right?

At that same meet, Jenny Barringer ran a furious final 50 meters to run down Anna Willard for the win, and the right to put her name beside the new American Record of 9:22. Sadly, what they didn't tell you was that the Flotrack cameras packed it in too early -- and this will dismay fans of steepling, message board rivalry-dissection, and women -- and thus, did not capture the exchange that followed, as the bad blood between "Jenny B" and "'Fred' Willard" spilled out and over into the steeple pit, where both wrestled around in sopping wet kits. Humminahumminahummina....

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Webb/Rudd -- BFF or BF/GF?!?!

Jeremy has tried since this blog's inception to keep it straight and professional. No gossip, no runner bashing or coach bashing, just a place where you go to find straight-laced, no frills running news and commentary. He reads the New Yorker. I, on the other hand, read jezebel like its my job.

In defiance of my co-editor Squaremy (too much of a stretch? NO!), I present you with some running news ripped straight from the front page of TMZ.com! Well, not quite TMZ, rather Charlottesville, VA's Daily Progress.com (same, same).

In an article detailing steeplechaser Julia Rudd's preparation for the Olympic trials, Julia being the young lady once refferred to as Alan Webb's "girlfriend," is now indicating the two are "best friends."

OMG! WTF?

This clearly has huge implications for Webb's build up to Beijing. How can he focus on training with distracting articles coming out forcing him to constantly pick through the labyrinthian semantics of a woman? I know I was bed-ridden for weeks trying to decipher a text message I received from a girlfriend once. It read: "pls stop txting me. i h8 ur gutz!" Why would she playfully put a 'z' on the end of 'guts' if she didn't still have feelings? WHY?!

Webb needs to stop getting distracted by women and focus on his speed work. He should see no other face but his own in the mirror until he steps to the staring line at Pre in a few weeks. You think the Kenyans are calling each other "best friends" and "girlfriends" and "boyfriends" all day long? Probably sometimes, but not ALL day long.

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What They Didn't Tell You: Penn... and Beyond

THE WEEKEND for all you relay lovers. You got your Penn, your Drake, your Hillsdale "Gina" Relays. Apparently Oregon is trying to get in on the act, but, as ben said Friday... too far west. Probably were some local high school races running relays as well. No time for all that, now - straight ahead, all the news from this past weekend, including What They Didn't Tell You.

At Penn Relays, Jamaican high school Calabar clocked a 40.74 to win the 4x100, a time which would have put them ahead of all but 12 college teams, as well as tied a relay team of Canadian pros, who competed in the USA v. the World competition. The lesson, as always... Canadians should stick to making bacon.

Hillsdale "Gina" Relays produced a 1500 that was downright "sizzling" with Nate Brannen falling to Boaz "the Lesser" Lalang, 3:37 to 3:38. The lesson, as always... Canadians should stick to making bacon.

Overall, the Hillsdale "Gina" Relays once again showed an ability to put together solid races, even on one of the most stacked weekends of domestic track. However, Drake Relays and Penn Relays will continue to call it the Hillsdale "Vagina" Relays, when they are all in the locker room together after gym class... due to the meet's steadfast refusal to drop that embarrassing, embarrassing syllable from its name.

NEWSFLASH - there is this site called Facebook. Have any of you heard of it? Meantime, have any readers heard of this new thing called the Internet? I hear it's gonna be huge.

Alan Webb, who had pulled out of Drake owing to some ailment or other, played video games all weekend. Just thought you'd like to know.

And finally, also at Penn, Texas swept the Men's Mid-D/Distance Relays, winning the 4x800, 4xMile, and DMR. They are now just 10 relay-sweeps behind Villanova, and the lesson, as always... Canadians should stick to making bacon.

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OMG, Webb DNF! WTF?

OMG you guys. Can you believe this? Alan Webb dropped out of the Carlsbad 5k this past weekend after running like super crappy two weekends ago at the NYRR 8k. WTF? Are you guys like totally freaking out or what?

This is totally not a good way to start an Olympic season you guys. Totally. I am like super worried.

Webb is totally training all wrong. How fast is he doing his tempo runs? Too slow I'm sure. He needs to do more hills. More mileage. Work harder. He needs to be stronger. Tougher. He's totally worthless. I hear there's a 15 year old in Iowa that just ran 4:20 by himself on a windy day. Now THAT is a guy we can root for.

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What They Didn't Tell You: April 7

Nice little weekend of running with the 10k-er down in Richmond and the 5k-er out in Carlsbad, and the beginning of the legit outdoors NCAA action. After the jump, find out What They Didn't Tell You...

Alan Webb dropped out of Carlsbad citing cramps, or something. Real reason? Scared of bats.

Abdi won the USATF 10k Champs over Ben's nemesis (OCC) and a few others. Shades of ESPN and the Men's 3k at USATF Indoors, though, as they didn't tell you THAT THIS RACE WAS EVEN FREAKING HAPPENING.

A substitute teacher won a "Dash For Cash" bonus by making his almost 3 mile head start stand up against the pros. Before the race, Abdi had a laugh with the contestant, saying, "When you see me coming, you better run for your life." After the race, Abdi stabbed him to death.

The whole Webb-Steve Scott connect leading up to Carlsbad generated lots of ink, what with them being the current American-record holder and the AR-holder emeritus, respectively. Generating no ink? The Jeremy-Steve Scott connect: he's my dad.

And in another father-son story, The Browns became the first father-son tandem under the 4:00 barrier for the full mile, snatching that honor away from Sam Bair, who clearly had long-suffered some sort of mental block, which was, we have learned, caused by fear and a childhood trauma. Now if you believe the papers, with the Browns claim officially on the books, Sam Bair now has no purpose in life. But if you only knew...

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Webb: NYRR 8k Now, Marathon Inevitable

Here's a simple distance running analogy:

Professional distance runners : New York Road Runners::

(A) Bee : honey
(B) The working man : morning coffee
(C) 20 minute videos : Flotrack
(D) People who are good at what they do and want to be treated as such : People who are willing and excited to treat them that way
(E) All of the above

Cultural inequality be damned, I'm going to do everything I can to get that on next year's SAT.

Allow me to drop a fact bomb: NYRR has successfully wooed every elite distance runner in America to simultaneously run in their races and fall all over themselves in praise of the organization.

Is it an accident that they keep getting elite runners like Alan Webb to not only run in their races, but to run in races that are out of their comfort zone (i.e. Webb in an 8k and mile road race)? Is it an accident that they successfully put on hugely popular mass participation events in conjunction with their professional races with a very notable emphasis on the professional races? Is it an accident that they have a very lame and poorly put together television show that airs regularly on a New York cable sports station?

None of these are accidents. They get the job done. It's clear that Mary Wittenberg and NYRR have something going on and I think I know what it is:

The lead car at the ING New York City Marathon.

Something goes on in this car (actual car may not be one pictured above). Look at all of the athletes that have admitted to doing whatever unChristian activity that goes on in this vehicle: Ritz, Hall, Meb, Abdi, and most recently, Mrs. Adam Goucher!

Webb is undoubtedly next. There is no way he can resist the lucious marathon fruit that Wittenberg dangles in front of all of these runners' (apple?) pie-eyed faces. All she needs to do is invite Alan into that lead vehicle next November and BAM! Our top Anglo-American (not that it matters) mid-distance track hope is slogging through 20 milers in August instead of blazing through European 1500s. Wittenberg is a genius at these things. Hell, she once convinced me to run the New York City marathon by slapping me in the face when I got too close to her saurkraut.

So get used to it America, no one can resist the NYRR: mid-distance runners are no exception. Wittenberg and her crew are the cream of the crop, le creme de la creme, das sahne des getreides, if you will. And for good reason. I've been in the lead car. I know. Trust me, I know ALL too well.

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Webb Enters 8k Champs, Lets Out Wookie Roar

Alan Webb announced he will traverse the Central Park roads on March 15th for the USATF 8k Road Championship. And, apparently, he also expressed a desire to sleep with the wife of one of the guys working on the IAAF website, too, as they chose probably the most unflattering photo that exists of Webb (above), to report the story.

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