Flat Hills Road

My preview is online now at iaaf.org. I’ve complained about preview-writing before, but the plain fact is that writing previews lets me write meet reports, which is more fun. And the two in combination let me get paid for going to track meets, which is even more fun.

I’m missing the press conference today, which is too bad, because I had a market for a Shalane Flanagan interview. I haven’t forgotten about my Adam Nelson back-stock, but he’s not throwing this weekend, so my mind has been elsewhere.

About this preview specifically, it’s worth noting that a U.S. track fan might find more at this meet to be excited about than I have mentioned in this article. The gap lies in the fact that U.S. track fans, in addition to their interest in the top levels of professional competition, also have eyes on the best Americans, high school runners, and/or masters competitors, and internationally, these are fields that just don’t matter. The high school runners are “interesting” only in so far as their competitiveness internationally as Juniors (which is to say, historically not much, in this country). The best Americans are “interesting” only if they’re regularly making appearances in big internationals, so Alan Webb despite his uneven record is interesting. Shalane Flanagan and Kara Goucher with their medals are interesting. Nick Symmonds, who could probably run for Mayor of Eugene and win at this point, is… not all that interesting. Rob Myers, the most underappreciated miler in America today, is… not all that interesting from this point of view.

The advantage to this approach is that it allows me to mask my shallow knowledge of sprinters and field eventers.

I’ll also be writing a meet report to appear in New England Runner. It will probably mention many of the same performances, but it will also mention the masters milers and high school athletes like Omar Abdi, who have local connections. If Shalane Flanagan runs an AR at 5,000m, something the Global Athletics crew thinks is a real possibility, that will be huge for NER, but most interesting for the IAAF only if in doing so she manages to beat both the Ethiopians entered.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 5th, 2009 at 7:09 am and is filed under boston, iaaf, indoor track, writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.