Flat Hills Road

Talk about the Boston Indoor Games so far has revolved around three records: the men’s pole vault WR, because of Steve Hooker’s performance at Millrose; the women’s pole vault AR, because of the Dragila/Stuczynski duel at Millrose; and the women’s 5,000m AR, because Shalane Flanagan has an excellent chance of becoming the first American woman under 15:00 indoors. (The race could easily be that fast; the question is more likely to be whether Flanagan is in shape to hang on to the pace that long. It’s early in the season yet.)

The fourth mark, which I’m probably not the first one to mention, is the men’s 1,000m AR. The mark is 2:17.86, and it belongs to David Krummenacker, who set it at this very meet in 2002. The same night, Tim Broe whacked a chunk off Steve Scott’s indoor 3,000m mark, a record now owned by Bernard Lagat, and though Lagat has bested the pre-2002 AR in the 1,000m, Krummenacker’s time stands supreme.

(I interviewed Krummenacker after he set the record. I was one of very few reporters at the Boston Indoor Games that year; there are plenty of us now.)

Despite my build-up, however, the 1,000m record is essentially soft. The reason is that it’s not run as often as it used to be. It’s not an international championship event any more (if it ever was); the world record is nine years old (2:14.96 by Wilson Kipketer) and apart from a few fast times from Abubaker Kaki and the men he outran last year, very few marks since Kipketer are at the top of the list. Certainly a 1,000m AR is more attainable than an 800m AR; just ask Krummenacker, or Ocky Clark who held the AR nearly thirteen years before that. (Johnny Gray’s 1:45.00 800m AR has been old enough to drive for nearly a year now.)

All of which brings us to the man of 2008 at 800m. No, not Andrew Wheating, but Nick Symmonds, who actually won the race that stamped Wheating’s face on everyone’s memories (and was, as far as I could tell, a class act about sharing the spotlight). Symmonds, like Krummenacker, has a background of 800m/1,500m doubles. He’s run well in Boston before, and he’s familiar with the track. In other words, he has about the same credentials Krummenacker had in 2002.

Perhaps the best part of this race, though, is that whether or not the pace is record quality, Symmonds is unlikely to have the win handed to him. Christian Smith and Duane Solomon, who have both represented the USA internationally in the 800m (Solomon in 2007 at the World Championships, Smith at the Olympics last year) are also in the race, as is a veteran by the name of David Krummenacker.

Maybe this isn’t a record attempt by Symmonds, and it’s obviously set up to make a good race no matter what the time. But the environment is there and the mark is not out of reach. If the record goes, don’t say I didn’t warn you just because I didn’t mention this race in my preview.

Update: Looks like Kaki is going for the WR in Stuttgart.

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.

I’m writing up a preview of the Boston Indoor Games for iaaf.org (I’ll link it when it’s posted, never fear). I’ve used some playful leads for this in the past, but I don’t think I’d get away with the one I just considered. Specifically, I considered implying that I had been able to cut-and-paste the previous year’s preview for several years now, but I wouldn’t be able to get away with it this year.

I covered the Millrose Games last night.

Of note: a British journalist of my acquaintance commented on the headline’s use of “scare” with a world record as the subject. (I didn’t write the headline.) I don’t have a problem with the personification (anthropomorphization?) of records, myself; in the past I’ve had them celebrate birthdays and get drivers’ licenses to illustrate age.

Also, for those who didn’t read the USATF release word for word, Adam Nelson announced that next year, when his wife has finished law school, they’re moving back to Athens, Georgia to open a yogurt shop. I guess that’s what you do with an MBA and a law degree. The name of the shop will be “MoYo”, because Nelson’s nickname as a child was “Mo”. But the name works even if you don’t know that, and even if Nelson is pulling our collective legs.

One of the things Adam Nelson talked about in our interview was the relative importance and position of the shot put among the athletics events, particularly in America. It was particularly interesting to hear him tell this, because he has been part of the renaissance of that event in America, starting at the 2000 Olympic Trials.

I included some of his quotes in the article, most notably his observation that to break through as an event in this country, you need to be breaking records constantly (think women’s pole vault) or have “awesome competition” which is what the shot put is currently delivering.

This is a point I think is often missed. The frequency with which Nelson, Christian Cantwell and Reese Hoffa compete with each other is unprecedented, I think, even in this sport. Even an uncharitable observer will put all three of those names among the top five in the world, if not the monopolizing the top three, and they go out and deliver a veritable event summit on a very, very frequent basis. Those three threw against each other more often in 2008 than Sebastian Coe and Steve Ovett faced off in their entire careers. It’s as though Asafa Powell, Usain Bolt and Tyson Gay met eight or ten times in one season.

It also doesn’t hurt that it’s the collective that dominates, not one of the three. The men’s 400m was boring when Jeremy Wariner (or Michael Johnson before him) was winning every race he entered. When LaShawn Merritt started beating Wariner, but not on a regular basis, the 400m got a lot more interesting. Which one would win this time? Same with the shot. Cantwell and Hoffa threw long in Europe last week, Cantwell longer than Hoffa, but Hoffa’s the Olympic champion. But Cantwell’s the indoor champion. And Nelson, well, he’s Adam Nelson, he’s been the diameter of a shot away from two Olympic gold medals. Which one’s going to get a grip on a good one tomorrow night?

Did you get a little excited there? Can you see why?

I suggested, and Nelson concurred, that this really sprung from the 2000 Trials. Nelson, John Godina (since retired) and C.J. Hunter (since booted from the sport in disgrace) made the team. Kevin Toth and Andy Bloom could’ve made it. I’m forgetting at least one other name. Six guys with a legitimate chance to make the team. The drama didn’t need to be manufactured, and the crowd in Sacramento recognized that.

Now add on the event itself. The shot is the heaviest of the throwing implements, and the circle it is hurled from allows the least movement of any of the throwing events, not that the spinning used by hammer and discus throwers would help putters much. Nelson describes the event as, “I’m trying to push a 16-pound steel ball as far away from myself as possible,” but that’s the reductio ad absurdum of the shot.

He also says the shot put is the purest strength event outside powerlifting. And yet he works on more than raw strength; he works on  speed, balance, form. He doesn’t advertise himself as the strongest guy, and when you compare him to a giant like Christian Cantwell, he doesn’t look it. He does say, and I’m taking this out of context in a way which makes it sound immodest, “I’m stronger and quicker than most of the people I’ve competed against.” (Emphasis mine.)

And quicker.

It’s tempting to look at the shot put as a sort of sideshow, feats of strength to amuse us while we wait for the World’s Fastest Something-or-Other. It’s harder to look at it as half a dozen or a dozen men performing a precise little dance they have been perfecting for over a decade apiece, and try to determine how the subtleties of each performance affect the precisely measured outcome, but ultimately it’s a richer experience. And while track fans may good-naturedly refer to themselves as “nuts”, it’s the fact that this sport features over a dozen such events, each of which may be observed just as richly, that makes it so fascinating.

If you’re one of the lucky folks who gets the IAAF Magazine (no, not Spikes) you should have the 2008 Yearbook by now. If you’re paying careful attention, inside you will find a few pages in which I torture a fireworks metaphor while describing last March’s World Indoor Championships. They love their gunpowder in Valencia, I have to say.

The Boston Indoor Games announced their date earlier this month. It will be later than usual: February 7. If that date looks familiar, that’s because it’s also the date of the USATF cross country championships, to be held in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC. Adding another line to the unusual spring schedule is the Millrose Games, scheduled for Friday evening, January 30.

I call this “unusual” because normally those three meets are spread over three weeks: first Boston, then Millrose the following weekend (though there have been years, earlier this decade when Millrose was Friday night and the Boston Indoor Games followed on Saturday evening). Cross country would be the third weekend, usually overlapping with the Tyson Invitational indoor meet in Arkansas (though in 2004, cross country overlapped with the men’s Olympic Marathon Trials).

It’s pretty easy to guess at why this happened. USATF scheduled their cross country meet ages ago, and date-wise, they’re not too far from where they usually are; if anything, a week early.

Millrose and the Boston Indoor Games, both put on by Mark Wetmore’s Global Athletics and Marketing group, probably had a tougher time. Global likes to dodge the NFL playoffs in order to get the full attention of the Boston sports press, but they also had to schedule Millrose in Madison Square Garden around the Knicks and the Rangers. Friday, February 6th is a Knicks game (hosting the Boston Celtics, of all teams) and Global needs time to set up and break down the Garden’s track. So January 30 it had to be, and the track will be going up in a hurry after a Kings of Leon concert in the Garden on Thursday night. (The Knicks won’t take the floor back until Monday the 2nd.)

That leaves three options for the Boston Indoor Games, none of them terribly good. They could go early, and run on January 24th; they could follow Millrose immediately on Saturday the 31st, and they could conflict with USATF on February 7th.

I’m guessing January 31st was vetoed immediately by the Global staff, considering that the consecutive-weeks schedule has been tough enough for them since Global added Millrose to their portfolio. The Reggie Lewis Center is booked for the MSTCA Relays meet from 9:30 to 3 on the 24th; this nominally leaves the evening for the Boston Indoor Games, which usually starts at 5, but two hours isn’t enough to set up for the meet, so assuming that was previously scheduled, February 7th was the only option left.

The interesting problem is what this means for the fields at the Boston Indoor Games. While the middle-distance and sprint events are unlikely to be affected, the backbone of the BIG in recent years has been record attempts at the 3,000m, 5,000m and two-mile distances by various international (often Ethiopian) stars. These athletes will be available, of course (and Commonwealth stars like Nick Willis and Steve Hooker have already been announced), but the field has generally been filled by Americans hoping to get a quick clocking in the Ethiopian slipstream. (Indeed, Shalane Flanagan’s 2007 3,000m AR was set here, signifying the start of a big year for an athlete who was known to much of the crowd from when she was an in-state high school star.)

With no World Indoor Championships this year, most distance runners will be emphasizing cross country over indoor track, vying for a spot on the U.S. team for World Cross in Amman, Jordan in March. This will probably mean a big hit for the distance fields in Boston–if not in front, then in 3rd through 6th. And possibly in crowd interest.

(For the curious, I’ll be at the Boston Indoor Games for certain, and possibly also the Millrose Games.)