Flat Hills Road

My article about Masters middle-distance ace Scott Hartley is in the CrossFit Journal today. The Journal is a pay site, so I won’t be posting the text here. Hartley is a very interesting story in that he’s faced problems common to a lot of runners, but his solution to those problems (that problem) has been decidedly uncommon. It’s not clear to me whether his approach would work for true distance runners (10K and up) as well as it does for Scott as a middle-distance guy, but so far I haven’t heard of anyone at his level who has tried.

Peter Gambaccini's line about a 4 x mile record attempt in Oregon:

The world record of 15:49.08, set by Irishmen Eamonn Coghlan, Marcus O'Sullivan, Frank O'Mara, and Ray Flynn in Dublin in 1985, is not likely to be threatened.

You think? That wasn't exactly a team of scrubs, there. This leads to all kinds of questions. To break that record, four runners have to average 3:57 between them.

• Is there a contemporary American team (by which I mean, ignore sponsor commitments and possibly even injury status: our criteria is that they be active athletes with a blue passport) that could even come close to that? (The Oregon team is chasing the collegiate record of 16:04.5 and will only need to average 4:01.) Lagat-Webb-Manzano-Lomong? Anyone? Would you pull in 800m specialists?
• How about any nation? Morocco vs. Kenya vs. Ethiopia in a 4 x mile? Have Qatar or Bahrain bought enough depth? Even the Russians always seem to be able to run out of their minds for a good relay.
• Certainly an all-star international squad could do it. How would you build a team like that?

Rob Myers has never:

• won an NCAA title
• been ranked #1 in the USA in his event
• set a record beyond the state high school level
• made an Olympic team (he’s tried twice)
• advanced past the semifinal of a World Championship
• won an outdoor national title
• won a major open (i.e. European) race

Maybe that’s why he’s so often overlooked. for this year’s USATF Indoor Championships, most people picked him third with the competition expected to be between Alan Webb and Chris Lukezic at the front. (The latter has, to be fair, been having a great season.)

Last night in Boston, Rob Myers won his third USATF indoor championship in the 1,500m (or mile–the distance seems to go back and forth.) I don’t know how many he’s going to have to win before people take him seriously. The first two were often dismissed on the grounds of weak competition, and certainly his 2004 win would count as a “steal” considering how unknown he was at the time, but this year he took Webb to the line.

I’m not going to try to argue that Rob Myers is a world-beater, but he’s regularly beating guys who are supposed to be world-class. Isn’t it time we stopped being surprised when he wins national titles?