GIF by Laurene Boglio
Hello again!
This week, I’ve been back at altitude in Santa Fe and battling a cold, which has been wonderful for my marathon training plans. (But actually great for re-learning the virtues of adapting the plan, which I can always use more practice with!) I hope you’ve all been persevering in your winter training so far, despite the frigid temperatures and all that.
Houston heat
There was a huge amount of news out of Houston this past weekend. One of the highlights, of course, was Emily Sisson’s stellar half marathon performance (1:07:30 with some crazy fast splits!), just barely missing her training partner Molly Huddle’s American record. I’m so excited to watch Emily’s season progress, and the rest of her career. She’ll be making her marathon debut in London in April, as part of a totally stacked women’s elite field.
Also in Houston: after a lot of chatter around Kara Goucher’s return to the marathon, she unfortunately DNF’d, citing an old hamstring injury. She’s teased that she’ll be “taking her running in a new direction” once she’s recovered. I’m eager to see what that looks like at this stage in her career.
Grand indeed
Looking ahead, there’s some serious fire coming to the track in Boston this weekend for the New Balance Indoor Grand Prix. One of my favorite recent running fan memories was watching the DMR at the 2017 meet when Jenny Simpson, Emma Coburn, Sydney McLaughlin, and Brenda Martinez broke the world record. They’ll all be running individual events at Saturday’s meet. (The women’s mile field, including both Emma and Brenda, looks incredible.)
The big screen
Olympian Alexi Pappas has a new movie coming out, called Olympic Dreams, that will premiere at SXSW in March. I interviewed Alexi for Outside a few years ago when she was promoting her movie Tracktown, and she had a lot of interesting things to say about balancing her training with her creative work. And in 2017, I edited an essay of hers about mastering that balance. A lot of what she wrote in that piece is still relevant now, and I’m excited to see how her storytelling has evolved in the years since.
Calling all sports bra feels
Outside is conducting a survey about sports bras. If you have gripes and praises you’re burning to share (of course you do!), you can fill it out here.
Club OTQ
There’s officially one year left to qualify for the 2020 Olympic Trials, and Tracksmith recently announced a program, in partnership with Linden & True coffee, to support athletes who hit the OTQ standard. This is a very on-brand move for Tracksmith, whose ethos has always been about celebrating the (often high-level) amateur runner—but it’s also a campaign I can get behind. The grind of the sub-elite, unsponsored runner is real. As Fritz Huber, Outside’s running columnist, wrote after CIM: “Sunday’s California International Marathon was a reminder that most of those who devote endless hours to excel in this sport do it anonymously—all in the hope of achieving an obscure benchmark that, for saner souls at least, means absolutely nothing.”
Further reading
It’s been a good few weeks for running media! I’m looking forward to reading Johanna Gretschel’s new Competitor column, the Inside Lane, on elite track and cross-country; as well as Allie Kieffer’s new column on Women’s Running, Ask Allie.
Called out
Keep the fire twitter game coming!
Drop me a line
I want to hear from you! Tell me about what you like here, what I missed, and what’s going on in your running life. (You can also follow the Kick on Twitter here.) Thanks for reading, and enjoy your miles.
Molly