Saturday, February 1, 2014

3:55.17.....Unexpected & Unbelievable

With no warning, Genzebe Dibaba rewrote the history books in just 3:55.17 seconds time!
In the Karlsruhe meet, Dibaba (younger sister of Tirunesh) destroyed the Indoor 1500 record with a (Please, I need some new adjectives here!!) time of 3:55.17.

There are many ways to look at this.

1. If she continued through a mile, she'd almost certainly break the OUTdoor record of 4:12.56, with a time of about 4:11.50 or 4:12.00!
2. She broke Yelena Soboleva's 2006 mark of 3:58.28 by 3.11 seconds.  As I've noted before, 1500/mile records aren't broken by 3 full seconds in one race!!  But Genzebe did!
3. It's a new Ethiopian National record (of course!) and an Age 22 record (obviously!)  BTW, she turns 23 just 1 week from today!
4. She improved her indoor PR of 4:00.13 by 4.96 seconds, moving up my World DDD list from 6th to 1st!!
5. She now leads the 2014 list by a mere 10.53 seconds!  (She won the race by about 13 seconds!!)

Renaud Lavillenie continues to own the PV!
He went over the bar set at 19-11.25, a mark attained only by Sergey Bubka!
But guess what?!
He does NOT get the Age 27 Indoor record!
You guessed it.
Bubka jumped 20-1 at that age!
He does improve his French National record!

Other than those 2 marks, it seems to have been a quiet weekend.
But I've got a few marks to report.

Keturah Orji TJ'ed a good 42-1.50 in her first TJ of the season.
It moves her onto the Indoor HS DDD list at 11th place.
With an outdoor mark just shy of 45 feet, she's bound (pardon the pun!) to move WAY up this list by March.

Another HS'er, 11th grader Alexa Efraimson, made news...in TWO ways!
One, it was announced that Mary Cain has moved from the 800 to the mile in the Millrose meet
This brought the announcement that Efraimson will run the Millrose mile also!
While I doubt Efraimson can beat Cain, this will be the first race since 2012 where Cain has faced another HS'er!
I'll predict Alexa can run 4:30 to 4:32.
But Cain might try again for Mary Slaney's 4:20.5 AR!!

And two, Efraimson just ran 3000 meters in 9:00.16 for 3rd in a race against pro's and collegians.
This is faster than Cain has run.
One tiny problem, however!
It was run on Seattle's 307 meter OT!!
Does NOT count!!
(However, in that alien world of OT's it IS the fastest HS time ever!!)

That Icelandic youngster (Well, she's now 18!), Anita Hinriksdottir, ran a 1500 in 4:19.
Normally an 800 girl, she ran like an 800 girl, sprinting to the lead from the gun, then even LAPPING 1 or 2 runners on the 200 meter track!
She'll be racing Ajee Wilson and Natoya Goule in that Millrose 800.
(As noted, Mary Cain won't be in the 800!)

At the Penn State meet, a couple of college teams ran good DMR's
Heck, they ran VERY good DMR's!
Stanford's women ran 10:54.07, the 2nd fastest time ever indoors by a College team!
(I'm working on my Relay lists, so I might have to add a correction later!)
Penn State's men ran 9:26.59.
And these were run on a 200 meter track!
Dartmouth finished well back, but Abbey D'Agostino ran a strong 4:32 split.

It's likely this weekend wasn't as "quiet" as I said.
I don't have ALL the results in yet from Karlsruhe, or the many collegiate and high school meets.
But I guarantee that I'll do another post...if necessary!

Oh yes.
Nick Symmonds won that much-hyped JDL Camel City 800 race today.
Time of 1:48.64.

And Lauren Fleshman started her post-baby comeback with a Seattle mile win in 4:42.77.
(She doubled back in that Alexa Efraimson 3K, but it was just a workout.)

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