Our favorite post-Olympic Trials links

(AP Photo/David J. Phillip)

Here is a list (in no particular order) of some of our favorite articles and blogs that we've seen since the Olympic Trials. I'm sure we've missed a few good ones, so if you have something to add, post it in the comments.

For the best recap and breakdown of the races, of course you need to check out Letsrun.com:Mens Analysis - Womens Analysis

One of the funnier (but totally true!) articles from the week, making fun of the fact that Nike dropped Meb, then he signed with Sketchers and ran back to back marathon PRs in 2 months! - Somebody ought to lose their job at Nike

Q: And, you’re sure he is no longer a Nike athlete?  We usually grab up those personal interest stories, war, Africa, just do it stuff.

A: No, we let him go so we could hire another bench-sitting baby in the NBA…marketing said that was the way to go.  Meb has no tattoos.

Some good race recaps from personal blogs
Paul Peterson - Fellow fast running blog member, and two-time OT qualifier:
Just clicked off 5:05-5:10 for the first 8 miles of the race, got in a great rhythm. Was it too fast? Oh, definitely! But I wanted to roll the dice. And I was excited about it. Maybe I could be the Trent Briney of this year?
Since I ran the 2008 Trials, and this would likely be my last Trials, I had nothing to lose, and I didn't see much to gain by running 2:18-2:19. Trying for 2:14-2:15 sounded a lot more interesting.

Camille Herron - Camille is a hard working, high-mileage runner:

I had a lot of people trying to give me advice on how to approach the race. As bold, confident, and risky as I am (which you have to be to win a marathon!), I felt what was most important to me was running a steady race to ensure I got a new PR. I’ve tried many times the past year to “throw myself out there” for a new PR…. and have come up short. Sometimes you take the risk and it pays off…. and sometimes it doesn’t. Great quote, Every GREAT race involves an element of risk. I ran a conservative race this time, probably too conservative, and got a PR (sometimes the risk, IS, running conservative and coming from behind). I would have liked to have passed more people and finished around 2:35 or faster, but given the nature of the course/conditions, I think it was a slower race than everyone anticipated. Additionally, I believe steady progress and not forcing it is a good thing. My fitness continues to improve, so I’ll go with the flow!

Devon Crosby Helms - An "ultra" runner who decided to give the marathon a serious shot, and has dropped over 10 minutes off her PR in the past year:
At the beginning of last year, I thought the journey was to the 2012 Olympic Trials. I thought that that is where the chapter would end. Now I see, it wasn't the end of a chapter, it was the introduction to an entirely new book. I look forward to discovering what I can do, following the thread of adventure and discovery before me.

Jaymee Marte - The last place finisher in the women's race... her inspiring story is worth checking out:
I have never been one who cares much at all about medals, but this one, I wanted more than anything on this earth.

Runner's Feed has posted recaps/interviews with dozens of athletes that are worth checking out. They put a lot of focus on the non-elite elites, which is cool - because they are often the runners we can identify with the most. Here's a few from their list:

Janet Cherobon Bawcom - we have a rule in our house that you never complain if you ran a PR. 
Mike Wardian - I was happy with the result but not satisfied, I know I can run sub 2:15 now and that is crazy cool. [Check out Wardian's upcoming race schedule... the guy is an animal! Oh, and after running 2:21 at the trials, he bounced back at ran 2:31 at the Houston Marathon the next day, which is amazing, but not surprising at all if you know who Mike is]

Well, that about sums up the difference b/w Top 3, and not Top 3
(photo by Margaret Hunter)

Adam Goucher writes about his wife - Kara's ticket to London

Her pre-race nerves were gone but mine remained. In that sense, runners are the lucky ones. The people who really have to suffer are the coaches, the parents, and the spouses. Our nerves do not go away when the race begins. Our nerves persist every step of the race causing a completely different type of agony than what the runners are experiencing. 

Perhaps it is because we have stood witness to the preparation for his moment for the weeks, months, and even years leading up to a race. This race is only a snapshot representing a much larger body of work. We have watched as the runners in our lives have battled through injury, sickness, doubts, good workouts and bad. We know just how desperately they want it; just how much they have already suffered and sacrificed to get to this line.

Lauren Fleshman blogging about her friend Stephanie Rothstein - There is a Herculean price to pay for making yourself vulnerable to a dream.

Flotrack images - Top 10 Men's Moments - Top 10 Women's Moments

Local Utah blogger Hungry Runner Girl had a post-race interview with Dathan Ritzenhein - Ritz on what's next

Yahoo! Photos - Houston Chronicle Photos - 
Women's trials shatters marathon depth record - This is really cool. In my (Jake's) opinion, this is exactly why they shouldn't lower the women's OTQ standard too much for 2016. Chasing the trials standard improves depth, and depth is good for the sport!

The top 3 men 
(Reuters / Richard Carson)

The top 3 women 
(Reuters / Richard Carson)

Some stats from the Women's Olympic Trials Marathon

Yesterday I posted some pace graphs from the men's olympic trials marathon. Today - the women's race.

Here is the link to the women's spreadsheet. Download the original file and open it in Excel for the formatting to be correct.

I am missing some mile splits for almost all of the competitors when they crossed the 1 hour mark (due to formatting that I don't feel like spending the time to fix right now), and also a few random splits later in the race (due to the splits simply being wrong on the USATF results website). Still, the graphs are interesting to look at...

The first graph shows the average mile splits of all finishers, and then separated into groups. A couple things jump right out - the women started off a lot slower than the men, the course was not completely flat, and its very common to slow down towards the end of a marathon!

Next up - the Top 10 women. I am missing some splits in here, but you can see that the top 3 (Shalana, Desi, and Kara) really hammered it home. Amy got dropped around mile 19, but put up a heck of a fight over the last couple miles.

Now, the DNFs - like the men's race, there were some blowups...

Zoomed-in view of the same graph. What I find interesting is that a lot of women dropped out when they weren't running all that slowly (yet). Quite a few made it through the halfway point of the race in that 5:45-6:00 pace range, but it just wasn't their day.

That's all for now. Maybe I'll do some more when I have some more free time.

Some stats from the men's Olympic Trials Marathon

I'm not going to offer any recap of the trials marathons, because there are dozens and dozens of awesome articles and photo galleries you can check out. Just head over to Letsrun.com and you'll be entertained for hours.

As everyone who watched / read knows, both races were incredible, and we are sending very strong teams to London this summer. It was cool to watch, but Andrea and I definitely felt like watching from home was not the way to experience the trials... it was exciting to be watching, but at the same time - very bittersweet. We want to be competing in 2016!

Being a total dork, I converted the mile-by-mile splits from the race website into a more usable spreadsheet. You can download it below. I've also made a few graphs. If time permits, I'll do this for the women's race as well.

Here is the google doc link for the Olympic Trials mile-by-mile splits spreadsheet. You'll want to download the original file and open it using Microsoft Excel, or else the formatting will be all jacked up.

For all of these graphs, the Y-axis is the mile split / pace, and the X-axis is the mile marker. The trials had timing mats at every mile, which is a stat geek's dream!

First up - here are the splits for the Top 20 finishers...

Now here are just the Top 4. You can see where Ritz lost it, around mile 20 - but he fought and clawed his way back in the last couple miles. 

Here are all the DNFs. While there were a few slow miles in there, most guys dropped out before they crossed that threshold into 6-minute mile land. They knew when the wheels were falling off.

This graph is similar to the first one, but just picks out some selected individuals. Paul Peterson, one of our fellow Fast Running Bloggers, was one of the few guys in the history of the marathon to slow down, and then manage to speed back up over the last 5K. Very impressive... he's a tough racer!

Here is what Paul said when I showed his these graphs: You can definitely see how the course was NOT flat, as some mile sets were consistently fast or slow (ie - Mile 8/16/24 are all the same stretch of road). The mile with the 180-uturn was 7/15/22, and those were all slow miles for everyone, etc. You can also see the utter carnage/chaos of the last last 6 miles pretty clearly...for everyone.

And finally, here's the average (+/- SD) splits for the entire field of finishers, versus just the top 10 finishers. I found it interesting that the "field" managed to kick it in over the last 0.2 relatively better than the top 10 guys :-)