A Heavy Week

This is the CITIUS MAG Newsletter, a weekly round-up of the biggest stories in the running and track & field community with analysis and commentary by me, Chris Chavez. If you’ve been forwarded this email or stumbled upon a link online, you can sign up and subscribe here:

In the two weeks since the last edition of the newsletter, 18 people have died in two mass shootings in Atlanta, GA, and Boulder, CO. As much as we’ve been craving getting back to “normal”, the American reality before the COVID-19 pandemic included deadly gun violence at a rate seen nowhere else in the world and it’s not a reality I want to return to. We can’t in good faith unpack the recent news of the running world without acknowledging the impacts these issues have and thinking critically about the role we can play in making our own community and every community safer.

The latest episode of Runners of NYC with Chinatown Runners founder Victoria Lo was recorded on Monday, March 15. A day later, the shooting in Atlanta took place. Victoria mentioned to me and Leigh Anne Sharek that her anger and frustration started in late February with news of hate crimes taking place in New York but as evidenced by Stop AAPI Hate’s research, there have been more than 3,800 incidents anti-Asian racist incidents reported within the past year. There is no doubt that this increase was due in part to former President Trump’s xenophobic rhetoric, which in turn was enabled and amplified by his supporters. 

“Most Chinese Americans are probably not going to report like being called something offensive or somebody spitting at them or moving away,” Lo said. “It’s not until you get these sort of really traumatic incidents where someone is stabbed or pushed down. An elderly Asian woman was set on fire. Those incidents are so traumatic that they have to get reported because other bystanders are capturing it. I would actually be suspect to believe whether or not they would be reported if there weren’t more eyes and ears around. That’s again why I’m just hoping if we can get more people out on the street, they can be the eyes and ears for the community that is pretty much scared even to speak out when things like this happen to them.”

Anti-Asian racism is something that I admittedly wasn’t as familiar with and it’s shameful that it took these deaths to get not only my attention by thousands of other people’s attention.

In my role, the least I can do is try to underscore, highlight and amplify the work by leaders within the Asian-American community like Lo or Dao-Yi Chow or Wilson Tang in my local community and educate myself on who is doing good on a national scale.

The Boulder shooting hit closer to home to a lot of runners because elite athletes call it home, people travel there to train in the summer and it’s one of the most beautiful cities in the country to explore trails. Roots Running’s Maggie Montoya was working within the King Soopers pharmacy when the gunshots were fired. When she took cover, she called her parents instead of 911. 

“I wanted to hear their voice, for them to hear my voice in case it was the last time,” Montoya told the New York Times.

A GoFundMe has been set up by agent Josh Cox to assist Montoya and her four pharmacy co-workers to aid in their recovery and therapy in their time away from work. You can watch her appearance on CNN here.

We don’t need any more deaths. We need to pass popular, common-sense gun control legislation now. After we attend a vigil or a rally, we need to get educated and get involved in making the change we want to see. I know this got political and it’s maybe not what you expected when you read a running newsletter, but there are no clear lines between sports, politics, culture, and our ugly reality.

Some resources for you to check out: The AAPI Community Fund; Stop AAPI Hate; Save Our Chinatowns;  More here

An Uplifting Interview from Chris Thompson

We ended the week with the British Olympic Marathon Trials in London, where Chris Thompson delivered one of the most special performances of the year. 

On Monday, his wife, Jemma Simpson, gave birth to their first son Theo. By Thursday night, he told his wife that he was planning to leave it all out on the looped course in Kew Gardens since he is 39 years old and likely nearing the end of his career. 

For reference, he first represented the UK at the 1998 World Junior Championships in the 3,000 meter steeplechase. American fans know him well since he spent a good chunk of his career representing the Oregon Track Club Elite team and competed at the 2012 Olympics in the 10,000 meters. The past few years have been rocky and he had only broken 2:20 for the marathon once since 2016. His personal best of 2:11:19 was from his debut at the 2014 London Marathon. The last time I saw Thompson was at a half marathon in the Cayman Islands in December 2019 and it sounded like he was just running for the joy that the sport brings him but didn’t have any major plans.

He fell behind the leaders by 30K but closed his final 10K strong enough to cross the finish line in 2:10:52 for the win, a personal best and a berth at the Summer Games in Tokyo.

His interview with Tim Hutchings afterward is a must-watch.

“I feel like someone is going to tell me this didn’t happen and this is a dream. I’m 39! This doesn’t happen!”

It happened.

More results from the British Marathon Trials:

– The women’s race had built-in dramatics since Charlotte Purdue (2:25:38) and Jess Piasecki (2:25:29) missed the trials due to injury and had to watch the race to see if they would hold onto their possible Olympic team berths. The top two marathoners at the Trials would make the team if they also got under the 2:29:30 qualifying time. Steph Davis claimed the victory in 2:27:16. Runner-up Natasha Cockram fell just shy of the spot with a 2:30:03 finish. The Guardian’s Sean Ingle profiled Davis last year.

– Peloton’s Becs Gentry (a friend of mine and past guest on the Runners of NYC Podcast) set a personal best of more than five minutes to finish fourth in 2:32:01!

News from Around the Sport

– The University of Oregon announced the first meet that will be held at the new Hayward Field will be the Hayward Premier on April 2-3. They will permit a limited number of guests of the student-athletes and coaches. Other meets at Hayward Field for the University of Oregon include the West Coast Classic (4/17), the Oregon Relays (4/23-24), the Oregon Twilight Meet (5/7) & the NCAA Championships (6/9-12) There is still no word on whether or not they will permit fans at the U.S. Olympic Trials (6/18-6/28).

– USATF cleared up one of the TBDs on its schedule for the Journey to Gold series. The USATF Grand Prix will be held at the Oregon Relays on April 24 at Hayward Field. 

– The International Olympic and International Paralympic Committee announced that there will be no overseas spectators allowed at the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo.

– Japan Running News reports that the Japan Association of Athletics Federations is putting an end to the Fukuoka International Marathon after the 2021 edition of the race. It was a pretty fast course before the super shoes era with a course record of 2:05:18 by Tsegaye Kebede in 2009. Frank Shorter won the race four times from 1971 to 1974.

– World record holders will clash at the Istanbul Half Marathon on April 4 with Brigid Kosgei (marathon world record holder) and Peres Jepchirchir (women’s-only race record holder) going head-to-head. We were super excited about Geoffrey Kamworor’s return at the Delhi Half Marathon before it was canceled. He is set to race for the first time since getting hit by a motorcycle last June when he goes up against world record holder Kibiwott Kandie in the men’s race.

– Marathon Project champion Marty Hehir announced he matched with the University of Virginia for anesthesiology, which seems to be convenient since the Reebok Boston Track Club is based there and he’ll be able to work closely with his coach Chris Fox. 

– Alysia Montaño and Dawn Harper-Nelson appeared on CBS News This Morning to speak about their non-profit work on AndMother. 

“We’re hearing this across the board in all industries, women are not supported from the top down,” Montaño said. “In order to get gender parity, we need to start with the mothers...We are faced with the motherhood penalty and in order for us to make these changes, we know that we need to help set an example of what it looks like to accrue resources, to listen, to learn and support the moms.”

Montaño said this all comes off the momentum from the Dream Maternity movement that came when she and other top professionals like Allyson Felix and Kara Goucher spoke out against Nike’s penalties in 2019. The conversation recently resurfaced when Nike released an ad captioned: “To every mother, everywhere: you are the toughest athlete.” Which was quickly called out by Felix, who tweeted, “I think you should watch this ad. It reminds mothers that they are athletes. It celebrates mothers. It speaks the truth. It’s powerful. It’s brilliant marketing. I agree with every word in this ad. I also think you should watch this ad so that you will hold Nike accountable for it. It was also hard to watch. My experience, along with many others, forced NIKE to support athlete's maternity, and when I watch this ad, it doesn’t seem to acknowledge that war. This ad is beautiful and heartbreaking. It celebrates all of the right things but seems to ignore the struggle it took to get to this point.”

– Riley Masters informed the Bangor Daily News about his decision to retire after nine years as a professional runner. He finished his career with personal bests of 3:36.49 for 1,500m, 3:56 for the mile and 13:16.97 for 5,000m. When he appeared on the CITIUS MAG Podcast last summer, he was attempting a comeback from a broken foot, an Achilles injury, a stress fracture and then surgery for Haglund’s Deformity. This makes Chris Derrick the last remaining active professional runner from The Real Maine documentary.

Some Personal News...

– Thursday was a good day! I got my second dose of the Pfizer vaccine and I got accepted to run the Chicago Marathon in October. However, I also got roasted on Twitter. 

Around the CITIUS MAG Podcast Network

“I said, ‘We don’t use the word ‘jog.’ They’re like, ‘Who’s we?’ I said, ‘Runners, we don’t do that.’ He’s like, ‘What’s up with that?’... I was like, ‘Gosh, you know what, you’re right. What’s my problem?’” – Chris Heuisler

Chris Heuisler has been working closely with his brother to launch the Knob Creek Jogging Club. Maybe you felt the same way I did when I initially heard the word “jogger” or “jogging”. You get a little defensive about it. But! There’s nothing wrong with being a jogger. So in this episode, you’ll get to know the two brothers and how they want to flip the connotation of the word “jogging” for the running community through the help of bartenders – which has been an industry hit pretty hard due to the pandemic.

You can catch the latest episode of the podcast on iTunes so subscribe and leave a five-star review. We are also on Stitcher, Google Play and Spotify!

– Shauneen Garrahan Werlinger joined the D3 Glory Days Podcast to recount the epic weekend when she won NCAA titles in the steeplechase, the 5,000 meters, and the 10,000 meters.

– Social Sport explores how the Philadelphia Distance Run is working to include free bibs for low-income runners, having non-binary prize money match male and female prize money and prioritizing minority-owned vendors.

That’s it from me in the latest edition of the CITIUS MAG Newsletter. Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this, learned something new or have any questions or commentary on anything featured in this issue, feel free to hit my inbox: [email protected]

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