Quick Splits
— Why Women Will Save Running: “Alberto [Salazar] asked me to sign a contract stating that I wouldn’t try to be friends with team members,” Olympian and former Oregon Project athlete Amy Begley told Erin Strout for Women’s Running. “I was supposed to be a cordial person, but nobody on the team wanted friends, he said.” If that’s not one of the strangest things a coach has ever asked of an athlete then please reply to this email and try to top it. What. The. Actual. F*ck? That line doesn’t do the full article justice but it was too ridiculous not to share here. Kudos to Begley and other female athletes who are speaking out about coaching misconduct and abuse they’ve seen and suffered from, which, while troubling to read, is helping to start a dialogue about how to change this type of behavior in sport moving forward.
+ Strout’s piece pairs well with this op-ed from Lauren Fleshman, who writes about how to rebuild sports for women and girls to thrive. “Coaches are the ones with the power,” she writes poignantly. “They bear the responsibility for creating an environment that prioritizes health over performance.”
+ A Nike athlete writing about how her sponsor was ignorant in its response to Mary Cain’s claims in her New York Times op-ed? That’s exactly what Olympic gold medalist sprinter and jumper Tianna Bartoletta did in this blog post on her website and she deserved to be applauded for it. “Let me just come right out and say it, was fucked up to include,” she writes of Nike including a line about how Cain wanted to return to the team earlier this year and didn’t raise any concerns. “Because THAT line was essentially an attempt to cast doubt on and discredit Mary’s story.” Compare that to this post from three-time Olympian and Cain’s former NOP teammate, Shannon Rowbury, which didn’t really say much of anything.
— I’ve listened to the last 45 minutes of Episode 479 of The Rich Roll Podcast with Edward Norton three times now because it’s that good. Great conversation about ego, self discipline, open-mindedness, social media, and more.
— It was a great weekend for American athletes at the World Mountain Running Championships in Argentina. Joe Gray and Grayson Murphy won individual titles in the 14K race, leading the U.S. to second and fifth-place team finishes, respectively. It was an especially big win for Gray, who contemplated quitting the sport earlier this year due to injury. Gray, for my money, is one of the most underrated American runners, regardless of discipline. He has great range and more national and world titles to his name than I can count in the limited time I have right now. Murphy is new to this mountain running biz but she’s on a little bit of a tear this year, having won national and world titles after leaving NAZ Elite this summer to move back home and “be the most fulfilled and happy human I can be with the freedom to explore new parts of the running world to my heart’s content.” Jim Walmsley won the men’s 42K long-distance race in 3:12:16. I believe the only race Walmsley has lost this year was the Carbon X 100K world-record event back in May during which he ran hard through 50 miles to break the world-record and jogged it home the final 12 miles to make it count. Pretty solid year, I’d say.
— A few more words/person observations on The North Face Endurance Challenge: 1. If you’re looking for the blow-by-blow of how the 50-mile championship races went down, there’s no better place to go than iRunFar’s recap of the event. 2. The timing of this race has always been strange—it’s late in the year and a tough one to prioritize as an elite if you’re coming off a big mid-to-late summer ultra. There were a number of drops on both sides in the weeks leading up to the race as injuries and other issues seemingly did a lot of people in. 3. I was inspired, as always, by my guy Justin Grunewald in the 50K. He never lost hope and found a way through even when he wasn’t feeling great and started to unravel. He struggled, yes, but he struggled beautifully to a third-place finish. Last night, Justin was Ethan and Kim Newberry’s guest on Ginger Runner Live, where he talked about his race and a lot more (from my home office, no less). I recommend watching/listening to the episode to learn more about one of the best people I know. Proud to call him one of my athletes but more importantly, a friend. 4. Lastly, I really, really hope the North Face Endurance Challenge doesn’t go the way of the dodo. There are rumors flying around that it might or that the series of Endurance Challenges around the world could be consolidated in the not-so-distant future. The championship event has been a staple on the U.S. racing calendar for the past 13 years, providing a big stage (and prize purse) for elites while also giving the rest of us opportunities to compete (or even just try out trail running) in a well-organized off-road environment. I’d hate to see it go and I think it'd be a sad day for the sport if it did.
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