Other racing news

Photo credit: Nils Nilson/XTERRA

Max King from Oregon is on an awesome winning streak. King has won three titles in less then a week.

King won the USA 50K Trail Championship in Bend, Oregon on September 22. On the very next day, King won the 21K XTERRA Trail Run National Championship in Ogden, Utah. On Saturday, Max King won the Ultra Race of Champions 100K (UROC) in Virginia with a time of 7:57:02. In the women's UROC race, Canadian Ellie Greenwood won the title in 9:04:09.
 
Also racing on Saturday was the University of Michigan women's cross country team. The ladies ran in Rim Rock Farm Classic in Lawrence, Kansas. Michigan senior Rebecca Addison was the overall 6K winner with a time of 20:29.20. Michigan teammates Jillian Smith (20:51.60) was fifth and Shannon Osika (20:54:10) was sixth. Rounding out the top 10 was Wolverine Lindsey Hilton in 21:00.40. Michigan won the team title with 33 points. Runner-up Toledo finished with 43 points.

Photo credit: University of Michigan

Michigan's women's cross country team will run next in the NCAA Pre-Nationals in Louisville, Kentucky on  October 13.

Sunday was the BMW Berlin Marathon. Geoffrey Mutai was trying to break the world record on this course (2:03:38 WR) . Mutai won the race, but did not break the world record. Mutai finished in 2:04:15.

The second place finisher, Dennis Kimetto, is Mutai's training partner. He finished in 2:04:16 and set the fastest marathon debut in history. I read a bunch of articles stating that it looked like Kimetto let Mutai win. Kimetto stayed right on Mutai's shoulder until the finish line. I watched the marathon and I thought that too.

Photo credit: PhotoRun

The other thing about the marathon was that the clock on the car behind them was incorrect. I noticed that the pace car clock and the timer on the screen were a couple of seconds off from each other. If the pace car clock was off, it could have cost Mutai the world record. According to this, the clock on top of the elite pace car froze on 2:50/kilometer read-out early in the race, giving the runners the impression they were under their 61:40 first half pace. Actually the elite runners were 32 seconds slower then they wanted to be.

Geoffrey Mutai just missed breaking the world record this year in Berlin. I hope he gets another opportunity to try again and successfully do it.