Follow up on Mara's win

A few quick points.

First Mara Yamauchi did get a PB - by three seconds.

Second, I mentioned the cameras following Kayoko Fukushi, what I hadn't seen was the distressing ending to her race - I had turned the television off before she finished. (Unrelated to turning the TV off, but I see no point in letting the nation's top athlete over 5km - 15km risk injuring herself, but it was a gritty performance.) Afterward Fukushi said something like "That was interesting wasn't it!" - so I guess no harm was done.

Third, the Olympic selectors criticized Tomo Morimoto for not going out harder at the start. If they expected her to follow Fukushi they are crazy. Morimoto ran, for her, almost the perfect race.

Finally, I said Mara's time could be largely attributed to the weather. While the heat of the Osaka summer must have hit her Worlds performance I probably didn't factor in the effect of the cold this time. This may have been a better run that her time indicated.


Re my own running: My knees are improving. I'm having some fun again, mixing up my runs, long, short, fast, slow, and I'm enjoying running instead of feeling constant burning pain on the side of my knees. I am doing many things people will disagree with, but they're working for me - all my training in an old pair of racing flats, fast 1 hour runs followed by a rest day or a 40 minute easy run, icing after every run, shorter stretches but more often.

Two weeks to my duathlon and a real test of my knees.