Run, Karla, Run!

As I stare at the remnants of Blizzard Juno out my window, I’m doing a little California dreaming. The ASICS LA Marathon announced yesterday its elite field for the 30th edition of the race on Sunday, March 15—the runners who will be competing for the 2015 USATF Marathon Championships title on the famous “Stadium to Sea” course.

The ASICS LA Marathon has been upping its professional presence in recent years. This year the race is hosting the USATF Marathon Championships and in 2016 will become home to the 2016 U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials. Expect to be hearing a lot about LA in the year to come.

Headlining LA’s pro field in 2015 are Ryan Hall and Sara Hall. The married California natives—who now live and train with Team Run Flagstaff in Arizona—will be running LA for the first time. The race also marks Sara’s marathon debut.

But they won’t be alone—all told 61 Americans will be competing in the USA Track & Field Marathon Championships, which will run concurrently within the larger LA Marathon event. It’s no accident that the national championships are in the same city where the 2016 Olympic Trials will be held. It’s a chance for pro runners to familiarize themselves with LA’s streets before a shot at Olympic glory.

So much running news this week. It must be fall marathon season! Here’s a rundown on some of the big stories I’ve been following:

Pamela Anderson Running The New York City Marathon

Everyone has seen images of Pamela Anderson running on “Baywatch.” Now she’ll be running a marathon.

From the sounds of the New York Daily News article, she’s not doing a ton of training. But Anderson is running to raise $500,000 on Crowdrise for Sean Penn’s J/P Haitian Relief Organization.

“The charity wanted her to simply hug their elite runners crossing the Central Park finish line, but Anderson, who has visited Haiti twice since the devastating disaster, suggested taking it a step further,” the New York Daily News reports.

Read the New York Daily News article here.

ING New York City Marathon Sets Professional Field

Pamela Anderson isn’t the only famous name running the ING New York City Marathon. A big list of professional runners are in it to win it.

Meb Keflezighi and Ryan Hall are still in. Kara Goucher is out. Geoffrey Mutai of Kenya and Ethiopia’s Firehiwot Dado are returning once again to defend their crowns from the 2011 ING New York City Marathon after the 2012 race was cancelled in the wake of Hurricane Sandy.

Altogether, the race will include 23 Olympians from 23 countries and will serve as the deciding showdown in the 2012-2013 World Marathon Majors series. Here’s a look at the professional field in both the women’s and men’s races. Read the rest of this entry →

A bib in the ING New York City Marathon is one of the toughest gets in the world of running. Roughly 140,000 runners apply to earn one of the coveted 47,500 entries. Year after year, runners all over the world are turned away.

Well, here’s one more chance. Nissan is giving away one more “golden” entry into the 2012 race, along with a free trip to the Big Apple, through its Innovation for Endurance program, which highlights elite athletes like Olympic and New York City Marathoner Ryan Hall.

From July 22 through July 28, enter for your chance to win entry into the 2012 ING New York City Marathon along with roundtrip airfare to New York City, hotel accommodations, an official training program, airport transportation, weekend transportation in a Nissan vehicle including transportation to the starting line in Staten Island, a Saturday shake-out run with a Nissan athlete and VIP tickets to the pre-race pasta party and post-race celebration.

Enter the Nissan Innovation for Endurance Golden Entry Sweepstakes at facebook.com/InnovationForEndurance through 11:59 p.m. ET on July 28.

Karla Bruning is a veteran journalist and running nerd. She has completed four marathons, two triathlons, trains with the New York Harriers and is a member of New York Road Runners. Follow Karla’s “Notes From a Running Nerd” at RunKarlaRun.com, Facebook and Twitter@KBruning.

The reigning Olympic marathon and World Marathon Majors champion, Sammy Wanjiru, died Sunday in a fall from a second-floor balcony in his home in Nyahururu, Kenya in the Rift Valley.

Varying reports have circulated calling his death a suicide and an accident. All accounts center on a dispute between Wanjiru, his wife and another woman.

“The fact of the matter is that Wanjiru committed suicide,” national police spokesman Eric Kiraithe said to The Associated Press.

But local police chief Jasper Ombati gave the AP a different interpretation of the events. Read the rest of this entry →

With near perfect running conditions, the 2011 Boston Marathon on April 18 was one for the record books with a pair of spectacular finishes in the men’s and women’s races.

For the third year in a row, American Ryan Hall played rabbit for the elite men’s field, leading from the gun. While he ran a personal best time of 2:04:58–the fastest time ever run by an American–three men were faster. Read the rest of this entry →

Ryan Hall is running. Meb Keflezighi is running. Abdi Abdirahman is running. Galen Rupp is running. Kara Goucher is running. The 2011 NYC Half marathon is about to get underway with the deepest American field ever.

But they’ll have to fend of Kenya’s Peter Kamais, the defending champion, and Ethiopia’s Gebre Gebremariam, the reigning ING New York City Marathon champion.

In the women’s field, Kara Goucher is in her final weeks of preparation for the Boston Marathon–her first after giving birth to a son last September. Goucher is one of just three women who have defeated Paula Radcliffe in a half-marathon.

Challenging Goucher will be Edna Kiplagat, the reigning ING New York City Marathon champion, and Madai Peres, the Mexican record holder who defeated Goucher at the Phoenix Half Marathon in January.

Stay tuned and refresh this page often for more… Read the rest of this entry →

Runners tend to be goal-oriented people. Whatever the goal may be, we plot, we plan and we train to make it happen—running right, eating right, sleeping right, doing everything “right.” But what happens when something goes wrong?

I found out the hard way in the last two weeks of my training for the 2010 ING New York City Marathon on Nov. 7. Reassessing goals and shifting expectations are among the hardest things a runner can do, especially when the goal is in sight.

Ryan Hall

Take Ryan Hall. After a hot streak in 2007 and 2008—he broke the North American half-marathon record, won the U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials and at the London Marathon logged the fastest time ever by an American-born runner—Hall was officially dubbed the next great American marathoner. In 2009, he placed third in the Boston Marathon and won the Philadelphia Distance Run.

Then he made a goal: to break the U.S. marathon record at the 2010 Chicago Marathon on Oct. 10. Read the rest of this entry →

There’s a new Robert Cheruiyot in town. Robert Kiprono Cheruiyot, a 21 year-old upstart from Kenya, won the 114^th Boston Marathon, shattering the course record by 82 seconds in the process. The previous course record holder? None other than Robert Kipkoech Cheruiyot, an unrelated Kenyan who won the Boston Marathon four times in 2003 and 2006-2008.

“I tried to show my talent,” Cheruiyot said immediately after the race. And he certainly did.

The new course record of 2:05:52 is also a personal best for Cheruiyot, whose age and performance was reminiscent of another young marathoner who burst onto the scene in 2008 with a gold medal win at the Beijing Olympics: Sammy Wanjiru, who was also just 21 at the time. In an event like the marathon where runners are often in their late 20’s to late 30’s, these two Kenyans may start a new trend of younger runners giving the distance a shot. Read the rest of this entry →

For the first time in years, the U.S. has two runners who could conceivably win Monday’s 114^th running of the Boston Marathon: Meb Keflezighi and Ryan Hall. An American hasn’t won the race since Lisa Larsen Rainsberger in 1985 on the women’s side and Greg Meyer in 1983 on the men’s side.

The Boston Marathon is the oldest and most storied marathon in the world, and for good reason—it’s also the most exclusive. Runners must qualify for the race, a feat that only 10.4 percent of marathon finishers accomplish. On the professional side, it’s just as exclusive; a victory in Boston means a laurel wreath, a World Marathon Majors win and a place in history. Read the rest of this entry →

It only took 27 years. For the first time since Alberto Salazar ran away with the title in 1982, an American won the ING New York City Marathon. On Sunday, Nov. 1, Meb Keflezighi cruised to victory in 2:09:15 wearing a “U.S.A.” singlet. Does his win signal the return of the great American marathoner?

Back in the 1970s and early 1980s, marathon legends Frank Shorter, Bill Rodgers, Joan Benoit Samuelson and Salazar enjoyed an era when Americans actually won races, and inspired a generation of runners to hit the pavement in the process—running boom, anyone? Indeed, Rodgers has the most major marathon wins—8 of them—of any runner in history according to the World Marathon Majors, a two-year race series with a $1 million prize. (New York, Boston, Chicago, London and Berlin comprise the Majors, along with the Olympics and World Championships as qualifying races.) But African runners have largely dominated the sport since. Sure, an American star like Deena Kastor—who won Chicago in 2005 and London in 2006—has challenged the status quo every now and then. But on the world’s streets at large, the U.S. hasn’t been a factor. Certainly not like Kenya or Ethiopia. But this year on the mean streets of New York, a total of six American men finished in the top 10—the most since 1979—with Keflezighi taking the crown. All signs point to a potential renaissance. Read the rest of this entry →