Sacramento Running News

One advantage of the apparent death of the “arena deal” is that the Bee has some extra ink lying around that they can use to write about some other, better sports.

For example, this morning’s sports page has an excellent story on American River College sprinter Diondre Batson.

Batson, 19, has already earned himself an Olympic “A” standard time in the 200 with his 20.53 at the Mt. SAC Relays. (Video below.)

Batson is still about .05 seconds shy of the “A” standard in the 100, but seems to have room for improvement. Does he have enough time before the trials to get there? We can only hope.

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You will probably recognize some of these guys–unless you are one of them, of course.

It is one of my core beliefs that very few runners ever achieve all they are capable of.

There are many reasons for this, but often it’s simply that people don’t realize that they are capable of doing more and going faster.

Running is one of the few things in life that consistently and generously rewards you for diligent, and intelligent effort.

Of course, no matter how hard you train, to be an elite runner you need to have some talent. But how will you know whether you have the talent unless you push yourself a bit?

There are many exciting stories coming out of the Olympic Trials Marathon, but this has to be one of my favorites.

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You’ve only got a couple days left to pick up that last gift for a running friend. Here’s a suggestion.

This Saturday, in Balboa Park in San Diego, Roseville’s Karlie Garcia earned a 5th place finish at the Footlocker National Cross Country Championships with a 17:36 finish.

Garcia, who placed 15th at the nationals in San Diego in 2009, decisively won this year’s West Regional girls championship at Mt. San Antonio College in Walnut on December 3rd in 17:46.

Coming in a bit back at the Nationals, but still quite respectably, was Vista Del Lago’s Clare Carroll in 27th position, at 18:18 on the hilly 5k course.

Complete results for the girls is here. The boys results are here.

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I couldn’t help myself.

It looks a lot easier with a groovy sound track. I hope you enjoy it.

There has been a lot of news coming out of the World Championships in Daegu, South Korea, but here is my favorite story so-far: Jenny Simpson (formerly Jenny Barringer) coming off injuries and a so-so year, is not even mentioned by the announcers as the runners assemble at the starting line.

Then she runs a beautifully tactical race, avoids some mid-race carnage, and goes on to win the championship.

The last time an American woman was world champion in the 1500 was in 1983 when Mary Decker bested three Soviet runners in the final.

Here is Jenny’s race (after the jump):

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We’re all waiting for Skynet to become aware and enslave the humans, but they still need to work on the design for the bipedal robots to do their dirty work.

Here is an early prototype that is capable of running 6.8 miles per hour. The fusion power source is still in development, so it can only run in circles–so far.

Look for it at a 10K in your neighborhood–soon. Better start training!

Here’s a nice video from the Wall Street Journal about interval training.