Her closest competitor trailed by a minute, but Molly Huddle wasn’t going to take any chances.
Running in the Cold world championships 10,000 Health & Injuries she slowed, celebrated too early, and ended up missing the bronze medal by .09 second, Huddle charged through the finish line of Monday’s New Haven 20K Road Race without raising her arms in victory. With the 1:06:26 win, the 31-year-old Huddle became the first woman to successfully defend her U.S. 20K title, and started the process of putting her Beijing heartbreak behind her.
“It helps a little bit,” Huddle told Runner’s World Newswire moments after the finish. “It obviously doesn’t make up for it, but it is a step in the right direction. The more races I get away from [Beijing], the better I’ll feel.”
Jared Ward, who won national titles at 25K and the marathon in the spring, was the men’s winner in 59:24.
Huddle, who said she felt strong from the gun, started the race with a conservative 5:27 mile. But by the two-mile mark, which she passed in 10:44, Huddle had opened up a gap on 2011 champion Janet Bawcom, the eventual second-place finisher, and 2014 runner-up Amy Cragg, who would ultimately fade to 14th place. Running alongside Graham Peck, a 26-year-old from Baltimore, Huddle clicked off her next three miles in 5:14, 5:28, and 5:22. By the 10-kilometer mark, which she hit in 33:13, her lead over Bawcom and third-place finisher Brianne Nelson was 20 seconds.
SEE ALSO: finished third, another two seconds back. Only 11 seconds separated the top five male finishers
The collaboration with Peck was unplanned. “He was running really consistently, so I thought, ‘I’ll use him to get away as much as I can, and if I fall off at least I’ll be ahead.’ It was probably kind of annoying for him, but he was nice about it,” Huddle said.
Taking advantage of the conditions, which were warm and sunny but much less humid than last year, Huddle put the race away early in the second half, extending her lead to 25 seconds by the eight-mile mark and then throwing down a decisive 5:17 ninth mile. She was the only elite woman to run a negative split, and her finishing time was more than two minutes faster than she ran in 2014. Huddle’s 59-second margin of victory over Bawcom, who battled Nelson for second place, was the largest for a men’s or women’s champion since 2005, and her winning time was the fastest by a woman at the U.S. 20K championships since 2003.
“I felt like I wasn’t really digging unless I went under 5:20 [for a mile],” Huddle said. “I was worried I would still be thinking about [the world championships], but my brain just goes into race mode, and that was still there, so it was good.”
Huddle plans to race again in two weeks at the Downtown 5K in Providence, Rhode Island, where she lives with her husband and former Notre Dame teammate, Kurt Benninger, and trains under Ray Treacy. After the U.S. 5K championship, where she has won four titles, she expects to race the U.S. 10-mile championship in Minneapolis in October, and then perhaps the U.S. 12K championship—the culmination of the USATF road-running series—in Alexandria, Virginia, in November. Huddle’s highly anticipated marathon debut will come soon, she says, but “probably not this year.”
For now, Huddle, the American record holder at 5,000 meters, is still healing from her world championship experience, with assistance from Treacy.
“He was really good about it,” she says of her coach, who spoke with a distraught Huddle by phone after the Beijing race. “I know he was mad, I’m sure. It hurts him as much as it hurts me to have one of his athletes get that close to a medal. But he was really good about not lecturing me, and being supportive, and just making sure I get back to where I was.”
Ward Wins In Close Finish
In contrast to Huddle’s dominating wire-to-wire win, the men’s race wasn’t decided until the final 150 meters.
That’s when Ward, a 26-year-old former Brigham Young runner, surged past Sam Chelanga to win in 59:24. The Kenyan-born Chelanga, who less than four weeks ago became a U.S. citizen, finished in 59:25, while three-time Olympian Dathan Ritzenhein wasnt going to take any chances.
The victory gave an ecstatic Ward his third U.S. title on the roads this year: In March he was third overall, the top American, at the Los Angeles Marathon, and in May he won the U.S. 25K Championships in Grand Rapids, Michigan. However, it was his performance Monday in New Haven, where he hung with the lead pack for the entire race and then outkicked two supremely talented runners, that cemented Ward’s status as a legitimate contender to make the U.S. Olympic team in the marathon.
“The Trials next February is the big picture for most of us, but I’ll run a couple more races this fall, and I’m focusing on this season before I get ready for the next season,” Ward said. “My training has been very strength-oriented over the last couple of months, so I feel fortunate to have been able to run well off of strength-training.”
Ward’s training is directed by his college coach, Ed Eyestone, a two-time Olympic marathoner who won the New Haven 20K in 1990 and 1994.
“Coach did send me a text a few days ago when I was doing one of my last workouts, and he said, ‘Go 4:46 pace, that’s what your old man ran on this course, and it’s time for you to beat that time.’” Ward finished eight seconds slower than the 59:16 Eyestone ran in New Haven 21 years ago, but he was nevertheless thrilled with the effort, the result—and the $10,000 purse for first place.
“I feel like I’m living the dream,” said Ward, who was greeted at the finish line by his wife, Erica, a massage therapist, and their children Paul, 3, and Ellie, 17 months. “To be able to bring my family out to some of these races and share the experience with them, I feel so blessed. I have had incredible coaches and supportive parents and trainers that keep me healthy, and I feel like anybody could run well if they were dealt all the cards that I was dealt.”
USATF to Elect New President Amid Budget Deficit.
“I didn’t feel that good; I was just tired,” said Ritzenhein, who two weeks ago placed third (top American) at the Crim 10-miler in Flint, Michigan, in 47:16. “I felt really good at Crim, and I’ve done some hard training since then, so maybe that’s why I was tired today.”
Much of that hard training has happened under the “supervision” of his two young children, whom Ritzenhein has been bringing with him to the track in the two weeks since his wife, a teacher, went back to school. Creative parenting aside, Ritzenhein says his 2014 relocation from Oregon to his native Michigan has been the right move for him and his family. He is focusing on quality rather than quantity in his training—“For me the key is to stay healthy, so I’ve been trying to underdo it”—and he is ahead of where he expected to be, fitness-wise, five months before the Olympic Marathon Trials.
Foot Locker XC Results: Sign up for the RW Daily newsletter
Ritzenhein, whose immediate racing plans include the national 5K and 10-mile championships this fall, is feeling confident in his prospects to qualify for Rio at the Trials in February.
“I’ve got more experience than anyone but Meb [Keflezighi]. No one’s run faster except Ryan [Hall],” said Ritzenhein, who has raced in two Olympics on the track and in one in the marathon. “I have a good chance to make my fourth team, and not many have done that.”
News & Notes
Russell Runs Well: Blake Russell, the 2005 New Haven winner and a 2008 Olympian in the marathon, placed fifth in 1:08:59, an encouraging result that comes in the midst of her preparation for the Chicago Marathon on October 11. “I’m hoping to get under 2:30 [in Chicago], and then a quick turn-around, and then a shorter build-up than normal going into the Olympic Trials,” she said.
The prospect of contending for a spot in Rio is “what keeps me going,” said the 40-year-old mother of two, a resident of Pacific Grove, California. “I definitely don’t feel any slower than I did a couple of years ago. If anything I feel better—just a little bit stronger and kind of more energized.”
Cabada Going Long “Soon”: Fernando Cabada, who ran 2:11:36 at the Berlin Marathon a year ago, placed eighth in 60:16 on Monday. The 33-year-old Fresno native intends to run a marathon this fall, though he wouldn’t say which one; he is waiting for the race officials to make the official announcement of his participation.
Cabada said that, because he’s a relatively low-mileage runner, he didn’t expect to have any trouble recovering from this fall’s effort in time for the Trials next February. “I can’t go straight to February [without doing a marathon]—that’s too long.”
A Part of Hearst Digital Media: Several Olympic marathon contenders are making plans to relocate for the winter. Ritzenhein expects to stay in Michigan until Christmas, and then head to the Orlando, Florida, area, where he can train for Trials, returning to see his family every 10 days or so.
Cragg, who said Monday’s race was “a rough one for me,” plans to “take a couple days to get all the emotions out, see how the next workout goes, and then make a decision” about whether to continue racing this fall, or to call it a season. One thing’s for certain: she’s heading to Portland, Oregon, to do her winter pre-Trials training, with a stint of altitude training in Flagstaff, Arizona, likely as well. Cragg placed fourth at the 2012 marathon Trials.
The Provo, Utah-based Ward is one athlete who hopes to stay put during his Trials buildup. “If we get bad enough weather, I might have to go find somewhere I can run, but this last winter was good, so if we can get winter like we had last year then I’ll be all right,” he said.
