Turning in an impressive, historic performance in just her second-ever marathon, Shalane Flanagan punched her ticket for the London Games by winning the US Olympic Trials. Her time of 2:25:38 slashed just over three minutes from her previous personal best, set a Trials record, and is the 6th-fastest performance by an American woman, all-time. And as the #3 US performer ever, she now trails only Deena Drossin-Kastor and Joan Benoit-Samuelsson — each of whom won an Olympic medal at the distance.

After biding her time for the first two hours of running, Flanagan made a late break and won by seventeen seconds over Boston Marathon runner-up Desiree Davila; new teammate Kara Goucher became Shalane’s Olympic teammate, as well, thanks to her third-place finish. “I tried to view it as a track race for the last mile,” Flanagan said after the race. “I didn’t really enjoy that last mile. It felt really long.” Read the full article

It’s Stanford week — we’re just days from arguably the most exciting collection of distance races in America, at the Payton Jordan Invitational.

Rebecca Donaghue is as excited as American running fans are — not least because she can escape the rain of central Pennsylvania for a few days. A recent blog post captures her excitement, as she writes about a beautiful, zen-like run that served as one of her final workouts (essentially a long bout of tempo work) before heading to the West Coast.

It takes me about a mile to settle in and get into a rhythm. Once that happens I start to notice where we are for a few brief moments, the rushing Juniata river to our left, remnants of torn down railroad bridges, and farmland to our right. It’s definitely a different kind of focus than being on the track, and much needed since we’ve been doing this type of workout mostly on the track for the past few months. I’m still able to zone out; it’s just slightly different having new things to look at here and there. All and all it made for a harder workout than the track but ends up being one of my strongest workouts yet.

Rebecca will run the 5000m on Sunday May 1st, her first race on the track since last June. You can read the full blog at RunningRebecca.com, linked here.

In her first race back from injury, Rebecca Donaghue took a very credible 7th in Jacksonsville at the US 15k Championships, contested as part of the 2011 Gate River Run.  Her KIMbia teammate Fasil Bizuneh placed 8th.

Rebecca discussed her race in great detail over at her blog, RunningRebecca.com, and, in addition to seeing dolphins and trying fried alligator, she was hungry to race:

I felt pretty much how I thought I’d feel, rusty from not racing in such a long time, and very excited to be out there again. Just in the past week or two things really started to come around with my injury. I logged decent weekly mileage within the past month but did only a handful of workouts without pain in my heel. Things have gotten better so gradually over the months but it was a pretty consistent progression that indicated that running at Gate would be a good fit. Read the full article

Chris Solinsky showed best among KIMbia athletes ranked by Track and Field News at the end of 2010, ending the year ranked 8th overall among all American men, and 3rd in the world for 10000m. While Solinsky’s American Record 26:59 at Stanford was the world’s second-fastest time of the year for 10000m, Wilson Kiprop got the top slot in the world rankings by virtue of his wins at the Kenyan National Championships and African Champs. Additionally, Kiprop won the World Championship in the Half Marathon this Fall: clearly a phenomenal athlete having a phenomenal season, and we are certainly very, very proud of Chris and this, his first Top-10 appearance in the T&FN World Rankings. Solinsky actually ranked 1st in the world in the event — and 5th in the 5000m — according to the IAAF’s point-system, which rates marks and head-to-head competition, with an eye toward repeated good performances. And, moreover, the Stevens Point-native ended 2010 ranked #76 in the world across all disciplines, according to the IAAF system. Not too shabby in a sport where over 6,000 male competitors earned points in professional competition. Read the full article