KIMbia Athletics

The new Frank Gagliano-helmed NJNYTC has been putting each of its members under the spotlight with a series of athlete blogs, and last week it was Erin Donohue who came up to bat. The New Jersey native and Olympian took the opportunity to put on for her state, extolling its wealth of facilities, its accessibility for travel to anywhere on the professional circuit and, well, its ability to toughen one up:

[...] Most major championships and big IAAF circuit races are held in large cities, which are hot, humid and have poor air-quality.  Living down-wind of Philadelphia prepares me perfectly for these conditions – there’s no amount of heat, humidity or oil refinery by-product that my lungs can’t handle.

It’s good to see someone who is so proud of New Jersey be able to make light of it a little bit, too. And, it’s even better to see an avowed skeptic of social media — such as Ms. Donohue — willing to still play along and give us a peak at her personality!

Read Erin’s full blog about how great it is to live, work, and play in the Garden State here.

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.

Four KIMbia athletes took the line at the IAAF World Championships in Cross Country, with Lineth Chepkurui captaining her Kenyan team, Shalane Flanagan and Brent Vaughn headlining the US senior women’s and men’s teams, respectively, as the reigning national champions, and Andrew Bumbalough making his senior debut after competing in the junior race in 2006.

Brent Vaughn placed 55th, which was something of a disappointment to the Boulder-based runner.  He positioned himself to take a shot at a Top 25 finish, sitting in the chase pack through three laps, and hitting 6k in 30th place. After one more steady circuit in the mid-30′s, he began to struggle and said the conditions didn’t agree with him.

Reached briefly via Skype, Brent offered the following thoughts from Spain when asked to summarize his race:

No good — it was warm. I was out perfectly and covered all the moves well. I had the fitness to be in it, I still believe. I managed the chaos well… I thought I just had some heat problems.

Brent returns to Boulder to prepare for Stanford’s Payton Jordan Invitational on May 1st.

KIMbia will be well represented this weekend at the IAAF World Championships in Cross Country, with Lineth Chepkurui captaining her Kenyan team, Shalane Flanagan and Brent Vaughn leading the US senior women’s and men’s teams, respectively, as the reigning national champions, and Andrew Bumbalough bringing experience from the 2006 junior race into his senior debut.

Andrew writes to us from Spain to describe the host town:

After a long journey we finally arrived in Punta Umbria, Spain – a small coastal town about ninety minutes drive from Sevilla. We got in around midnight to the hotel and luckily food was still available. We ate a quick dinner and then hit the hay to try and get rested after a long trip. The next morning I woke up to a bright and powerful sun that I hadn’t seen in months thanks to Portland’s gray, damp climate. While it is only about 65 degrees outside, the sun is warm and bright making it very pleasant. I even needed sunglasses on my run! Read the full article

KIMbia will be well represented this weekend at the IAAF World Championships in Cross Country, with Lineth Chepkurui captaining her Kenyan team, Shalane Flanagan and Brent Vaughn leading the US senior women’s and men’s teams, respectively, as the reigning national champions, and Andrew Bumbalough bringing experience from the 2006 junior race into his senior debut.

Simon Bairu placed an impressive 12th last year, and though he is taking a year off from the event, he provides us with a first-hand look at what will be going down on the course this Sunday:

The IAAF Cross Country Championships is the greatest distance race in the world. I love the fact that you are going up against the top six runners from each country from around the world. You’ve got milers, 10k runners, and marathoners, all gunning for the hardest gold medal in distance running. It’s like our Super Bowl. Read the full article