After months of waiting, it’s finally here. The IAAF World Championships get under way in London on Friday night, and it’s set to be a busy one for KIMbia athletes.

Emily Infeld is the first into action on Saturday night, the Bowerman Track Club athlete taking to the track at 8:10pm local time (12:10pm PST/3:10PM EST). Two years ago in Beijing, she claimed a superb bronze medal in the 10,000m. Can she repeat those heroics in London? She goes there in outstanding form, having run a PB of 14:56.33 over 5000m in Heusden just under a fortnight ago.

Evan Jager will get his campaign under way on Sunday morning at 10:05am London time (2:05am PST/5:05AM EST). The 28-year-old has been the dominant athlete in his  event this season, blitzing the field to win the Monaco Diamond League in 8:01.29. Last year in Rio he sprinted to an Olympic silver medal behind Kenya’s Conseslus Kipruto, who will be back in action in London. No American man has ever won a world title in the distance events; can Jager be the first?

Later that day, Amy Cragg will take to the streets of London a few miles away for the women’s marathon, which gets under way at 2pm local time (6am PST/9am EST). The 33-year-old has raced sparingly this year, but has shown her credentials each time she has. Last year she finished ninth in the Olympic marathon in Rio, and she seems primed to improve on that in London.

Colleen Quigley and Courtney Frerichs will have to wait a few days before they take to the track, the pair going in the heats of the 3000m steeplechase at 7:05pm next Wednesday (11:05am PST/1:05pm EST). Quigley finished third at the US Championships and warmed up for London with a huge 1500m PR of 4:03.93 a fortnight ago. Frerichs finished second at the US Championships and worked on her flat speed with a PR over 3000m in Lucerne earlier this month of 8:56.99.

The final KIMbia athlete to take to the track will be Marc Scott, our recent recruit, who will compete in the heats of the men’s 5000m at 8:05pm local time (12:05pm PST/ 3:05pm EST) on Wednesday night. He secured qualification by the skin of his teeth in recent weeks, running a lifetime best of 13:22.37 the day before the window closed for qualifiers. It should prove a memorable experience for the 22-year-old Brit, likely the first of many world championships.

In what is technically known as a no-brainer, Amy Cragg was named today by USA Track and Field to the marathon squad for this summer’s World Championships in London.

Amy’s teammates will be Serena Burla and Laura Thweatt, both of who have set marathon personal bests this year. Amy, in contrast, has been focusing on shorter races before beginning her marathon build-up. In February, she set a PR of 68:27 at the Marugame Half Marathon in Japan. Last Friday, in her first track race since 2015, she was only 7 seconds off her 10,000-meter PR with her runner-up 31:17.20 performance at the Payton Jordan Invitational.

The World Champs marathon (both women’s and men’s races) will be run on Sunday, August 6. The women’s race over the four-loop course will start at 2 p.m. local time. Anyone who last year saw Amy win the Olympic Marathon Trials in Los Angeles and then finish 9th in Rio knows she’ll be ready to roll regardless of the weather.

For an athlete who “wanted a medal real bad,” Thursday’s steeplechase final may have looked like an exercise in frustration for Evan Jager, who saw the race play out in similar fashion to last summer’s Olympic Final when he came in sixth. Once again, he was in the lead pack at the bell, but was out of reach of the medals at the final water jump.

But Jager’s performance yesterday shows true progress from his performance in London, even if he improved “only” to fifth place here in Moscow, running 8:08.67 to miss a medal by 0.81 seconds. His upgrade in the final results came in a field with more top talent than the London final, as the Kenyan team entered four athletes, owing to the wild card entry given to defending world champions. Yesterday, not only did he narrowly miss fourth place by just five-hundredths of a second… he was less than one second from bronze, and just 2.66 seconds behind the eventual winner, all-time great Ezekial Kemboi. Compare that with finishing twice as far behind the winner (also Kemboi) in last year’s global championship, and a whole 3-plus seconds awash of third place. Most impressive: Read the full article

Half a world away from home in Moscow, Team KIMbia hit the track at the 2013 World Championships, in a variety of distances. Kicking things off on Sunday, Shalane Flanagan led the early proceedings in the 10,000m final before coming home in 8th place. Looking to ensure the steady and honest early pace likely to suit a strong, rhythm-running marathoner such as herself, Flanagan ran three straight kilometers around 3:07 — 31:10 pace — before Hitomi Niiya of Japan took the lead and began to pick things up. As the lead pack broke up, Flanagan was gapped a few laps later but soldiered on in “no man’s land” and clocked a 31:34.

In the first round of the men’s steeplechase, Evan Jager executed the race one would expect from a medal-hopeful: conserve energy early, break things open late, cruise home safely in an automatic qualifying position. Read the full article

Here we experience World Cross through the lens of the social media mentions of KIMbia’s World Cross athletes Elliott Heath, Emily Infeld (pictured above, photo by LetsRun.com) and Ireland’s Fionnuala Britton… Read the full article