I won’t pretend I have been following women’s running particularly closely the past few years, but it’s hard not to take notice of some of the fantastic performances by US women at the high school, collegiate and professional level.
Jenny Simpson is coming off a fantastic season at 1500m. She was consistently at or around 4 minutes flat and nearly took down Mary Slaney’s American Record. In the final meet of the year on the Diamond League circuit, she won the race and won herself the overall Diamond League title in the process (giving her an automatic bid to the 2015 World Championships). This will be the second world championships in a row Simpson for which Simpson has an auto bid in her back pocket after her Gold medal performance at the 2011 Worlds clinched her spot in the 2013 rendition of the event (where she earned a silver). Not only is it fantastic that Simpson can relax at U.S.A.’s knowing that her spot is assured, but it is also great news for the American team: now we can send four women for the 1500m for the second year in a row, giving valuable experience to a young, up and coming wave of talent.
The leader of that new wave is Mary Cain, formerly of Bronxville, New York and currently a freshman at the University of Portland. Of course she won’t be wearing a Pilots uniform anytime soon as she has been locked up under contract by Nike among the professional ranks, training under Alberto Salazar. Cain chased a variety of indoor records this past winter and appears to be chasing a few more this year. She is still a Junior (still just 18 years old), meaning she is eligible to break American and World Junior Records at a variety of events. She started out her season recently with a 600m and 800m (1:30.03/2:07.21), essentially back to back at University of Washington. After breaking just about every high school record in the books in 2013 and making the world championship final, Cain’s 2014 was relatively underwhelming by most people’s high standards. She passed on her spring/summer season and chose to prepare for her first semester of college instead. However, she did find time to dominate the world junior championships in the 3000m and give the hometown crowd at Hayward Field a Gold Medalist to cheer.
The US women are rolling right now across the board. Molly Huddle recently broke her own American Record at 5,000m (running 14:42.64). Emma Coburn broke the American Record in the Steeplechase this summer as well (9:11.42). Shannon Rowbury had a barrier breaking year after joining the NOP team. She broke 4 minutes in the 1500m and 15 minutes in the 5k for the first time in her career. She could be a force on either team this year at the world championships. Jordan Hasay is doing some fantastic running at the shorter distances which should hopefully translate to the 10,000 this spring, her new specialty event. Chanelle Price (from Easton, PA) is the reigning indoor world champion at 800m and will look to qualify for her first outdoor team this spring. Ajee Wilson, another high flying youngster, won a Diamond League meet this past summer at 800m and now has a PR of 1:58. Couple that with professional debuts for Lauren Roesler, Abby D’Agostino and Alexa Efraimson and the future of women’s distance running is equally bright.
PA will hope to make their contribution to the future of distance running as well. With Angel Piccirillo, Tessa Barrett and Brianna Schwartz all winning Foot Locker Regional Championships (and Barrett winning the national championship) it’s clear that PA is full of talent. We already have multiple Millrose Games qualifiers on the women’s side (Sheva, Chalane) and we had four footlocker finalists and another regional champ at NXN. Hopefully we continue to see excellent racing from these girls and more as 2015 rolls on.
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