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(c) 2025 Race Results Weekly, all rights reserved. Published with permission. TOKYO (14-Sep) -- After two hours, 24 minutes and 30 seconds the women's marathon at the 20th World Athletics Championships had yet to be decided.  Two of the best marathoners in history, 2021 Olympic champion Peres Jepchirchir of Kenya and 2024 Olympic silver medalist Tigist Assefa of Ethiopia, had entered National Stadium with barely any daylight between them.  It was anyone's race. "I was so exhausted," Jepchirchir told reporters when asked to talk about the final 300 meters of the race on the track. Assefa made the first move, passing her Kenyan rival on the backstretch, but she did not shake her.  Jepchirchir stayed on her heels and tried to gather the strength for just one more push forward after running nearly 42 kilometers in hot and very humid conditions. "At 100 meters when I saw the finishing line... let me try if I'm going to win," Jepchirchir said she told herself.  "Thank God that I managed." Rounding the final bend Jepchirchir shot ahead of Assefa who, despite being a former Olympic 800-meter runner with a 1:59.24 personal best, had no answer.  Spreading her arms, Jepchirchir sailed through the finish line to win her first world marathon title (and her fourth overall world title) in 2:24:43.  She had also won the world half-marathon title three times. "I feel grateful," said Jepchirchir, who thought of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games even though the marathon was held in Sapporo.  "I feel good memories here; I was not expecting that.  I love Tokyo." Assefa crossed two seconds later to take the silver, a bittersweet result for the former world record holder. "I guessed that it would be all about a sprint in the last 100 meters," she told the flash quotes team after the race.  "It was the same at Paris Olympics when I also finished second and lost to Sifan (Hassan).  But I don't like to think I lost gold. I always try to be positive and think that I won the silver." How those two women arrived to the stadium together is a tale of two races.  For the first 28 kilometers, American Susanna Sullivan ran alone through the streets of Tokyo.  The main contenders were content to stay together and not push the pace, and Sullivan just wanted to stretch her legs and run her own race.  By the 10K mark (34:21) Sullivan only had teammate Jessica McClain for company, and by 15K she was 21 seconds ahead of McClain and 25 seconds ahead of the main pack.  Her lead over the main group would peak at 63 seconds at the 20K point. "The whole time when I was in the front I was just reminding myself that they are going to come back," Sullivan said.  "You have to run your own race and you can't panic." McClain was rolled up by Jepchirchir, Assefa, Sutume Asefa Kebede of Ethiopia, Stella Chesang of Uganda, Magdalyne Masai of Kenya in the 26th kilometer.  That group caught Sullivan, who had been on pace for a 2:25:00 finish, at the 28K point. "When they went by I kept it together," said Sullivan, who maintained her pace. It was at this point that the second race started.  Assefa and Jepchirchir quickly pulled away from the others and proceeded to run from 30K to the stadium side by side.  They took drinks and soaked themselves with cold towels and sponges as they went, trying to stay cool.  Like two gunfighters facing each other in an old western, the tension built and built until that final circuit of the track. But the biggest surprise of the race would come later when Julia Paternain --a novice marathoner representing Uruguay who lives and trains in Flagstaff, Ariz.-- tiptoed through the field from 15th position at 25K, to tenth place at 30K, to sixth place at 35K.  Paternain, who was born in Mexico but grew up in Great Britain before having a collegiate running career at Penn State and the University of Arkansas, moved into third position in the 39th kilometer.  She had no idea where she was in the running order. "I had no clue," Paternain told reporters.  "Around halfway there was a pack of maybe ten or 15 women ahead of me, and slowly that pack started to break up.  I was just trying to make sure that my miles were consistent.  I knew if I stayed consistent that everyone around me could do what they wanted." Paternain, who was running just her second marathon, entered the stadium a clear third and won the bronze medal in 2:27:23, the first-ever medal for a Uruguayan athlete at the World Athletics Championships.  She did not realize that she made the podium, and wasn't even sure if she needed to do an additional lap inside of the stadium. "I could not believe it when I crossed that finish line," she said.  "I had no idea I was in third.  I also wasn't sure that was the finish line; I wanted to make sure.  I was in so much shock.  I truly cannot believe it." Sullivan finished fourth in 2:28:17, followed by Finland's Alisa Vaino in fifth (2:28:32).  McClain, who had run with Sullivan in the early kilometers, finished eighth in 2:29:20.  Masai, who was contending for a medal late in the race, was forced to drop out. A total of 63 women finished the race out of 73 starters, about the same as the 65 who finished in Budapest two years ago.  The men's marathon will be contested here tomorrow morning on the same course. PHOTO: Peres Jepchirchir of Kenya winning the marathon at the 2025 World Athletics Championships in Tokyo (photo by Jane Monti for Race Results Weekly)

(c) 2025 Race Results Weekly, all rights reserved. Published with permission. TOKYO (12-Sep) -- Jessica McClain ran her first marathon in 2022 with minimal preparation and shoes she bought at Dick's Sporting Goods the night before.  McClain, 33, who will represent the United States here on Sunday in the marathon at the 20th World Athletics Championships, built a playlist on her iPhone to last two hours and 40 minutes and listened to it the entire race.  She went on to win that race, the Mesa Marathon, in Arizona in 2:33:34. "I did everything wrong," she told Race Results Weekly in an interview here today.  "I went to Dick's Sporting Goods and bought a pair of shoes the night before because the Brooks shoes I ordered didn't get there in time because of the post-COVID supply chain stuff.  I was like at Dick's at 8:00 p.m.  Like, I need shoes to race in.  I had no idea what I was doing." But McClain, who competed for Stanford University during her NCAA career, found that road running in general, and marathon running in particular, made her happy.  That was something that had been missing from her solid, yet often injury-plagued, track career.  McClain fell in love with the open and inclusive format of road racing and all of its uncertainties and quirks. "There's just so much that can go wrong in the roads which is why I love it," McClain said.  "You're thinking about things constantly and making decisions in the moment: tangents, and potholes, and there's wind.  There are just so many fun curve balls on the road, and that's why I love it." Putting the fun back in running is one of the main reasons that McClain made it here to Tokyo where she will be competing in her first major championships.  She tried to make it as a pro track runner with the Brooks Beasts in Seattle, but left the Beasts at the end of 2018 to train on her own.  She moved to Phoenix and put up solid results at several road races, including a second place at the Abbott Dash 5-K in New York City which hosted the USATF 5-kilometer road running championships.  That day she finished second to Olympic and world championships medalist Shannon Rowbury by one second. "That's a race where I should have looked at that as, wow, a big springboard or launch pad," McClain recounted.  "That should have been, like, my second rebirth of doing this again."  She added: "I think that race... showed me how much I loved the roads." The Mesa race was McClain's re-entry to competitive running after the pandemic shutdown and an extended training break after marrying her husband Connor McClain.  She felt a new spark to compete and trained herself for Grandma's Marathon in Duluth in 2023 where she finished fourth in 2:29:25.  That performance qualified her for the 2024 USA Olympic Team Trials Women's Marathon in Orlando, Florida, a race where she produced a world-class performance despite her unconventional build-up. "Just me and my friends, who were also marathoners, just kind of making up training as we went," McClain said with a hearty laugh.  "It was a hot day, and that was something that definitely played in my favor.  So that made me pretty confident going in." Running in the early morning in Phoenix turned McClain into an unusually good heat runner.  She played her cards almost perfectly in Orlando.  She was only in 13th place at halfway (1:12:38), but moved up to fourth by the finish.  She missed an Olympic team berth by one place and just 15 seconds; that's just 0.58 seconds per mile. "I know how to run in the heat so I knew to be patient," McClain told Race Results Weekly that day.  "Pretty much every marathon I've run that's what I can base my experience on.  A lot of people have come back to me each time.  I know I'm a good second half of the race runner so I just tried to stay within myself." But McClain got even closer to the Olympics than those 15 seconds.  Trials champion Fiona O'Keeffe was nursing a sore hip in the weeks leading up to the Olympic Games, and McClain was brought to Paris as the team alternate just in case O'Keeffe could not race.  O'Keeffe did ultimately start, but dropped out in the first 5-K segment of the race.  McClain's turn on a big stage would have to wait for at least another year; her spirit was not broken. "I think Paris was a big learning opportunity," said McClain, who still works a job and only runs once a day.  "I think I just learned to just be grateful that, you know, the opportunity presented itself in whatever way it looked like.  It also showed me, for me to look back on my career, kind of like, think back on what made it successful." McClain made the USA team for these championships after finishing eighth at the TCS New York City Marathon last fall (2:27:19), then nailing the best run of her life at the Boston Marathon last April where she clocked a personal best 2:22:43.  She finished seventh and was the top American.  That gave her enough World Athletics ranking points to gain selection for the USA team along with Erika Kemp and Susanna Sullivan, who both qualified by time.  The Boston race was McClain's first under the coaching of David Roche, an ultra-marathoner who set the course record for the Leadville 100 Mile last month. "Making a team now in my eyes as a 33 year-old at the older end of the spectrum, I am so grateful and excited to be here," McClain said.  "I ended up getting here because I let go a little bit.  I think I was just holding it so tight all of these years, defining my entire career by making a team.  And when I kind of relinquished that a little bit and embraced the World (Marathon) Majors scene and just realized there are so many amazing opportunities, it just kind of alleviated the pressure I put on myself.  Now that I'm here, you've just kind of have to go for broke." Indeed, McClain sees the hot and humid conditions as giving her a relative advantage (Phoenix experienced 113 consecutive days of 100-degree Fahrenheit/38-degree Celsius temperatures this year).  She also did four training sessions in a humidity chamber at Arizona State University which she said would help her even more here in hot and humid Tokyo (it may also rain).  She is hoping for a high finish. "I'm assuming that it won't go out too, too crazy," she said.  "But, I'm kind of up for whatever.  If it goes, it goes.  She continued: "I feel pretty good.  I want to keep the top ten in focus for the first half, and I'm here to get top-five, top-three.  If I blow up in pursuit of that, that's what it is. I'm here to show up and show out, so I'm just really excited to see how it goes." PHOTO: Jessica McClain finishing the 2025 Boston Marathon (photo by Jane Monti for Race Results Weekly)

(c) 2025 Race Results Weekly, all rights reserved. Published with permission. NEW YORK (07-Sep) — Disappointed to have missed a spot on Team USATF for the upcoming World Athletics Championships in Tokyo, Yared Nuguse found a different way to end his season on a high note, winning a thrilling New Balance Fifth Avenue Mile road race in Manhattan. Gracie Morris was the surprise winner of the women’s division, using a well-timed kick to secure victory. The races were held in light rain, capping a day of mass participation, age-group and specialty heats featuring more than 8,500 participants at the New York Road Runners-organized event. MORRIS NAILS HER TIMING The women’s elite race went off first, and defending champion Karissa Schweizer, who ran 4:14.8 to equal the event record last year, immediately went to the front down the 20-block straight-line, downhill course. A two-time Olympian in the 5000 and 10,000 meters, she knew she would need to rely on her strength up against a field of established middle-distance runners. She admitted that her enthusiasm, combined with the course’s initial downhill slope, may have caused her to push the pace a bit too hard. Leading Morris by 10 meters, Schweizer earned the race’s $1,000 halfway leader bonus. Morris, fifth in this event last year, continued to track Schweizer while remaining several steps ahead of a pack that included Dani Jones, Gabbbi Jennings, Eleanor Fulton and Kayley DeLay. Shortly after the three-quarter mile mark Morris began to close the gap on Schweizer, who still looked strong but was beginning to strain. With about 300 meters to go Morris decisively surged into the lead. She remained unchallenged to the finish and won comfortably in 4:15.5. “I knew I needed to stay patient and that I could get her,” said Morris, who joined the Puma Elite Running Team in North Carolina a year ago after graduating from Texas Christian University. “And right around 1200 I knew that’s a key point in this race, so I just started pressing.” Morris finished 9th in the 1500 meters at the USATF Outdoor Championships in early August and then won the Sir Walter Miler (track mile) a week later, smashing her track personal best with a 4:23.74 clocking. “This is one the best seasons I have had, just confidence wise and having consistency. I don’t feel like I’ve had a bad race,” she said. “I really wanted to win this one and use this momentum to go into next year.” Behind her, Kayley DeLay broke free from the pack and tracked down Schweizer, edging ahead for second place just before the finish, 4:17.4 to 4:17.6. Fulton (4:18.9) and Laurie Barton (4:20.6) rounded out the top five. “I’m happy with this,” said Schweizer, who finished a disappointing sixth in both the 5000 and 10,000 at the U.S. championships. “It’s been a weird year. I feel like this race and my 5K in Brussels [where she clocked a season’s best 14:39.30] showed that I’m not as far off as I thought.” NUGUSE'S PRIDE HELPED CARRY HIM TO THE WIN The men’s race played out quite differently, with a huge pack running together in the early going. No significant moves were made until Flavien Szot bolted to the front just in time to earn the halfway leader bonus. (He would eventually finish 12th.) The pack quickly caught the Frenchman. Nuguse --who opened his season in New York City in February with his third straight victory in the Wanamaker Mile at the Millrose Games-- was at the center of the road, with his expected chief rivals, Josh Hoey and Hobbs Kessler, to his right, while Luke Houser and Amon Kemboi were on his left. Hoey, the runner-up here in 2024 and this year’s world indoor champion in the 800 meters, nudged briefly ahead, but could not gain any separation. With a quarter mile to go, Parker Wolfe swung wide on the right and edged into the lead, appearing poised for an upset. But a cluster of men remained on his heels and just steps before the line Nuguse found one more gear and broke the tape in 3:47.7, becoming the first American man to win this race since Eric Jenkins in 2016. “I feel like a lot this year I haven’t really had the kick I wanted, and I think with that downhill energy and also this being my very last race, I really just wanted to leave it all out there,” said Nuguse, the Olympic bronze medalist in the 1500 last summer in Paris. “When Parker passed me that just ignited something within in to really leave it all out there.” Wolfe (3:48.1) held off Drew Hunter (3:48.1) for second, followed by Ireland’s Nick Griggs (3:48.4) and Kenyan Festus Lagat (3:48.4). Kessler (3:49.6) came home 10th and Hoey (3:51.9) finished 13th. The win gave Nuguse a nice boost after his season took a shocking turn at the U.S. championships, where he was relegated to fifth place in the 1500. The On Athletics Club star’s bid to earn a wild card into the World Championships by winning the Diamond League Final in Zurich on August 28 fizzled out when he finished seventh, leaving him off of the national team for Tokyo. “After what happened in Zurich I was a little bummed that that was the end of my season, but Fifth Avenue only asked me [to run here] after that race,” he said. “I liked the idea of racing a fun race. I wanted to win, but I wanted to have an enjoyable [experience] and I heard that Fifth Avenue has really fun vibes.” Wolfe also found redemption with his performance. An injury cut short his senior season at the University of North Carolina this spring, but he rallied to place 6th in the 5000 at the USATF Championships on minimal training. “I thought I had it until the last 10 meters,” he said of his bold move today. “I started tying up a little bit. I’m very happy to feel that gear be there. It’s been a while since I’ve really had that. I felt like myself racing again, so that was awesome.” Morris and Nuguse both recorded the third fastest times in event history and pocketed $5,000 in prize money for their victories. PHOTO: Gracie Morris and Yared Nuguse celebrating their 2025 New Balance Fifth Avenue Mile victories (photo by John Nepolitan for Race Results Weekly)