Weekend recap: Jim Walmsley smashes 100K, Matthew Boling runs 400m PB
From 60m up to 100K, there were plenty of big races this past weekend
Photo by:
Instagram/matthew_boling1
With Hoka One One’s Project Carbon X 2 in Arizona, the American Track League season opener in Arkansas and some extremely quick NCAA races across the U.S., there was plenty of action to keep running fans entertained this past weekend. Jim Walmsley, Matthew Boling and Athing Mu posted some of the best results of the weekend, each running record or near-record times. This weekend’s recap is filled to the brim with those performances and more from some of the world’s best athletes, from sprinters up to ultrarunners.
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Project Carbon X 2
Project Carbon X 2 was created by Hoka to give the brand’s top athletes a shot at breaking the 100K world records. While no one accomplished this goal on Saturday, the event was still a massive success, and it produced one of the most exciting runs of the past year. Walmsley, who was the favourite to take the win and challenge the world record of 6:09:14, ran an incredible race, finishing just 12 seconds off the mark with a 6:09:26 result. He fell just short of the world record, but he smashed the American record of 6:27:44, running a ridiculous 3:41 per-kilometre pace for 100K. On the women’s side, France’s Audrey Tanguy took the win in 7:40:36, and while she finished well off the world record of 6:33:11, it was still a tremendous performance.
RELATED: Jim Walmsley runs 6:09:26 for 100K, misses world record by just 12 seconds
Boling’s big run
In his first season at the University of Georgia, Boling didn’t compete much due to COVID-19. As of this weekend, the 20-year-old sprinting sensation is back to making headlines after running a massive 400m PB of 45.51 seconds at a meet in South Carolina. This result is the second-fastest in University of Georgia history, a current NCAA-leading time and the second-best time in the world so far this year.
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Athing Mu sets NCAA record
On Saturday, Mu, a freshman at Texas A&M, broke the NCAA 600m record, running the three-lap race in 1:25.80. Her result took 0.76 seconds off the previous record, which was set almost 40 years ago. This is amazing enough, but what’s even more noteworthy is that this time isn’t even Mu’s PB at the distance. In 2019, at just 16 years old, she won the USATF Indoor Championships, running 1:23.57, which is the second-fastest indoor 600m result in history. She also opened her collegiate career with a win in the 800m, running a U20 American record of 2:01.07.
RELATED: Tom Brady smashes 3,000m, Calum Neff sets Canadian 50K record
American Track League
Sunday marked the first event of the American Track League. This is a four-event series that will take place for the next three Sundays, with all of the meets to be held in Arkansas. This weekend’s meet was all about sprinting, and it attracted a number of top athletes. Included in the fields were Canadians Sage Watson and Andre De Grasse, both of whom were opening their 2021 seasons. Watson finished in seventh place in the 300m, running 37.90 and finishing behind American Gabby Thomas, who took the win in 35.92. De Grasse failed to make it to the 60m final, finishing in sixth in his heat in 6.79 seconds.
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Seidel’s first run with Puma
In her first race as a Puma-sponsored athlete, American Molly Seidel took the win at the Las Vegas Gold Half-Marathon, running a PB of 1:09:19. Her previous best was 1:09:35, which she ran at last year’s Houston Half-Marathon, and while she bettered this time by 16 seconds, she wrote on Instagram that it was a “controlled” effort, which means she might be capable of even more in future races. On the men’s side, Australian Pat Tiernan won in 1:02:37.
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