Weekend recap April 3-5: Elite 5,000m and spring road races
Stanford Invitational opens track season for Canadian elites
The track season kicked off for many Canadian elites in Palo Alto, Calif., over the weekend at the Stanford Invitational, a regular stop on the early season calendar for distance runners.
The Canadian highlight of the weekend was Nicole Sifuentes’s 5,000m personal best 15:19.15. The time dips under the world championship standard of 15:20 in a huge personal best for the Winnipeg native. She finished second overall behind Gabriele Grunewald of the United States. Sifuentes’s main event is the 1,500m, though it looks as though she may have options leading into championship season later in 2015.
Canadians Rachel Cliff and Kate Van Buskrik also raced the 5,000m, finishing eighth and thirteenth, respectively. Mohammed Ahmed finished fourth in the men’s 5,000m, running 13:32.10. Lanni Marchant raced to a 32:11.06 finish in the women’s 10,000m, good for the fourth spot.
“@FloTrack: Gabriel Grunewald wins the invitational heat in 15:19.01 #Stanfordinvite pic.twitter.com/6MPVxhgrcs” So close!!!
— Nicole Sifuentes (@ndsifuentes) April 4, 2015
Harry’s Spring Run-Off
While Eric Gillis, at 35, won the men’s 8K in Toronto’s High Park over the weekend, a younger Speed River teammate won her first ever road race. Heather Petrick, a 19-year-old University of Guelph student-athlete, won the women’s 8K in 28:12. Petrick was the Ontario university cross-country champion in 2014.
Gillis’s winning time was 24:16.
Ethiopia continues success at Daegu International Marathon
For the third time in the race’s seven-year history, Ethiopian athletes won both the men’s an women’s titles at the Daegu International Marathon. Girmay Birhanu won the men’s race in 2:07:26 and Meselech Melkamu won the women’s race in 2:27:24. The race is an International Association of Athletics Federations silver-label race.
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