Wednesday Links from Around the Track

Last weekend brought us a ton of great races and the Boston Marathon is coming up next week. With so much going on there is a ton of running news. Let's take a look around the track.

Lap 1

Sara Hall sat down and talked to Runners World about her decision to run the London Marathon. This move is honestly a head scratcher. Sara ran the Olympic Marathon Trials and came close to qualifying but did not. She's vowed to try and qualify at the track trials this summer. So why is she running a marathon now? Well, she wants to. Plain and simple. It's refreshing to see a professional runner taking bold steps, and the Hall family seems to do nothing but that.

Lap 2

WADA clarifies a new drug rule that's been making the news. Meldonium was placed on the banned substance list back on January 1st and guess what? A ton of athletes in several sports tested positive within a few months. WADA has decided to clear athletes who tested positive with 1 microgram before March 1st, meaning that the drug was taken before January 1st. The heart medication drug is for short term use only, so the simple fact that several athletes were taking it is already fishy, but now clearing the athletes who took the drug and stopped before January 1st makes it sound like they knew what they were doing. It will be interesting to see if anyone tests positive for it in the future.

Lap 3

The Pre Classic women's 1500 meter field is LIT. Simpson and Rowbury are going head to head this summer in Eugene, Oregon at the Pre Classic. These two have absolutely dominated the event in the US for the past several years, and the announcement today that they will both be at the Pre Classic means that we will most likely see them go head to head at least twice before the Olympics in Rio. Also entered in the race is Sifan Hassan, who won the 1500 at the indoor World Championships in Portland last month. Raise your hand if you are excited for this one.

FREE IN-N-OUT! Ok this article is really about the free food. Brooks Running is putting on a high school race at Mt. SAC which they are calling "Assault on the 4 minute" mile. The race is bringing in some of the best high school milers in the country and they are looking for fireworks. To get more butts in the seats, they're throwing in In-N-Out. The first 1,000 people to sign up at the "Bring Back the Mile" Booth will get a free In-N-Out card if someone breaks the barrier. Only twice in history has a high school runner ran a sub-4:00 mile in a high school only meet, so the race this Friday night could get interesting.