Well, I’m not sure what I’m going to do with myself now the athletics is over. I mean, there’s always the Birmingham Diamond League next weekend, but it does feel something of an anticlimax. For all the sport’s current woes, I absolutely love watching athletics, both from the comfort of my sofa or live in the London Stadium (as absolutely no one calls it).
Watching live does have a side benefit of avoiding ridiculously one-sided coverage on TV – I understand the BBC caters to a British audience, but constant sappy pre-made montages of Mo Farah should never, ever be played over actual live field events. Field events are anyway massively under appreciated – one of the highlights of the whole championships for me was the duel played out in the womens triple jump between the old guard – multiple gold medallist Caterine Ibargüen of Colombia – and the new, 21 year old Yulimar Rojas from Venezuela.
Athletics geekery clearly runs in the family: I took my girls to the final night yesterday and my eight year old at one point turned around to the people behind us and explained that Sifan Hassan now trains with Alberto Salazar, like Mo … And perhaps inspired by all the athletics we’ve been watching, she was also keen to get back to junior parkrun for the first time in a while, though she did announce to me about 400m in that “I don’t think I’m going to PB today, mummy, so I’ll just do it as a tempo run”…
So, how was your weekend running? I saw some lovely tweets over the weekend of Aly Dixon, fresh from the marathon event last weekend, volunteering at a parkrun. Anyone bump into any elite runners? Share your stories below the line as always
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