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It almost feels unfair to mention Shalane Flanagan's winning margin in the 3,000m this evening, on the first day of the USA Indoor Track & Field Championships. After all, Lisa Galaviz, placing second in 9:10.75, was within a second of her PR, and did it by fighting a down-to-the-homestretch duel with relative unknown and former University of Texas runner Emily Field (third in 9:11.32). Galaviz, whose 9:11 seed time was a full 38 seconds slower than Flanagan's, admitted after the race, "We expected Shalane to run away with it from the beginning."
That she didn't might be a little to Galaviz's credit—she and Field led the first kilometer—but Flanagan is running spectacularly well, and nobody else in tonight's field is at the same level. After Galaviz and Field took the pack through a 3:05.14 first kilometer, Flanagan simply ran away from them, dropping the pace by two seconds per lap and hitting the second kilometer in 6:03.10 (a 2:58) before finishing in 8:56.74—23 seconds slower than her American Record from last month, but still a time nobody else in the field has approached. And she made it look easy. She admitted afterward, "I got kind of lazy. We were going to work on the last 800, then 400, then 200, but I really only worked the last 200."
"I'm trying out race tactics," Flanagan explained. "I usually don't sit; I'm pretty antsy. But I think my fitness level is allowing me to be a bit more confident about sitting." On the other hand, she also conceded, "I feel like at a championship meet, you need to put on a championship performance." She went on, "I knew my dad was sitting up there, and he hates any type of slow race when people are capable of running faster. I could hear him yelling, 'Faster!' So I really just felt pressure from my dad."
Flanagan sees her improvement at 3,000m this winter as encouragement for her 5,000m prospects outdoors. "For that [8:56] to feel so easy, I feel like I could have run another 2k. And that would have been a sub-15:00 5,000m. I'm looking forward to seeing where the training takes me."
Posted by Parker Morse at 10:45 p.m. | Tags: Race Reports, 2007 USA Indoor T&F Champs