Genzebe Dibaba came oh-so-close to the women’s world 5K road record and Lani Lalang got his 2015 season back on track as they won the women’s and men’s elite titles at the Carlsbad 5000, Sun., March 29, in the seaside community of Carlsbad, Calif., just north of San Diego.

The 24-year-old Dibaba, who’s from Ethiopia, had hoped to run 14:40 (4:43 per mile pace) in the women’s race – the world record is 14:46, held by Meseret Defar, also of Ethiopia – but despite the help of a designated pacemaker, the leaders ran the first mile in only 4:50.

On a less than perfect day for fast running (it was warm and somewhat breezy), Dibaba took the lead after the mile mark and aggressively began to push the pace in hopes of making up for lost time. The only two runners from the lead group to go with her were her fellow Ethiopians Gelete Burka and Wude Yimer.

The three quickly separated themselves from the field, and as they approached the second turn on the course, Dibabe put in another burst of speed and suddenly she was on her own in front. It was the same place and the same strategy that Lawi Lalang would use to break away in the men’s elite race, which was run half an hour later.

By two miles (9:32), Dibaba’s lead had swelled to 100 meters, and for the rest of the race, it was just her against the clock.

The world indoor 5000-meter record holder passed three miles in 14:21, running all out, but when the clock reached 14:46 she was still a few meters from the finish line.

She would cross the line in 14:48 to complete the third fastest women’s road 5K ever behind Defar and Lorna Kiplagat of Kenya.

The two other Ethiopians, Gelete Burka, 30, and Wude Yimer, 27, finished fairly close together but a considerable distance behind as they ran 15:13 and 15:18 respectively to make it an Ethiopian sweep of the top three places.

Susan Kuijken, 28, of the Netherlands was fourth in 15:28, Betsy Saina, 26, of Kenya  fifth in 15:31, and Jessica O’Connell, 26, of Canada sixth in 15:36.

The first American finisher in the race was Sarah Brown, 28, of Solana Beach, Calif., who finished eighth in 15:48.

The great Deena Kastor, now 40, finished 12^th in 16:05, but she missed the U.S. Masters record of 15:48.

Genzebe Dibaba, who said through an interpreter after the race that she thinks she could have broken the world record if the first mile had been quicker, will hope to break the women’s world 5,000-meter track record later this year at the Pre Classic in Eugene, Ore. That record is 14:11.4, held by her sister Tirunesh!

In the men’s elite race at Carlsbad, Dejen Gebremeskel of Ethiopia was hoping to win for the fourth straight year – note, he was the silver medalist in the 5000 meters at the 2012 Olympics! However, when he had to withdraw from the Carlsbad race the morning of the competition due to illness, it left the door wide open for eight-time NCAA champion Lawi Lalang, 23, of Kenya to redeem himself after a lackluster indoor season.

From the gun, Lalang and his countryman Wilson Too, 24, stuck like glue to the designated rabbit Andrew Springer, and by 1K (run in 1:38) they were already 20 meters clear of the decorated veteran Bernard Lagat, now 40, and Sam Chelanga, 30, still another Kenyan.

By the time the leaders hit the mile mark in 4:14, their lead had grown to 40 meters and it seemed evident that the race was now between Lalang and Too, but which one would win?

That was answered quickly enough when they reached the second of the four 180-degree turns on the course and Lalang hit the accelerator, quickly opening a 10-meter lead on Too. He would hold on to that margin, after passing two miles in 8:36, all the way to the finish line.

Lalang’s winning time was a relatively slow 13:32 (but it was warm and breezy, remember?), with Too finishing three seconds further back.

Lagat, who had separated himself from Chelanga and Joseph Kitur before the two-mile mark, chased Too all the way to the finish line but couldn’t catch him – and Lagat would jog the final few meters after he realized he would fall short of the American Masters 5K road record.

Lagat would finish third in 13:41, Chelanga fourth in 13:50 and Kitur, who’s 26, fifth in 13:53, which meant that Kenyan natives (Lagat is now a naturalized U.S. citizen) would sweep the top five places in the race.

Diego Estrada, 25, of Salinas, Calif., (he now lives and trains in Flagstaff, Ariz.) was the first American to finish as he ran 13:56 to take sixth place. Estrada, who won the U.S. Half-Marathon Championship last January in Houston, Tex., running 1:00:51, hopes to make the U.S. team in the 10,000 meters for this year’s World Track & Field Championships – and next year the game plan is for him to step up to the marathon, with the objective of running the U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials in Los Angeles and to qualify for the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics in that event. 

Comments