The Double Road Race 15k Challenge!
This video features our Fort Lauderdale Double Road Race held May 18. Peter Mullin (age 63) was our Double Victory Cup winner (posting the best age-graded performance). Jonathan Kinsey was our men's winner posting a time of 51:45 (it was very windy) and Natasha Yaremczuk was our women's winner posting 57:02.
Our next Double Road Race is coming up June 1st in Indy, Ind. The world record is on the block. Here is an update.
THEY’RE BACK!
Julius Koskei and Liudmila Stepanova return to the Indianapolis Double where they both set world records last year.
By David Prokop
Last August 11 at the Indianapolis Double Road Race™ in Indianapolis, Ind., Julius Koskei of Kenya and Liudmila Stepanova of Russia broke the men’s and women’s world records in this unique new road running competition consisting of a 10K and 5K with a break in between.
On Sunday, June 1, in the second annual Indianapolis Double, both will be back with the intent of bettering the records again.
In Koskei’s case, he will be seeking to improve on his own world record -- the aggregate time of 44:24:01 he ran at Pleasanton, Calif., last December 22 to improve on his Indianapolis time by seven seconds.
He had run the 10K in 29:48 last year at Indianapolis and came back to run the 5K in 14:43 for an aggregate time of 44:31:09. At Pleasanton he ran the 10K in 29:45:20 and the 5K in 14:38:81 for an aggregate time of 44:24:01.
So the 32-year-old Koskei (pronounced Kos-kay) has now run the Double twice and set a world record each time. Will he make it three world records in three tries on June 1 in Indianapolis?
Koskei, who’s the only athlete to break 30 minutes for the 10K in the Double (and he’s now done it twice), has said that at his peak he thinks he could run 28:50 for the 10K and 14:10 for the 5K of the Double, which would give him an aggregate time of 43:30!
In Stepanova’s case, she will be trying to regain the world record she first set at Indianapolis last year, 52:38, but which has since been broken – first by Sarah Crouch of South Lake Tahoe, Calif., when she posted an aggregate time of 52:23 in winning the San Juan Bautista (Calif.) Double on Sept. 28 (35:02 10K/17:21 5K), and most recently by Molly Pritz, who lowered the world record to 52:13 in winning the Pacific Grove (Calif.) Double on May 11 by running the 10K in 34:39 and the 5K in 17:34.
Stepanova, who’s 30, had run the 10K in 35:21 and the 5k in 17:12 last year in Indianapolis to set her then world record of 52:38, and the previous world record she beat that day, 53:13, had been held by … Molly Pritz!
The course for the Indianapolis Double is flat and fast – exactly the kind of course where the existing world records could fall again if runners like Koskei and Stepanova are fit and focused.
The two, who are professional runners, come to America twice a year to compete in a series of races on the lucrative American running circuit. They have the same agent in this country, Larisa Mikhaylova, former world-ranked 800-meter runner from Russia who later made a very successful transition to road racing. Mikhaylova, who retired from competitive running in 2008, is now an agent and coach based in Hebron, Ky., where she manages LM Elite Running Club, which includes runners from numerous countries, including Kenya, Russia, Ethiopia, Morocco and Ukraine. Koskei and Stepanova are two of her most experienced and successful runners.
Fort Lauderdale Double May 18th...coming up Indy June 1st. The Double world records (both men and women) are on the block.
