Strong Half Marathon Debuts Highlight Great Action

By Scott Bush

A chilly morning in New York City, couldn’t slow down the strong fields at the NYC Half, as fellow Kenyans Geoffrey Mutai and Sally Kipyego won in impressive fashion against very tough competition. Here’s a breakdown of what we learned:

Sally Kipyego has a very bright future on the roads ahead of herself. The Olympic silver medalist over 10,000m came up big against a terrific field, winning by 28 seconds in 1:08:31. Her closest rival, Buzunesh Deba finished second at the NYC Marathon in both 2013 and 2011, so besting by as much as she did has to give Kipyego plenty of confidence heading into the rest of her season. The real question now is, will Kipyego run a fall marathon?

Geoffrey Mutai is a champion and owns the streets of New York City. Mutai won the NYC Marathon in 2013 and 2011, so his win in the NYC Half should come as no surprise. He loves the energetic air of New York. Despite Mo Farah falling, Mutai clearly showed he was top runner on the day, winning by 17 seconds in 1:00:50 after a pedestrian start to the race.

Molly Huddle and Matt Tegenkamp ran great in their half marathon debuts. Huddle finished third overall in 1:09:04, a time that ranks her US#5 all-time.  While Huddle still has her eyes set on the track the rest of this season, her success in NYC might just be enough to sway her to run a marathon sooner rather than later. As for Tegenkamp, a seventh place finish in 1:02:04 is a good sign, as he continues to test himself over the roads.

Desiree (Davila) Linden’s eighth place finish should be looked at closely. Yes, she finished eighth and 2:33 back from Huddle (and 3:06 from the winner), but she clearly use the NYC Half as a workout. In the first 5k of the race, Linden was already 46 seconds behind the lead pack. Her 5k splits grew progressively faster, and it’s easy to see that she used the race as a progression run and a fitness gage more than anything. With Boston less than six weeks away, this was actually an encouraging race for the Hansons-Brooks Olympian. Her 5k splits:

5k – 17:21

10k – 17:13

15k – 16:51

20k – 16:23

Meb Keflezighi seems to have a little work to do before Boston next month. He went out with the lead pack through 5k, but when the pace started to quicken, he didn’t go with and was 20+ seconds behind by 10k. This very well could have been a tactical move, as many Americans were simply using the race as a tune-up for their Boston Marathon race, but Meb’s 1:02:53 just didn’t seem as competitive as he usually shows.

After Teg and Meb, ex-Stanford All-American and current Hansons-Brooks runner Jacob Riley finished as the third American in 11^th place. Riley came up big with a 1:02:56 time and only three seconds off Meb. Jeffrey Eggleston and Luke Puskedra both finished in 1:03:32, while Brett Gotcher and Jason Hartmann rounded out their Boston Marathon prep with 1:04:01 and 1:04:17 performances.