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Pay close attention tonight. You will be in that race in four years!

hahahaha. i'm hoping you said "please don't elbow me in the ribs" or "it's a fine morning for whole milk, isn't it?"

haha I need Lasik too.

Is everything televised Jake? Or do we have to watch online. It is going to be a very exciting race and I definitely agree with Derek.

NBC has coverage every day.. schedule is here -

http://tracktown12.gotracktownusa.com/

I'm sure we'll see about 4 laps of the 10K in-between coverage of the field events that no one cares about :-)

The men's race will be interesting b/c the only way Ritz makes the team is if he runs under 27:45, so he has no choice but to push the pace early. We already pretty much know which 3 women are making the 10K team so that race could be a little boring unless someone just goes for broke and tries to hit the Olympic A standard. Hopefully that will happen!

Thanks Jake! It would be awesome if an underdog just blew up in the womens race. The fun thing about the olympics is you just never know what can happen. I love it!

I'm guessing this is your first olympic trials since you've gotten into running, Rachelle. Here's how the trials work in track - you have to finish in the top 3 AND have the olympic "A" standard time to actually make the olympic team. So if a woman who won the race tonight in a tactical, slower race (which is often the case in the trials) but she didn't run under 31:45 (or hadn't earlier this season), she's not going to London. Since its unlikely that they'll even run fast enough to break that time, there are only 4 women in the race that have the "A" time (and Shalane is one of them, and she won't run the 10K at the olympics)... so basically the other 3 women just have to finish it and they'll be on the Olympic team.

That's what Dathan Ritzenhein did in 2008 - he was one of the only guys w/ the "A" standard... and he had a broken foot, so he just jogged around for 25 laps and made the olympic team :-)

In the shorter races, like the 800/1500/5000, pretty much all of the contenders already have the A standard, so in those ones, the top 3 go to London.

Thanks for the explanation Jake! Definitely my first time ever caring about running, I used to just watch the Summer Olympics for the gymnastics. :)

Basically then the trials are kind of pointless unless someone is able to run faster than those that have already met the "A" standard?

The situations where the race becomes pointless don't happen that often. And you never know when someone is going to try and hit the A standard in the trials race itself. I mean, they have no other choice, so why not try?

Like I said, in most of the races, like the finals of the 1500 and 5000, everyone will have the "A" so they are really racing for a spot on the olympic team. Those are the ones that are likely to go out slow and you'll see a blazing finish. I'm most looking forward to the 1500/5K for both men and women, those are going to be really exciting races.

The whole thing with the A/B standards for the trials, then another set of A/B standards for the Olympics, gets really confusing! :-)

Runner's World has a good blog setup for the trials... some of their recent posts describe (in a manner more articulate than I can write) what's going on w/ the 10Ks -

http://olympictrials.runnersworld.com/

haha how it works seems about as mind boggling as running that fast. jk I think I basically get it. None the less I am stoked to watch some fast running this weekend!

Explode it will!

thanks for the explanation and links. I am actually going to try to watch the 10k tonight. I will try not to press fast-forward, even if they show all 25 laps. It's a lot more interesting knowing a little bit about the runners and their status/background.