News Archive


Press Release: Olympic Marathon Champ Constantina Dita Wraps up Main Training, Flies to London Tonight

July 18, 2012 (For immediate use) Reigning Olympic Marathon champion Constantina Dita completed her final hard training session this morning in her US hometown of Erie, Colorado… a set of repeat 2,000m intervals… and will fly out on this evening’s British Airways Denver/London flight to compete in her third Olympic Games. In Beijing four years …

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Madalina Florea takes 7th in World Juniors 5000m with new PB

Madalina Florea (adidas) ran an impressive 7th in a new PB of 16:08.07 in tonight’s 5000m final at the IAAF World Junior Championships in Barcelona. A member of our adidas Boulder Wave Romanian Development Project, Madalina ran the best time of her career by twelve seconds while also finishing as second European in the race. 17-year old Anca Bunea, who joined our program this past winter, took 17th in her first world championship race.

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Rene Goes On-Air to Chat about London with Lotus FM in SA

Rene in Nagoya this Spring.

Rene Kalmer (adidas/Nedbank) is very upbeat and chilled out (as always!) in this interview with DJ Neville Pillay posted yesterday on the website of Lotus FM in South Africa. It is part of the station’s “Run-Up to London” interview series.  Click here to hear their three-minute chat.

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Ionela Dinca Leads adidas-Boulder Wave Trio’s 10,000m Sweep at Romanian Youth Championships

Ionela Dinca

In the Romanian Youth Athletics Championships that concluded yesterday, three women from our adidas-Boulder Wave Development Program swept the 10,000m podium: Ionela Dinca took the title with a 41-second PB of 35:48.03, a fraction ahead of Nicoleta Petrescu in 35:48.36. Cristina Negru chopped a massive 76 seconds off her best time with 36:10.47 for 3rd to round out the podium sweep.

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44-Second PB for Pat Rizzo at US Half-Marathon Championships

Patrick Rizzo (Mizuno) made a big jump in his PB at this morning’s USATF Half-Marathon Championship in Duluth, Minnesota, chopping 44 seconds from his old mark to score 8th place and $1000 prize money + $750 time bonus for a sub-65:00. Pat’s old PB was ancient, a 65:04 from the 2010 Rock ‘n’ Roll Chicago Half-Marathon. Pat texted from the finish, “I just missed catching Jason Hartmann for 7th [two-second gap], as well as that sub-1:04 time bonus. Still, almost a minute PR is a good step forward…Now I need that sub-1:04.”

Kayoko Fukushi Doubles Up: Olympic Selection for 5 and 10!!!

Kayoko Fukushi (Photo courtesy of Wacoal)

Off of her pair of second place finishes at this weekend’s Japanese national championships, the JAAF announced today that Kayoko Fukushi (Wacoal/adidas) has been selected to represent Japan in both the 5,000m and 10,000m at this summer’s London Olympic Games. On Friday night, Kayoko ran 31:43.25 for second place behind Panasonic’s Mika Yoshikawa. Kayoko brought a qualifying mark of 30:54.29 from last year’s Payton Jordan Cardinal Invitational. She is the second-fastest Japanese woman ever at 10,000m, with a PB of 30:51.81

In yesterday’s 5000m, Kayoko, who is the national recordholder in the event with a 14:53.22 mark, took second in 15:25.74 behind Universal Entertainment’s Hitomi Niiya’s 15:17.92.

Over the past year, Kayoko has also been building her road resume, with an impressive 3rd place finish at the 2011 Bank of America Chicago Marathon, and a 4th-place finish at last month’s Dick’s Sporting Goods Bolder Boulder 10K. She did the bulk of her training for this year’s Japanese championships at altitude, spending most of April and May  in Boulder, Colorado, with head coach Tadayuki Nagayama and coach Yukio Mihara.

Although Boulder Wave does not officially represent Mika Yoshikawa or Hitomi Niiya, who also were both selected today to represent Japan in both the 5,000m and 10,000m,  we are annually hired by their clubs to support their altitude training. Panasonic head coach Toshiaki Kurabayashi has brought his team to Boulder for altitude training camps each of the past four years, including this Spring to prepare for the national championships; while Niiya trains under Coach Yoshio Koide, who annually brings his athletes to Boulder for several months in the late summer and autumn.

Kayoko is the 9th Boulder Wave athlete so far to become a 2012 Olympian.

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Portland Track Festival: US Championships Qualifier for Adriana Nelson

At this weekend’s Portland Track Festival, Adriana Nelson (ASICS) knocked five seconds off the 10,000m PB she set at the Payton Jordan Cardinal Invitational with a 32:43.48 that brings her just under the USATF “A” qualifying mark of 32:45.00.

The USATF National Championships/Olympic Trials will take place from June 21st to July 1st in Eugene, Oregon.

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Edna Kiplagat Wins NY Mini 10K in 32:08!

Edna carrying the Kenyan flag shortly after this morning's victory at the NY Mini 10K (Photo courtesy of Boulder Wave, Inc.)

A very popular champion!

Edna's post-race autograph session.

Edna Kiplagat (Nike) won today’s New York Road Runners Mini 10K in Central Park in a solid 32:08, blowing apart the field with a 4:49 fifth mile. The lead pack of five women, including Edna and Diane Nukuri-Johnson (ASICS) came through 5K in 16:20. According to David Monti, who was on the lead vehicle, “Edna put in one surge on the hill near 5K that looked like she was testing everybody, but then when she hit the flat alongside the reservoir she was absolutely flying, making a big move almost exactly where she did when she won the ING New York City Marathon in 2010.”

Diane had another strong race, finishing in 4th in 32:38, improving by 50 seconds and eight places over her 33:28 12th place run here last year. Amazingly, even on this tough Mini course, she just missed breaking her PB/NR by a single second.

Lidia Simon (ASICS) and Irvette van Blerk (adidas/Nedbank) finished just a second apart in 12th and 13th in 34:03 and 34:04, respectively. For Lidia, it was a 66-second improvement over her 2011 result here.

All four of our women who ran today will represent their respective countries in the Olympic Marathon on August 5th in London.

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In Memoriam: Jason Kehoe

Charlie Rodgers (left) and Jason Kehoe (right), 2012 Boston Marathon weekend (Photo courtesy of Antoni Reavis)

Very sad news today from Toni Reavis that Jason Kehoe has passed away. Jason was one of the mainstays of the Boston running community whom I knew in various iterations over the years: first as one of the original staff at the Bill Rodgers Running Center in Cleveland Circle when it was as good as Mecca for aspiring distance runners and running bums; then as a housemate; then as a permanent fixture of the Boston running community whom I would usually meet when in town for the marathon or any other excuse.

My first year out of Boston College, while earning farm wages for Thom Gilligan in his newly-founded Marathon Tours business and trying to figure out “What’s Next?”, I ended up sharing a house with three other runners: Doug and Ruth Sweazey, and Jason, as well as Ruth’s cat and Jason’s dog. Doug and Ruth catered to the running-tourist clientele at the Bill Rodgers’ Running Center down at Quincy Market, while Jason manned the fort with Charlie Rodgers (Bill’s brother) and a WKRP-In-Cincinnati type of staff down at Cleveland Circle. The house was a big old mansion next to the Brookline Reservoir just outside Boston city limits, owned by an Iranian immigrant named Albert, who to this day I am certain hightailed it out of Iran about the same time the Shah went down. The four of us and the animals occupied the old servants’ quarters up on the top floor.

Jason exuded a Zonker Harris vibe, laid back while simultaneously rarely keen to suffer fools for any longer than necessary. In his article attached here, Toni relates the perfect Jason memory, which anybody who has worked retail can appreciate:

“It’s brutal being polite to people all day,” said the assistant manager [Jason] to a passing friend headed to the locker room in back for the weekly Saturday run. “In fact,” he concluded sardonically, “it’s not healthy. You’re not being honest.”

That said, Jason was always polite as can be to everybody in my family, including my Dad, who, long after Jason, Bill Rodgers, and Charlie Rodgers had graduated from Newington High in Connecticut, became the head cross-country and track and field coach at Wethersfield High School, the next town over. Invariably whenever my parents had spent a day in Boston and stopped by the Quincy Market store, they’d relay a message to me about how friendly and welcoming Jason had been.

Years later, when I had begun working with Japan’s top distance runners, Jason shared a story of Toshihiko Seko coming into the Cleveland Circle store in during the week of the 1981 Boston Marathon with an entourage of coaches, media, and other handlers. “That was the fittest-looking human being I have ever seen,” Jason told me, despite the fact that one of his dearest friends on earth, Bill Rodgers, had been fit enough to win four Bostons, four New Yorks, and one Fukuoka during his phenomenal career. Jason called ’em as he saw ’em.

As much as anybody I know, Jason was a guy completely comfortable in his own skin and his own routines. As Toni quotes him, “Personally, in my own life, I try, with my own limited interaction with the world, to do it with integrity, and earn what I get, and don’t ask for more than I’ve earned – which seems to be an exception.” The past ten days, I’ve been reading a book titled In Pursuit of Spenser, in which a dozen or two authors share their reminiscences of the late Robert B. Parker and his famous literary creation, the Boston private eye Spenser. Each and every writer comes back to the same theme, that Spenser was a guy who had figured out how to live Life on his own terms, which included his integrity, and what more could he ask for. That approach seems to have worked well for Jason.

I completely lost the regime of the day, i.e. I did not sleep at night and insanely wanted to https://disabilityarts.online/ambien-10mg/ sleep during the day.


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“Going the Distance”: Rene Kalmer article

The Tsogo Sun Hotels group in South Africa features Cosmo model Rene Kalmer (adidas/Nedbank) in their in-house magazine this month. Click here.

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