While the most fun comes from actually running in the Carlsbad 5000 with the civilians, there is a deep, deep elite field in this Sunday’s 25th running of the “world’s fastest 5k.” Two-time Olympic medal winner Eliud Kipchoge of Kenya will lead the field to take down Sammy Kipketer’s 13:00 road 5k record set in Carlsbad in 2000.
“Nobody has come close to Sammy’s mark since 2001,” recalls running historian Toni Reavis, 20-year broadcaster of the race. “That record has taken on a Beamon-esque stature in the ensuing years, especially Sammy’s first miles in under 4:00!”
On Sunday, April 11, 2010 the Village of Carlsbadistan will be filled with the stomp and clomp of runners as The Carlsbad 5000 “world’s fastest 5k” returns. And while we don’t enjoy all the visitors as much as we should, having Coast Highway closed for most of a day is a wonderful thing.
Today, April 5, 2010 is the last day to save $5 on the $30 entry fee for the Junior Carlsbad running on April 10, 2010 in the Village of Carlsbadistan. The race is for runners (and crawlers) from 0 to 12 years old.
11 Races for Every Age Group and Fitness Level
FREE GIFT to First 500 registered
Finisher’s Medal Awarded to Every Runner!
Receive a FREE Race T-Shirt!
Family-Friendly Weekend Promotes Fitness Fun!
Awesome Awards for top 3 girl/boy finishers (ages 5-12)
If everything goes well Carlsbadistan’sErica Davis will be the first paraplegic woman to climb Africa’s Mount Kilimanjaro, according to a story on Recordnet.com.
With the help of a specially made wheelchair and a team from the Corrective Holistic Exercise Kinesiology Institute, which will carry her about 60 percent of the time, Davis hopes Monday to be atop the tallest free-standing mountain in the world – 19,340 feet above sea level. . . “Reaching the top is showing that it doesn’t matter what it is, you can do it, because there are people out there willing and wanting to help you,” Davis said. “I think it will show other challenged athletes that you have two choices. You can lay there on the couch being depressed or look at it as a new chapter in your book of life. It will bring different things to your life. Your life is not over in any way.”
Davis was paralyzed from the waist down in 2005 when she suffered a “cavernous hemangioma.” Since then she’s competed in cycling races, triathlons, and two marathons. We’re pretty confident she’ll summit.
This morning (January 24, 2010) at 6 AM the elite runners hit the streets of Carlsbad for the Tri-City Medical Center Carlsbad Marathon. After a week of storms Sunday lived up to its name and set up what has to be one of the most perfect Carlsbad Marathons in years. Temperatures were cool, skies were blue, and the the course was a party on legs.
The 10,000 runners also got to see some of the biggest, cleanest surf we’ve seen in weeks. The look on one surfers face was classic as he surveyed the waves and then looked down at the mass of humanity that stood between him and the surf. It was like a human wall. Don’t know if he ever made it across.
For 30 years she’s been producing running races and though the 69 year old may be pulling back a little, it doesn’t sound like she’s slowing her pace at all.
She’s still president of In Motion Inc., the family-run company she founded, whose marquee event is Sunday’s Carlsbad Marathon and Half Marathon. But she stepped back last May, passing day-to-day operations to her daughter, Christine Adams.. . “It was time,” Flanagan said.. . .The woman is hardly sitting at home, waiting to baby-sit the 11 grandkids. . . She’s taking two art classes. One room at home is reserved for her work, which apparently is improving. . . She works out with a personal trainer twice a week, runs 18 to 24 miles a week and if you called the office, it was Flanagan answering the phone this week. . . “I will probably always work,” said Flanagan, who has cut her schedule back from 50 to 15 to 20 hours. “I don’t like to use the word retire. I think it’s a bad word. I’m transitioning. To retire, rest, that’s not for me.”
Click the link for the rest of the inspiring story behind the world’s most beautiful marathon.
The weekend, January 22-24, 2010, is Tri-City Medical Center Carlsbad Marathon weekend in Carlsbadistan. For locals, it means that a few roads will be closed and we’ll have a lot of extremely fit guests in town. For the nearly 10,000 people who will be competing in the Marathon and Half Marathon it means running one of the most beautiful courses in the world.
Don’t know why this seemed to appropriate today. . . maybe it’s because we’re all so bummed at The Chargers right now. If only they had “done their thing.”
We don’t follow horse racing at all. But one of our favorite horses of the last season (for rather obvious reasons) was Dennis Wier’s filly Carlsbad.
. . . the Arizona-bred filly won four races, all stakes, from seven starts this season. Undefeated in three starts as a two-year-old with trainer Kevin Lewis, she began 2009 with an eye-popping 13¼-length win in the Arizona Oaks in February at Turf Paradies.
Well, those days are over for poor Carlsbad. She reportedly fractured her ankle while galloping out for a workout on Saturday morning at LA’s Santa Anita Park and was “euthanized.”
If you have a Carlsbad news story, press release, event, rumor, or scandal that we'd be interested in (and there are a lot of them), please click the link to send them to The Editors.
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