It’s a big racing weekend for the ZAP Team. Saturday morning Amanda, 1 week removed from her 31:20 10k in Central Park, will race the US 4 Mile Championships in Peoria, IL where she will take aim at her first US title. Sunday night the trio of Ryan Ford, Dan Schaffer and Eric van der Els will be racing a 5,000m on the track at the Portland Track Festival.
Amanda is the in the shape of her life coming off a 15:01 5k PR and a 31:20 10k road performance, and she will be one of the favorites to win the US 4 Mile Championships this weekend in Peoria, IL. The race begins at 7:00am central time (8am eastern.) The race will be streamed live on USATF.TV (subscription required), and you can follow along with live results here.
Sunday evening at the Portland Track Festival Dan, Eric and Ryan will all be chasing personal bests at 5,000m. Portland is the site of Eric’s breakthrough race a year ago, the 13:21 that qualified him for the Olympic Trials, and he’ll be looking to replicate the PR magic this year. Coming off a 13:27 performance at Trackfest, he’s in good position to take that step.
Dan comes into the race with a 13:34 personal best, set earlier this year at the Raleigh Relays, and his goal will be to take a significant chunk off that mark. It’s a goal that his training shows he’s capable of. Ryan is coming off a breakthrough performance at the Boston Marathon where he ran 2:08:00 to notch the 10th fastest time in US history. He has bounced back well since Boston and will be hunting his 13:29 personal best.
The automatic qualifying standard for the USA Track & Field Championships is 13:12. It’s unlikely to take a mark that fast to qualify – for reference, in a slightly larger field for the Olympic Trials the final qualifying time was 13:25. The heats have not been finalized yet, but the fast section of the men’s 5,000m will be at 7:40pm pst (10:40 eastern) and the 2nd section is scheduled for 5:33pm pst. Once the heats become final you can view those here.
The race will be streamed live for free, the link will be available here. The link for live results will be available here.