Brian Harvey of the BAA raced the 5k at the Payton Jordan Invitational yesterday.  Check out his race:

Brian ran a 14:16.49, which placed him 13th in his heat. Thoughts from my couch: I thought Brian was looking good up front through the frst half of the race and was quite excited to see him up front. I loved the way he was attacking it, and was a little surprised by the lack of love the announcers were giving him.  They were having an aneurysm because they couldn’t figure out who was in third at the time, meanwhile Harvey was sitting right there in fourth. They kept listing the top two, then would freak out about the third guy, then failed to mention Harvey. Brian came through 2k in about 5:36 and was looking great in second…and then the announcers give him some credit! Sadly they had also had to throw in that he has “one of the slowest seed times in the field”.  Bastards.

Overall, the race pace seemed good early, then right when the rabbit dropped out it all seemed to go to shit.  Without having a clock on the screen, it was tougher to tell.  The whole field seemed to go from like 67’s to 70 pace and then things just really shook up.  A pack of 4-5 guys shot out to the lead and Brian slowly fell back.

We know it wasn’t what he was aiming for (or what he’s capable of), but the Level respects the effort. Way to attack it!

Throughout the three sections, 26 guys got under the ‘B’ standard of 13:50, and 10 guys got under the ‘A’ standard. If you missed the fast section, go back and watch it now! Lopez Lomong somehow miscounted the laps and stops with one lap to go. Once he realizes the mistake, he turns it back on and finishes up the last lap…and still somehow manages a 59 sec split on the 400 meters including the breather he took.

Then there was Alan Webb in the second section, with an unbelievable 13:49.7 (‘B’ standard!) after he was only in there to rabbit for the first mile. This was all after running a 3:38.86 (‘A’ standard) 1500 like forty minutes earlier!

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