Wednesday 1 July

RAB Mixed Team 10th out of 18 at Ethiopian National Marathon Relay in Hawassa

Sunday morning the RAB athletes competed in the annual marathon relay event organized by the Ethiopian Athletics Federation. Known internationally as the Chiba Ekiden event, a marathon relay features teams covering the marathon distance in a series of legs of distances 5km, 10km, or 7.195 km, which must be run by a combination of men and women. Thus it gives men and women from the same training group the chance to actually work together in competition, not just supporting each other morally during training.

Like the Ring Road Relay last week in Addis Ababa, this event had tough competition. The location 270km away from the capital city did not deter the best clubs from around the country making the trip to compete. 18 of them showed up on the starting line prepared for battle.

Unlike last week, however, RAB’s star professional Assefa Girma did not lead off, as it was more sensible to reserve him for one of the longer 10km legs rather than the first leg which was only 5km. This meant that the developmental athletes who made up the rest of the team could not adopt a ‘hold the lead’ strategy as they did last time. Rather they would spend the entire race fighting for position in the middle of the pack.

To guide their efforts, therefore, Coach Melaku told them to watch for the team from Muger Cement. Prior to his employment with RAB, Melaku coached Muger Cement for 7 years. When a coach spends that long with a group of athletes he gains an intimate familiarity with their abilities, strengths, and weaknesses. Having been with the RAB developmental athletes, by contrast, for just two months, Melaku is just beginning to learn about them as individuals: how they respond to different types of training, how they can react to various competitive situations, and more. But by having them race Sunday against Muger Cement he could use his former athletes as ‘measuring sticks’ for his new ones.

Melaku knew that 3 of Muger Cement’s six entrants were proper professional runners. Still he believed the RAB developmental athletes could compete with them, and told all the RAB athletes to be aware of this and chase Muger throughout the race. Haptamu Getonoho led off and headed this advice well, coming to the 5km exchange mark in 8th place, just 4 seconds and 2 positions off of Muger Cement. Dunkane ran next in the critical second position, but unfortunately could not match the standard of her solid run last week. She fell back to 10th place while Muger Cement’s athlete meanwhile ran 1:51 faster than her to move the team up to 4th. Next however the tables turned a bit, as Girma ran the 3rd leg of 10km for RAB in an impressive 29:56 while Muger Cement’s athlete Tesfaye had an off day and ran 32:04. Thus RAB was catapulted back into 8th place while Muger dropped to 10th.

At this point, however, Muger was able to run an established professional athlete for each of the 3 remaining legs in the race; RAB by contrast had to look to the other developmental athletes of Nishan, Aman, and Dinkinesh.

But this trio was not to be easily deterred. Nishan admirably set the tone for the second half of the race by running just 19 seconds slower for the leg than Muger’s athlete and, although getting caught by her, still tagging Aman neck-and-neck with the rival team. Aman took a cue from her quite well, running a mere 5 seconds off his competitor from Muger, keeping contact and maintaining the 9th overall position. This made two weeks in a row that the recent 10th-grade graduate of Asella Secondary School stepped up to a mid-race competitive challenge in a big way; last week he was tagged with RAB in sole possession of the lead at the Ring Road Relay, and ran an entire 4km leg without relinquishing it.

As with all marathon relays the final leg is the odd length of 7.195 km, to complete the full marathon distance, and this climatic phase of the race features female anchors from all the teams. As the best female athlete in the camp Dinkinesh bore this responsibility for RAB, and thanks to Aman was tagged just 5 seconds back of Muger’s athlete. Unfortunately she found herself a bit over-matched by Muger’s anchor Amane, and although running a solid 25:43 for the distance finished more than 2 minutes back, getting caught by one team to finish 10th. Amane meanwhile ran a stellar 23:31 to move her team up to 6th.

So in the end Melaku’s new team of athletes finished nowhere in sight of his old one. But this did not make the race at all a bittersweet one for him. ‘The race was very good for the RAB athletes to develop better racing experience,’ he said in an email recounting the race.

The race also showed the RAB female developmental athletes perhaps have further to come along even than their male counterparts. Nishan thanks to a valiant effort finished just 19 seconds behind her Muger counterpart over 5km, but Dunkane and Dinkinesh meanwhile each lost roughly 2 minutes on theirs.

But according to Melaku this is not a cause for concern. For Dunkane, she has unquestionably found the adaptation to the higher volume training to be difficult from an injury standpoint, and that is probably why she ran her 5k leg Sunday at a slower pace than she ran 10k just 3 months ago in Addis Ababa Stadium. But just last week even amid the training struggles she still ran a very solid 4k along the ring road. The overall objective must be to prescribe for her a proper regime of physiotherapy and get her to adapt to the higher training volume. When Melaku coached her through their old club in the past they did not have the opportunity to do this, and were forced to release her. Then when Dunkane trained on her own she could take a low volume approach and thereby get back to 36:25-shape for 10k. But the goal now is to progress beyond that level to being able to compete with the likes of athletes like Muger’s anchor Amane.

Then for Dinkinesh, well, what could she really do today? She has shown consistency in every training session, led the pack on long runs and surged ahead of it in most track sessions, stayed on top of all her minor aches and pains, and is steadily progressing in the training she can handle. But going head-to-head today with Amane, who ran essentially the equivalent of a 33-flat 10k at altitude, was somewhat of a reality check in terms of the gap separating her from Ethiopia’s true professional athletes. The good thing is she has years to develop her talent; if she continues to progress and stay healthy she may very well reach that level. Thanks go out as always to Girls Gotta Run Foundation for supporting developmental female athletes like Dinkinesh and Dunkane.




Splits:

Running Across BordersMuger Cement
1.Habtamu 5km14:27.9 8th position  _   ,Feyissa 5km 14:23.3 -6th
2.Dinkuane 5km18:29.0-9th   "          _                   ,Mestawot 5km,16:38.2-4th
3.Girma     10km 29:56.6-8th  "         _                   ,Tesfaye   10km,32:04.0,10th
4.Nishan    5km   17:31.38-9th  "        _                    ,Rehima    5km,17:12.7-8th
5.Aman     10km   30:16.1-9th "        _                    ,Abera      10km 30:11.6 8th
6.Dinkinesh 7.195km 25:43.1 10th      _                    Amane      7.195m  23:31.8-6th

*Distance of individual legs and total course not certified by AIMS, IAAF, or other verifying association.
**Results hand-timed unofficially by Coach Melaku and Assistant Coach Maresha  Aserat.

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