By Chris Chavez
January 22, 2024
The On Athletics Club’s Josette Andrews will chase the 2024 Olympic qualifying standard of 14:52.00 when she races at the John Thomas Terrier Invitational at Boston University on Saturday.
Here’s what you need to know:
– Andrews has not raced an indoor 5000m since 2020. Last year, she ran 14:43.36 at On Track Nights: Los Angeles in May to move into No. 7 on the U.S. all-time outdoor list. The Olympic qualification period opened on July 1, 2023 so her time does not count toward Paris qualifying.
– She will be paced in Saturday’s race by her On Athletics Club teammate Alicia Monson, who already has her Olympic standard with a 14:19.45 at last year’s London Diamond League. Monson was also slated to pace Andrews at On Track Nights: Los Angeles but came down with COVID
– Some Ethiopian stars will get their first look at Boston University’s famous track as Fantaye Belayneh (14:44.51 PB from 2021); Aynadis Mebratu (14:45.70 PB from 2023) and Senayet Getachew (14:46.25 PB from 2023) are all entered and can keep Norris company toward the front of the pack.
– U.S. Olympian Rachel Smith is coming back from giving birth to her first daughter and will be racing her first track 5000m since 2021. She owns a personal best of 14:52.04 from May 2021 and then went on to qualify for the U.S. Olympic team and competed at the Tokyo Games. She is coming off a 4:41.27 mile and 2:12.51 800m double at altitude in Flagstaff, Arizona at the Lumberjack Invitational.
– Spain’s Marta Garcia Alonso, who ran 15:02.11 last September in Berlin, is entered after mostly competing in cross country over the past two months.
Kevin Morris / @KevMoFoto
We caught up with On Athletics Club coach Dathan Ritzenhein to discuss his team’s plans for this weekend’s meet in Boston and how it sets his athletes up for the remainder of the indoor season. The following interview has been edited lightly for clarity.
CITIUS MAG: Alicia Monson isn’t racing this weekend, correct?
DATHAN RITZENHEIN: She’s pacing. She’s not opening up until Millrose. It’s a good field. I think there are four or five women who have run sub-14:50. Josette is in really good shape so Alicia’s going to return a bit of the favor for the 10,000m last year. Alicia doesn’t need to race since she has all of the standards so we’re focused on getting in a bigger training block. She came off sickness (COVID) a couple of weeks ago.
CITIUS MAG: How’s she feeling coming back from COVID?
DATHAN RITZENHEIN: She’s good. It seems to affect her not extremely bad but just knowing the acute phase in the month or so after, we have to be a bit smarter. A lot of the team had COVID earlier and she didn’t. It’s fine. We just try to be smart a couple weeks after.
CITIUS MAG: She’s also getting ready for The Ten. I see she’s been running with Hellen Obiri a bit. How do they match up in practice?
DATHAN RITZENHEIN: Hellen has started her marathon build-up for Boston. We took a bit longer after New York than we did last year. It was a long buildup from the year before. We took it easy for a while and got her back to some baseline fitness and then she just wanted to do Houston as a first race. We started training this week and she’s been doing some track workouts with the girls to get the speed back in her legs. With Alicia, we’re slowly pushing her up in distance but she’s still got a couple more years of really getting better on the track. I started putting her in more with Hellen on longer stuff. Every week or two, she’ll do something longer with her. Hellen can train so hard that we still have to ease our way into it.
Kevin Morris / @KevMoFoto
CITIUS MAG: How’s Josette feeling?
DATHAN RITZENHEIN: She has to get the Olympic standard still. It’s a good field. With good pacing and some good competition, BU is always fast. It’s a good chance for her to make a shot at it. Two weeks later, she’s running the mile at Millrose.
CITIUS MAG: As you head into Year 2 with Josette on the team, you’ve now been able to learn her body and training. What’s different a year later?
DATHAN RITZENHEIN: She’s just so much stronger aerobically and physically. When she came in, she hadn’t been in the weight room in like four years. She could hardly lift the bar in the gym. There was a lot of time throughout the year where there were foundational things that we needed to build on so that she could run more. Her volume was relatively low. We spent a lot of the year doing that. She’s really strong and looks really good in training. She’s been able to bump up her training too in total volume as a result.
CITIUS MAG: It’s been an up-and-down last few years for Carmela Cardama Baez. What can we expect in her return?
DATHAN RITZENHEIN: Yeah, it’s her first race on the track in like a year and a half I think. The first year, we started off pretty good but she had some tendenosis in her peroneal tendons – which needed a complete rebuilding. Likewise, she ran really low volume so we had to take a super long time with a lot of rehab. The return to running was a very long process. Now, she’s been training really good. Much higher volume than she did in the past ever. It’s been six or so months, where there’s been consistency in training. She’s wanted to race for the last six months but I wanted her to focus on putting in a lot of training. We’ll probably pay it a little cautious in the early parts of the race for her but I’d like to see her in the faster heat and going for it. Let’s just get back out there and remember all of the feels.
Kevin Morris / @KevMoFoto
CITIUS MAG: Sage Hurta-Klecker is in the 3000m? This is her first race over a mile since 2018.
DATHAN RITZENHEIN: If she doesn’t get a PB, I’ll be surprised because it’s been a long time since she’s done anything like that. She’s doing great. Last year, she ran 1:58 for 800m but she was a bit beat up toward the end of the year. She ran the Diamond League final, ran a few sub-2s but we had to spend much of the fall getting her built back up to feeling normal. We’ve taken a slightly different approach than we have the past two years. She hasn’t quite touched the normal speed that we’d do. She did run some good 28-second 200s yesterday and looked good. It’s there. She’s just running a lot of volume. She said she ran her highest volume week since 2018 or 2019 so she’s been feeling good. This is a fitness test for her. We don’t have a whole lot to compare it to and she doesn’t intend to race that distance at USAs.
CITIUS MAG: Checking in on the women’s side, who do you plan to send to the U.S. Indoor Championships?
DATHAN RITZENHEIN: I think Josette and Sage will both run U.S. Indoors.
CITIUS MAG: If they qualify for World Indoors in Glasgow would they go to that?
DATHAN RITZENHEIN: Yeah, if they qualify for World Indoors then they’d go to that. If not, we’ll just take some foundational weeks to rebuild and get ready for outdoors.
Chris Chavez
Chris Chavez launched CITIUS MAG in 2016 as a passion project while working full-time for Sports Illustrated. He covered the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro and grew his humble blog into a multi-pronged media company. He completed all six World Marathon Majors and is an aspiring sub-five-minute miler.
