By Audrey Allen
March 28, 2025
With the outdoor season in full swing and the World Championships top of mind for athletes and fans alike, consider this preview your friendly reminder to refresh that Road to Tokyo tab in 48 hours time once The TEN wraps up Saturday night.
The “World’s Fastest 10,000m” tagline might sound like boastful marketing, but Sound Running sure puts on a meet to back up that statement. In the meet’s four-year history, 15 national records have been set, including both American records, and we’ve seen 10 sub-27 performances plus the first ever sub-30 on American soil. Can 2025 keep the hot streak going?
With seemingly fewer and fewer 10,000m racing opportunities on the calendar, the TEN feels like a saving grace on the world stage, especially given that the Night Of The 10,000m PBs was canceled this year. Even if the setting may not scream it, the stakes are high at JSerra High School—the BU of outdoor distance running—in suburban Southern California.
When the gun goes off at 8:55pm and 9:35pm PT (take that, East Coast folks), you can follow the live results here, and stream it live on Flotrack (subscription required). Plus, the CITIUS MAG team will have boots on the ground in San Juan Capistrano, providing updates and interviews.
TOKYO Women’s 10,000m (11:55pm ET/8:55pm PT)
On the women’s side, the Americans have yet to hit the standard—which dropped from 30:40 to 30:20 this championship season—but Weini Kelati, Karissa Schweizer, Parker Valby, Amanda Vestri, and Jessica McClain are currently sitting in the quota. (That’s right… qualification in the 10,000m hasn’t gotten any cleaner since last go around, with World Rankings likely factoring in again.)
Most domestic eyes will be on Weini Kelati and Elise Cranny, who seem to have the best shot at sub-30:20. Cranny knows a thing or two about winning this race (hello, 2021 and 2022!), and is coming off a busy indoor season with personal bests across the shorter events. She’ll need to tap back into her strength and will run her first 10,000m race since the 2023 World Championships, after opting to contest the 1500-5000m double at the U.S. Trials last summer. Given that Cranny is a national champion and the third-fastest American ever in the event, it’ll be fun to see how she kicks off her outdoor campaign.
If you’re going for recency bias, Kelati is the reigning national champion in the event. And based on her American record-setting performance at the Houston half, she’s theoretically coming into this race in better fitness to surpass her 30:33.82 PB from 2024. Plus, she might have the bad taste of a sixth-place finish at the U.S. Half Marathon Championships from earlier this month still stuck in her mouth and is looking for a much-needed palate cleanse. With these two on the line, you can bet our social team is going to have an American record graphic template prepped and ready to go.
We can also wipe away our tears for Parker Valby’s scratch by getting excited for Lauren Ryan, who’s continuing her revenge tour and flexing her fitness after a 1:08:43 half marathon, a pair of 15:0X 5000m races and an 8:41.8 3000m in 2025 alone. While she posted the Australian record with a third-place, 30:35.66 finish at this meet last year, she was a mere 0.12 off Kim Smith’s Oceanian record and is hoping to continue rewriting the record books. If a member of this trio doesn’t take the win, it’ll likely be at the hands of Lemlem Hailu of Ethiopia, who has the fastest PB in the field and is part of the sub-30 club with her 29:59 from two years ago. Her 2024 season ended with three straight DNFs, but a 1:08 half marathon PB from February means the odds are looking promising that she’ll reinsert herself into the conversation this season.
Other athletes to look out for are Courtney Wayment in her 10,000m debut, perennial U.S. fourth-placer Jess McClain, and newly crowned U.S. Half Marathon champion Taylor Roe. If you’re biased towards the NCAA, keep an eye on New Mexico’s Pamela Kosgei, who is at the top of the collegiate distance ranks but has yet to race a 10,000m. She might be hoping to notch the collegiate record in the same rookie fashion that Valby ran her 30:50.43.
And as for under-the-radar intrigue, be sure to tune in for the earlier SPIKE Women’s 10,000m race at 7:20pm to watch Allie Ostrander’s first 10,000m on the track since 2019, where she’ll be paced by Colleen Quigley.
TOKYO Men’s 10,000m (12:35 am ET/9:35pm PT)
Closing out the late West Coast night will be the men’s race. The likes of Grant Fisher, Nico Young and Woody Kincaid—our Paris 10,000m trio and familiar faces at this meet—will be watching comfortably from home as they already have the standard checked off their respective bingo cards.
The fastest returner will be New Mexico’s Habtom Samuel, who also already hit the standard, but that 26:53.84 was slightly overshadowed by Young’s collegiate record. He’s coming off a strong indoor campaign with both mile and 5,000m personal bests, and he’s 10 seconds faster over 5000m coming into this race than he was in 2024. While Samuel might be the favorite to give that NCAA DI record a scare, we might see a new DII record as well, thanks to Romain Legendre of Adams State.
The next fastest returner is South Africa’s Adriaan Wildschutt. Another one with the standard under his belt (26:50.64 from Paris), his presence on the start list begs the question: why is he at The TEN? In a race centered around records and times, a refreshing answer might be that he’s simply here to compete and wanting to flex his fitness coming off a 12:55.02 PB this past indoor season. There’s also a chance that with the security blanket of his Tokyo standard already comfortably wrapped around him, he can make this race as full-send as he wants and his spot at Worlds is safe even if he blows up.
Also in the ranks and a new face at this meet is Graham Blanks. He ran four 10,000m races in the span of 2.5 months in 2023 and hasn’t run one in the oval since. (Can you blame him?) What has the soon-to-be Harvard graduate done in that time frame? Perhaps his two NCAA trophies, the Olympic rings tattooed on his back and membership in the sub-13 club speak for themselves. We also haven’t forgotten about Sean McGorty, who made two 10,000m teams in 2022 and 2023 but didn’t race the event last year, and Ahmed Muhumed, who’s coming off a strong 1:01:03 half marathon performance earlier this month and noted on Instagram that this is his first 10,000m on the track that he feels “truly prepared for.”
Drew Hunter made his 10,000m debut in 27:38.87 here last year, and he’s run one 10,000m since then: fourth at the Olympic Trials. Now an established 10,000m guy, Hunter will be looking to shave some serious time off his PB, and give himself an even better shot at representing the U.S. over 25 laps come Tokyo.
On a final note, the meet has expanded the high school side of things to a full day of racing. Keep an eye on sub-four milers Tayvon Kitchen and Josiah Tostenson getting a taste of the professional ranks in the men’s 1500m, set to go off at 6:40 pm. And Rylee Blade, the second-fastest high schooler over 5,000m with a 15:16.72 performance two weeks ago, will contest the 3200m at 7:05 pm to kick off the night session.
Will more national records fall? Which athletes can dip below the Tokyo 2025 standards? How much business will the nearby In-N-Out be doing afterward? These are some of the questions on our minds heading into a potentially “perfect TEN” weekend.
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Audrey Allen
Audrey is a student-athlete at UCLA (Go Bruins!) studying Communications with minors in Professional Writing and Entrepreneurship. When she’s not spiking up for cross country and track, she loves being involved with the media side of the sport. You’ll often find her taking photos from the sidelines or designing graphics on her laptop.
