by Bill Katovsky
Thoughts on the Just-Completed World Track and Field 
Championships in Beijing…American track sprinters don’t just have a doping problem; they have a dropping problem. Well, the botched baton hand-off in the men’s 4×100 was actually due to illegal passing outside the restricted zone. But in years past, especially in the Olympics and on a regular and maddening basis, it’s usually a case of butterfingers, as if the baton were made out of butter… The U.S. is no longer the to-be-feared global track and field hegemony. Its gold medal tally placed them third behind the Kenyan and Jamaican teams…Jamaica’s population is only 2.7 million, the same as Chicago. Imagine if all the top American sprint and short-distance runners only came from Chicago…In Kenya, the high-altitude region of Iten is where their top long distance runners live and train….Let’s hope that in forty years, decathlon gold-medal stud Ashton Eaton doesn’t have his own reality 
television show about heaven-knows-what….Attention all gold-medal winners: when the photographers are clustered around the awards podium, giddily snapping away, it is not necessary to pretend-bite your medals. It’s not the Nathan’s Coney Island Hot Dog Eating contest…What do you call Jenny Simpson’s gutsy one-shoe on, one-shoe off performance midway into the 1,500 meters finals? Quasi-barefoot running? A competitor landed on her left foot, causing the shoe to rip off. Will she go Zola Budd one day and run entirely barefoot?
Trail Travails on the AT. It’s old news that Scott Jurek recently set a land-speed record on the Appalachian Trail, covering the 2,190-mile distance in a brain-staggering 46 days, eight hours and eight minutes hours, nipping the old record by the slimmest margin of daylight– 3 
hours. But do we really want to see our nation’s great trails turn into racetracks? Thru-hiking the AT typically takes six months to complete. Nor did the Maine park officials like it when Jurek and friends celebrated on Mount Katahdin with a carbonated beverage, not the Calistoga kind. Park rangers later issued Jurek three summonses – for littering, hiking with a group larger than 12 people, and consuming alcohol – all violations of park policy. The trail case might go to trial!…At long last Bill Bryson’s bestselling book, “A Walk in the Woods” is now made into a movie that opens this week. More mind-boggling than
Jurek’s speed-run on the AT is that Robert Redford, 79, plays Bryson, who is a much younger and rather portly bearded chap from England. See the photos here: Does Bryson look anything like Redford? Spoiler alert: Bryson only walked about 700 miles.
Hot Book Release. One new running memoir that will soon get plenty of buzz is middle-distance runner three-time Olympian Suzy Favor Hamilton’s “Fast Girl: A Life Spent Running from Madness,” which peels back her public facade and reveals her struggle with manic depression and bipolar condition. Her beauty and natural athletic talent had an unfortunate downside. The illnesses led her to live a hypersexual secret life as a high-priced-priced escort in Las Vegas, working as “Kelly.” The book cover is a first for all running books. Instead of wearing running shoes, she’s photographed in silhouette in high-heeled stilettos.
Shoe Fashion. Speaking of shoes, the trend for new running shoes of 2016 is fat, flat and flash. Judging from the eye-candy footwear selection at the recent Outdoor Retailer Show in Salt Lake City, it’s a fantastic assortment of wild colors, innovative designs, and new cushioning materials. (The pendulum will one day swing back to less shoe and minimalism.) The 
zero-drop Altra IQ pictured here has a built-in micro-sensor in the foot-bed that provides gait biofeedback. Another interesting shoe is the Adidas Outdoor Terrex X King whose knobby sole is modeled after a mountain bike tire. Go here for photos.
http://running.competitor.com/2015/08/photos/sneak-peek-a-first-glance-at-30-new-shoes-for-2016_133152#i7bfEEb73MqqmHiB.99