Every once in a while there comes a meet that is so talked about, so heavily promoted, and so exaggerated in importance, all of America takes note.
The meet we are referring to is of course the Stanford Invitational.
It’s like the Catalina Wine Mixer of Track and Field events.
Before you fire up your FloPro livestream (for a whopping $30/month now?!), and settle in to watch, here are 10 things you should know about the Stanford Invitational.
- This invite is a bigger deal to high-schoolers than Minecraft but not quite as big as Arcadia.
- Paul Chelimo absolutely ravaged the 5k last year at Stanford Invitational. He closed in 56 seconds. This was the start of a very successful string of 5k races that ended with Silver at the 2016 Olympics. Oh, and btw he wont be racing this year.
- Ches + Maton + Prakel.
- 3 words: Parker Stinson 5k.
- I don’t even think Allie Ostrander knows which event she’s running and where. She’s entered in the 3kSteeplechase at Stanford and the 5k at SF State Distance Carnvial. Could she pull of a super impressive logistically miraculous double?
- You can pretty much guarantee that Flotrack is gonna pull some lame April Fool’s Day stunt regarding Stanford Invitational.
- A lot of athletes are gonna be real disappointed when they get off the bus and see the “Welcome to the San Francisco State Distance Carnival” sign…
- Be sure to give your sprinter/jumper/thrower friends some space this weekend, because they’ll likely be pissed they’re at this meet and not somewhere in Texas.
- There’s a cool gift shop attached to the stadium if you need any keepsakes/memorabilia. As the story goes, when the Rosa bros hosted Ches as a recruit, he bought an Oregon hat at this exact gift shop.
- The security guards are more strict than my mom’s friend Vince.
- If the palm tree emoji isn’t one of your most frequently used emojis by the end of this weekend, you did something wrong.
DumbFlotrack 