With her new USA indoor 5000m record in Boston last night, Shalane Flanagan has become the first American athlete to simultaneously hold the national records for 3000m and 5000m indoors, and 5000m and 10,000m outdoors.
"Mary Slaney?" Flanagan answered when asked if she was the first to hold all four marks at the same time. "I don't know. I don't keep tabs like that."
But statisticians do, and according to two of the nation's top distance running statisticians, Ken Young and Marty Post, Flanagan is indeed the first. Slaney simultaneously held the national records at 3000m indoors (8:47.3), 5000m outdoors (15:08.26 then 15:06.53) and 10,000m (31:35.3) from Jul. 16, 1982 through Jan. 31, 1987, but never held the 5000m indoor record. As Post points out, she may have never run a 5-K indoors.
Of course, Slaney also held the USA 3000m record during the same period: 8:29.71, then 8:29.69, then 8:25.83. The last mark, achieved Sept. 7, 1985, remains the USA record.
Flanagan's national records are now as follows:
3000m indoors: 8:33.25 (Boston, 7-Jan-2007)
5000m indoors: 14:47.62 (Boston, 07-Feb-2009)
5000m: 14:44.80 (Walnut, 13-Apr-2007)
10,000m: 30:22.22 (Beijing, 15-Aug-2008)
Her personal best for 3000m is 8:35.34 set in Monaco in 2007.
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