IAAF

On a day where Ethiopia dominated all four races, 20-year-old Merima Mohammed overcame leg problems and cold, wet conditions to run the second-fastest ever women’s race at the Chevron Houston Marathon on Sunday (13), while countryman Bazu Worku, 22, ran away with the men’s title.

Ethiopian teenager Muktar Edris took a gun-to-tape win in the men’s 9 km race at the 36th edition of the Cross della Vallagarina with a gap of 42 seconds over Italian Stefano La Rosa and nine-time European cross-country champion Sergiy Lebid in a breath-taking final sprint on Sunday (13).

Olympic bronze medallist Yekaterina Poistogova and Yuriy Borzakovskiy were the standout performers at the ‘Cup of the Head of the Republic of Chuvashiya’, a new athletics tournament that was launched this weekend in the town of Novocheboksarsk.

The 2010 World cross-country champion Emily Chebet completed a scintillating campaign with a fourth victory as African cross-country champion John Mwangangi reigned supreme in the men’s long race to wrap up the seven-meet KCB/AK National Cross Country series in Kericho on Saturday (12).

On January 11 Monika Pyrek’s benefit concert was held in the Contemporary Theatre in Szczecin, Poland, to mark the end of her athletics career. Less than 24 hours later Pyrek – who is currently four months pregnant – married Norbert Rokita, her agent and partner for many years.

For the first time in 26 years, Kanagawa prefecture won the 31st annual Inter-Prefectural Women’s Ekiden – a nine-stage marathon distance (42.195km) ekiden – in Kyoto on Sunday (13).

Ireland’s 2011 and 2012 SPAR European Cross Country Championships gold medallist Fionnaula Britton defended her title at the 36th Antrim International Cross Country, an IAAF Cross Country Permit meeting, while Uganda’s 2011 IAAF World Cross Country Championships junior men’s silver medallist Thomas Ayeko got his first international cross country win on Saturday (12).

With now only three weeks to go until the start of the IAAF Indoor Permit series, the Indoor Meeting in Karlsruhe will have a mouth-watering clash in what is arguably the nation’s best event, as one of the highlights of the six-meeting series.