Sydney Vaught practically jogged through the first half of her race before dominating the latter stages of the event to win the win her first national 10,000m title on the first night of the Toyota USATF Outdoor Track & Field Championships at Icahn Stadium on Thursday (23).
Like the men’s race, none of the women were in the mood for a fast pace on Thursday night. In fact, the first half of the race was covered in just 18:09.44, a time which wouldn’t win a high school 5000m these days. Vaught, in her rookie year as a pro, and her key rival Katie Izzo stayed near the front and waited patiently. Vaught decided just before the halfway point that it was time to pick up the pace.
“It was kind of fartlekly slow, but once Sydney decided to go I was like, this is the real race,” Izzo told reporters.
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A 72-second lap through 5600 meters put everyone out of contention except for Izzo and Allie Buchalski. Vaught then settled in at about 75 seconds a lap to try to grind down her competition. Izzo and Buchalski stayed with her until two laps to go. Buchalski began to lose contact and Vaught made her bid for victory.
She dropped the pace to 71.5 seconds for the penultimate lap, and that put a two-second gap on Izzo. Running her final circuit in 69 seconds, Vaught won by more than six seconds over Izzo, 33:30.60 to 33:36.98. Her winning time was the slowest since Lynn Jennings ran 34:09.88 to win in 1998.
“I’ve been feeling really confident in my training and really confident with where I’m at,” Vaught told reporters. She continued: “I went into it wanting to win. It’s really exciting.”
Vaught ran her second half in 15:21.16, a time that was faster than her 5000m personal best just a year ago.
“It is just a dream come true,” said Vaught, who grew up in Rawlins, Wyoming. “I couldn’t imagine anything better for my rookie year.”
