I went down the Google rabbit hole and ended up looking at the list of past U.S. 10,000m champions. The name Mike Mykytok jumped out at me. It’s a name I hadn’t heard or seen since 1997 yet it was instantly familiar. I’m not sure why. My best guess is that I was paying very close attention to the U.S. 10,000m scene in 1997. That’s the year I ran the race at the Junior National meet. Or maybe I saw him run a good 10K at Stanford around that time. Or because he was a former Junior National champ at 10,000m and for nearly two years of high school and college I was focused on doing the same thing.
Who knows. Point is, running forms are like finger prints, aren’t they?