Festival of Miles - Pro Race Previews

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Nike Festival of Miles
June 5th, 2014 at 7:00 pm CT
St. Louis University High School

The Nike Festival of Miles features more than just great high school races. The fields for the professional races, the Saint Louis Track Club Elite Men's Mile and the Speed Factory Athletics Women's 800, include Nike OTC's Jordan McNamara, New Balance's Craig Miller, Heather Kampf (Asics) and British Olympian Marilyn Okoro among many others.
 
In the Women's 800 the favorite is almost certainly two-time defending FOM champion and meet-record holder Heather Kampf. Kampf just ran 2:00.65 at the Nike Prefontaine Classic on Friday evening and was part of the USA's silver-medal winning 4 x 1500 at the IAAF World Relays the week before that. She'll face off against Olympian Okoro (1:58.45 PR) and new Brooks Beast Erica Moore who owns a bronze medal from the World Indoor Champs and a PR of 1:59.97. Other challengers include native Saint Louisans Shannon Leinert (Nike OTC Elite) and Cydney Ross (NJNY Track Club). 
 
The Saint Louis Track Club Men's Mile is stacked. Jordan McNamara, the 2011 FOM Champ, leads the way coming off a 3:52 at the Nike Prefontaine Classic on Saturday. Another former champ, Craig Miller, could be his biggest challenger. Miller is the defending champ and was the runner-up in 2012. Other top contenders include Duncan Phillips, Chris Gowell and Tommy Schmitz. All have been on fire in 2014 with Phillips winning at last week's American Track League Meet in Austin and Gowell and Schmitz running 3:39 for 1500 at the OXY USATF High Performance Meet. All three have run FOM in the past. Local favorites include Nike OTC's Dan Quigley and Stephen Pifer (Newton/Speed Factory Athletics) who'll be trying to break four minutes, or the 1500 equivalent, for the tenth straight year.