With Stunning 600, Possibilities Seem Boundless For Mu

By Marc Bloom for DyeStat

How far under 2 minutes can Athing Mu of New Jersey go when she races the 800 meters on the Armory track at New Balance Nationals Indoor March 10 to complete one of the most celebrated indoor seasons ever by a high school athlete? 

After her astounding 600-meter multi-record victory in 1:23.57 over a professional field on Sunday’s concluding day at the Toyota USATF Indoor Championships on Staten Island, the 16-year-old Mu is not only a candidate for sub-2:00 indoors but a threat to Ajee' Wilson’s American indoor record just out of the oven and still cooling off.

Wilson, 24, ran 1:58.60 on Feb. 9 in the NYRR Millrose Games at the Armory. She raced a marquee field to dip under a mark that surpassed training partner Charlene Lipsey's 2017 record. It was an ideal set-up: two other women were on Wilson’s back and broke two minutes themselves. The runner-up, Natoya Goule, the 2015 NCAA indoor 800 champion while competing for LSU, set a Jamaican indoor record of 1:59.13.

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Unlike Wilson, Mu, in her junior year at Trenton Central High School while competing in open and professional events for Trenton Track Club, will have meager competition at Nationals. Who could possibly stay with Mu as she attempts to reel off 30-seconds-or-faster per 200-meter lap? The next-fastest girls in the country are currently at 2:06-and-change. Perhaps meet officials could call in a favor and find some capable “pacer” from the elite high school ranks.

Mu, the second youngest of seven children (four boys, three girls), shrugged off the burden of a solo attempt. She said that she just runs, without guile, and lets her legs take her where they will. At 5 feet 10, the willowy Mu, a Sudanese, has a Larry James stride.

Mu had all the ear markings of a pro herself at the Ocean Breeze Athletic Complex, the three-year-old facility situated just around the bend from the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge, its towers visible from the track, on Staten Island’s North Shore.

Mu coolly raced from far outside lane 6 on the banked surface and broke from the stagger into the lead on the opening lap; fought off Stanford grad Olivia Baker, herself a former New Jersey high school star, on the second lap; and denied a furious bid by five-time NCAA 800 champion Raevyn Rogers, an Oregon alum now training with the Wilson group in Philadelphia, on the bell lap with 100 to go.  

When Mu’s winning time came up on the scoreboard, it was so farfetched that no one quite knew right after which records Mu had broken. It turned out: just about all of them. High school record? Check. (She took almost three seconds off her 1:26.23 heat winner the day before.) Meet record? Check. (Two years ago, Wilson ran 1:23.84.) American record? Check. (2012 Olympian and three-time world championship bronze medalist Alysia Montano ran 1:23.59 in 2013.) World U-20 record? Check. (Mu’s time shattered her own mark set in the prelims, which shaved Wilson’s 1:26.45 set in 2013.) 

World record? Almost-check. A Russian woman ran 1:23.44 in 2004. (Based on that country’s sordid track history, if you believe the legitimacy of that performance I’ve got a private berth on the Staten Island Ferry to sell you.)

Mu was so stunned by the number 1:23, she too was momentarily confused. “I don’t know the 600 times much, I’m just looking for a PR,” she said. “When I saw the ‘AR,’ I said, ‘That’s crazy,’ and then I saw the 1:23, I thought, ‘That’s really crazy.’” Then, lost amid the post-race commotion, Mu, still woozy, allowed herself a breathless comment of fanciful conceit. With her head down and in a barely audible voice, she uttered, “That’s a 1:53 conversion.”

That’s right: 1:53, in the 800. Of course it won’t happen, not yet, but hear out the teenager’s math. When 1:23 struck Mu (pronounced Mow as in Wow) like a spear of sunlight on a summer day, she did a quick, impulsive calculation. “Athing has a very technical mind,” said her coach, Al Jennings. One-twenty-three: Mu’s laps were 25.99, 29.04 and 28.55. She thought, one more lap, a bit slower, in 30 seconds… yes? No, physiology is not so tidy. But if 1:53 (indoors, outdoors, wherever) is years away, 1:57 or 1:58 is perhaps days away. 

Has there ever been a young runner with Mu’s combination of short speed, long speed and middle-distance strength — the hybrid 600 was a perfect foil — all wound in a combustible, sinewy package? Last summer in Des Moines, at the AAU Junior Olympics, an annual favorite of Mu’s, she won the age 15-16 400 in 52.83, the 800 in 2:07.54 and 1500 in 4:38.78 before taking second in the 200 in 24.07 (after running 23.63 in the heats).

With her poise, daring and teenage charm — she turns 17 in June while saying, “I’m still 14 in my mind” — Mu matches grace notes with that other heralded Jersey Girl, Sydney McLaughlin, who turned pro after her freshman year at the University of Kentucky and is now living and training in southern California. In 2016, McLaughlin, turning 17 prior to her senior year of high school, made the Olympic team in the 400 hurdles while setting a World U-20 record and made the semis at Rio. Soon enough, she’ll be a world favorite.

This summer, Mu, who turns 17 in June, hopes to embark on a similar adventure. She will likely run the USA senior nationals in Des Moines in late July, with a chance to make the U.S. team in the 800 for the world championships in Doha, Qatar, Sept. 27 through Oct. 6. The top three placers qualify, provided they meet the IAAF standard; in the women’s 800, it is 2:00.60.

Mu got a taste of international experience last October when she took second in the Youth Olympics 800 in Buenos Aires as a member of the American squad. To affirm her national team identity, Mu found a local Walmart to pick up red, white and blue ribbons, which she wore in her hair during Sunday's final. 

By the summer who knows how fast Mu will have run and whether she will return for her senior year of high school with a bonus in her spike bag. As an amateur, Mu had to forego the USA $6,000 winner’s purse. Asked about whether a pro deal may be coming, Mu said, maybe her coaches were approached, but she was, well… “I’m not focusing on that.” Jennings said he’d heard such talk going around but that “nobody has approached me directly.”  

On Staten Island, instead of competing in her usual Trenton singlet, Mu wore a stylish Nike floral jersey in the prelims, then her Nike USA team uniform from Buenos Aires in the finals.

When Sunday’s 600 approached, you could feel the crowd gathering anticipation. Not for the upcoming men’s mile but for Mu and the 600, an indoor specialty given new life, a throwback to the heyday of North American indoor track almost a half-century ago — soon after the Verrazzano opened and transformed the city’s “forgotten borough” from an island backwater to politicians’ playpen.

It was 1970 when Martin McGrady, at these same championships, then the AAUs, then at Madison Square Garden, before more than 15,000 fans, before Nike or Mondo track surface, outran his rival, 1968 Olympic 400 gold medalist Lee Evans, in a world record 600 — that’s 600 yards — in 1:07.6. McGrady won 25 of 29 600s and was King of the Boards before, a decade hence, Eamonn Coghlan would become Chairman.

Finishing her indoor campaign, which has taken her from Virginia to North Carolina to several appearances at the Armory and, now, Staten Island — leading the nation in the 400, 600, 800 and 1,000 (11th in the 200, 24.11) — Mu has resumed workouts at The College of New Jersey outside Trenton, facing these high school standards in the 800 with one race to go: Sammy Watson’s (she recently turned pro after her freshman year at Texas A&M) indoor record of 2:01.78 from 2017, and Mary Cain’s outdoor, “all seasons” record of 1:59.51 from 2013. 

Plus, the AR. Crazy. #

Marc Bloom’s book about Fayetteville-Manlius, “Amazing Racers: The Story of America’s Greatest Running Team and Its Revolutionary Coach,” will be published in August by Pegasus Books.