2025 Summer Mileage Program, July 21, 2025, Week Three , Day One, Jakob Ingebrigtsen, on the mend!

This is the first day of the third week of summer mileage for cross country. This is about your future. This is July 21, 2025. Our focus is on Jakob Ingebrigtsen, one of the sports most popular athletes.

This is the third  week of RunBlogRun’s Summer Mileage Program, day one and   we focus on Jakob Ingebrigtsen 

I first met Jakob Ingebrigtsen in Dusseldorf in 2019. I was seeing how cheaply I could hit six meets in 3 weeks (Ibis budget hotels, trains, planes as little as possible, you name it), Dusseldorf was my third stop on the Tour de Larry (Indoor WA meets in Europe). It was a blast. I met Jakob after he and his brothers had run in the meet.

The Sporthalle in Dusseldorf seats about 3500, and was sold out. I loved the German pretzels and good beer post meet. I loved walking around the facility, speaking with coaches and athletes. In the mixed zone, right after I had interviewed Marie-Jose Ta Lou, I met Jakob, all of 19 and really a nice guy. He was guarded a bit, yes, but he was happy to talk post race and we chatted for five minutes, which I appreciated.

I watched Jakob come up through the ranks, coming oh so close to medals in 2019 at the World Champs. Jakob is a gutty runner, who loves the motivation that racing gives him. He trains at a very high level. ” I train to race comfortably at 55-56 seconds for the 1,500m, ” Jakob told me, ” to take the kick out of my competitors.

In 2021, Jakob won the Olympic 1,500 meters. In 2022, Jakob took silver in the World 1,500 meters and won the 5,000m. In 2023, Jakob took the silver in the 1,500m and won the 5,000m again. And in 2024, Jakob gave it all he had, taking 4th in a brilliant men’s 1,500m won by Cole Hocker, and then, won the 5,000m. In between years, Jakob runs the European Cross Country European Indoors and Outdoors. Last March 2025, I spent two weeks in The Netherlands with my girl friend and we were the only Americans at the European Indoor Champs. I intereviewed Jakob twice and he was very happy after his 1,500m and 3,000m gold medals, giving him 4 titles at the 3,000m and 3 titles at the 1,500 meters. Then, his achilles acted up. We are happy to hear that he is back to training at full scale and we hope to see him in Tokyo.