Galen Rupp,Mary Cain, Matthew Centrowitz, and Jordan Hasay, Nike Oregon Project runners coached by Alberto Salazar, will compete on January 31 at the Armory Track Invitational, a new indoor meet at the New Balance Track and Field Center in the Armory in New York.
Rupp, who has the American two-mile record of 8:07:41 indoors, will try to improve on the world’s best mark of 8:04.35 by Ethiopia’s Kenenisa Bekele. Cain and Hasay will be in the two-mile, an event in which Cain, 18, has the American junior record of 9:38.68.
Centrowitz will be on a leg of a distance medley relay, an event that will include national teams from the United State, Kenya, and Ireland, plus the professional teams Brooks Beasts and New Jersey-New York Track Club.
"The new Armory track makes it as fast as any track indoors,” Salazar said in a press release. He intends to bring some of the same athletes back to the Armory for the Millrose Games on February 14.
Ray Flynn, a prominent runner’s agent who is the Millrose Games meet director, will also serve as director of the professional portion of the Armory Invitational. There will be a two-hour broadcast of parts of the Invitational from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m., details of which have yet to be announced.
Though in recent years Salazar has tended to take his athletes to Boston for indoor meets at the Reggie Lewis Center or Boston University, followed almost immediately by post-race workouts at Harvard University’s indoor track, his runners are not strangers to the Armory.
Cain, whose Bronxville home is about a 20-minute drive from the Armory, set a pair of U.S. high school mile records there, the most recent a 4:28.85. Centrowitz won the men’s Wanamaker Mile at Millrose in 2012 and was second in 2013.
