High School and Pro Athletes Are This Week's Performance of the Week Honorees

Track and field fans voiced their choices in this week's DyeStat's Performance of the Week poll, while DyeStat's editors made their own selection.

Readers’ Choice: Derick Peters

With 45.1 percent of the vote, Derick Peters won our Readers’ Choice vote, beating Jesse Reiser with his second-place tally of 19.66 percent.

Peters, a senior from West Central SD, came away a dominant winner Saturday at the Roy Griak Invitational. His winning time of 15:49 was 23 seconds clear of second place, making him the only high school athlete on the day to break 16 minutes on the tough Roy Griak course.

Thus far, Peters is undefeated this season. His previous wins came at the Augustana Twilight Meet and the Nike Heartland Pre-Regional. However, his Roy Griak performance is his strongest to date, generating a 194 speed rating, the best in the nation in the past week.

Peters is now only about two weeks out from the start of the South Dakota championship portion of the season. Last year he went undefeated through the SDHSAA Class A State Championships and he appears poised to repeat that undefeated streak.

Editors’ Choice: Guye Adola

Peters did not produce the only top high school performance at Roy Griak this weekend. Emily Covert, a junior from Washburn MN, continued her undefeated season, beating Grace Ping in the process. Covert has already run 17:32 on the year, but her 18:13 winning time might actually be a stronger performance based on the tough nature of the Roy Griak 5k course.

However, this week the Editors' Choice award goes to Ethiopian Guye Adola for his performance at the BMW Berlin Marathon. Entering the race, all the attention was on the big three of Eliud Kipchoge, Kenenisa Bekele and Wilson Kipsang and their chase of the world record. Adola was running under the radar in his debut marathon.

Prior to Berlin, Adola had never run a race longer than a half marathon. His best performances came in 2014 when he earned a bronze medal at the IAAF World Half Marathon Championships. That year he twice ran under an hour for the event, something he has not been able to do since. Adola has also run several 10,000-meter races on the track, including earlier this year in Hengelo, but never well enough to be chosen for the Ethiopian team.

From the gun, Adola ran with the leaders. As the race progressed, both athletes and pacers began to fall away. By 30 kilometers, it was just Kipchoge and Adola. Once the two were alone, Kipchoge gave Adola some marathoning advice, pointing at the blue tangent line painted on the course.

Whether Adola, 26, took Kipchoge's advice to heart is unclear, but not long after, Adola put in a surge, distancing himself from the veteran runner. Kipchoge eventually recovered and went on to win, but Adola stayed close.

In the end, Adola crossed the finish line in 2:03:46. That is the fastest debut marathon ever and places Adola seventh on the all-time marathoner list.

Adola's performance is even more impressive given the conditions, which included slick streets and periodic heavy rain. Also finishing only 14 seconds behind the fastest all-conditions marathoner ever is a good sign that Adola has potential to be a great marathoner. Of course, the marathon is a fickle event and Adola's debut success is not guarantee of future success. Only time will tell.