The 2017 Payton Jordan Invitational is live on FloTrack on Friday, May 5, beginning at 4:00 PM Pacific time, and we can't wait. We've already previewed the women's 800, women's 1500, women's 5k, men's 800, men's 1500, and men's 5K. Below, we break down the men's 10K.

Men's 10K

Worlds standard: 27:45.00
USAs standard: 28:30.00
Who: Hassan Mead, Shadrack Kipchirchir, Patrick Tiernan, Jake Robertson, Callum Hawkins, Abbabiya Simbassa, David McNeill, Marc Scott, Noah Droddy, Trevor Dunbar, Diego Estrada, Minato Oishi, Andy Vernon
When: 10:37 PT (Heat 1)​

​UPDATE: ​Mo Ahmed has been added to the field! With his 13:01 (outdoor) and 13:04 (indoor) 5K PRs, Ahmed has a serious chance to become the first Canadian man under 27 minutes for 10K. The current Canadian 10K record is Cam Levins's 27:07.51, and Ahmed's presence in the race immediately puts it in danger. Our original preview appears below.

Why: Only 11 American men have ever broken 27:30 for 10K, and six of them did it at the meet now known as Payton Jordan. (Meb Keflezighi ran his time when the meet was called the Cardinal Invite, and Galen Rupp has gone sub-27:30 multiple times.) At least one man could be ready to join their ranks this weekend in Palo Alto: Hassan Mead.

In the 5K, Mead ran 13:04 and 13:09 last year, 13:10 in 2015, and 13:02 in 2014. He is a legit low-13 minutes guy in the event. But he has not yet tapped into his full potential in the 10K. In 2015, Mead began transitioning to the event, running 27:33 and qualifying for worlds. The transition halted last year, though, when Mead dropped out of a hot Olympic Trials final and came back to make the 5K team. It could get rolling again on Friday night. This is Mead's 2017 season opener.



He'll have plenty of company up front. The American Distance Project's Shadrack Kipchirchir outlasted Mead in Eugene last summer to make the U.S. Olympic team, and has a PR of 27:36 from Payton Jordan two years ago. Kipchirchir is a much better runner now than he was then. Two of Kipchirchir's American Distance Project teammates, Stanley Kebenei and Abbabiya Simbassa, could be dark horses to watch. Kebenei, typically a steepler on the track, hasn't run a track 10K in four years. But he made the American team for world cross and finished 26th overall there. And Simbassa is a relatively new addition to the ADP; he's already run 28:03 this year for the U.S. lead, and could be the next name to show huge improvements. His teammate and Olympic silver medalist Paul Chelimo thinks so, anyway.

Patrick Tiernan has raced sparingly over the last few months, but he's made it count. Since the Olympics, he's raced four times: NCAA XC regionals, NCAA XC nationals (he won both), a 27:59 10K in December, and a 13th-place finish at the IAAF World Cross Country Championships. The two finishers directly in front of him at world cross, Sam Chelanga and Leonard Komon, have 27:08 and 26:55 10K lifetime bests, and Nicholas Kosimbei, two spots behind, has run 27:02. (I couldn't find a PR for Onesphoré Nzikwinkunda.)

Two more men in the field have shown half marathon field that says they could be ready to run between 27:00 and 27:20 on Friday night. Great Britain's Callum Hawkins has run under 60:10 for 13.1 miles twice already this year, and New Zealand's Jake Robertson ran 60:00 in March. And if we're talking about half marathoners, then we have to mention Noah Droddy, whose stunning 61:48 in New York was his first performance on that level. His 28:22 PR is ready to go down.

At least seven men in the field ran their PRs at Paytons past:
-Bashir Abdi, 27:36 in 2014
-Kipchirchir, 27:36 in 2014
-Parker Stinson 27:54 in 2015
-David McNeill, 27:45 in 2015
-Luis Fernando Ostos Cruz, 27:45 in 2016 (Peruvian national record)
-Andy Vernon, 27:42 in 2016

And of course, the Payton Jordan 10K hosted one of the most iconic races in American history and the best video in the history of this website, Chris Solinsky's 26:59 from 2010. If Friday night's race is a fraction as exciting, then it was extremely good.

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