By Brett Taylor
PALO ALTO, Calif. — When Jessica Hull walked onto Stanford’s Cobb Track and Angell Field on Saturday, she found herself on the track with the Australian 1,500-meter record holder, Linden Hall, for the first time. She remembered, “I’m standing here, like wow.”
And then Hull surpassed Hall on Sunday.
Wearing an Oregon singlet for the final time, Hull was ready to go. She chose a singlet with silhouettes of Bill Bowerman and Steve Prefontaine.
The 2018 NCAA 1,500-meter champion from the University of Oregon broke her personal record by four seconds, finishing seventh in 4 minutes, 2.62 seconds and beating veteran runners including Kate Grace, Alexa Efraimson and her countrywoman, Hall. Her time puts her fourth in Australia’s all-time 1,500-meter rankings.
“You never really believe it until you do it,” Hull said. “And now it’s like, ‘OK, well, I set the bar there.’”
Hull had just set a new personal best, 4:06.27, three weeks ago in the NCAA championships, in which she was edged out for the title by Oklahoma State’s Sinclaire Johnson by .29. Her coach told her she could run splits of 1 minutes, 4 seconds per 400 meters this Sunday, and she did it.
“I knew that I could probably run 64s,” Hull said. “You know, maybe I don’t give myself enough credit, but it was cool to see it happen.”
In Sunday’s race, Hull stayed with the eventual top finishers, Faith Kipyegon, Laura Muir, Shelby Houlihan and Gudaf Tsegay,who all broke the 4-minute mark, until about 300 meters to go.
“It was just natural to me to be like OK, Laura Muir and Faith Kipyegon are moving, I’m going with them,” Hull said. “I learned a lot out there today, and I just feel like, wow.”
