The summers featuring Olympic Games or World Championships are some of the most exciting for Track & Field fans. I've been glued to my television just about every night this past week, watching the World Championships at the famed (and newly-renovated) Hayward Field in Euguene, Oregon.

With that in mind, this week's selection of Top 5 Running Stories is, by default, World Championships-heavy, but not exclusively. I tried to showcase some of the stories behind the scenes that piqued my interest.

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Syndney McLaughlin's youth track coach knew what was coming

Late tonight we all saw Syndney McLaughlin not only break her world record in the 400H, but SMASH it to smithereens. As a bonus, she's also now a World Champion. This article from The New York Times is an interesting Q&A with one of McLaughlin's earliest coaches. A woman who saw her potential from the start.

[Doug Mills, The New York Times]

Lisa Morgan, ...A five-time U.S.A. Track & Field junior national team coach, was also a longtime coach at Columbia High School in Maplewood, N.J. McLaughlin, who grew up in central New Jersey and ran at Union Catholic High School, was a friendly rival and then ran for Morgan on multiple junior national teams.

What was the most important thing you instilled in her?

Believing in who she was. The confidence. Step on that line and believe in you and use your God-given talent to do what you are supposed to do. That is what I instilled in her. You are competing against the world, across the globe in another country and you are competing for your country. You have to ste up. Your team is counting on you to bring back gold for your country.

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Writer Erin Strout gets the inside scoop, for Women's Running magazine, on a spectacular moment captured at the end of the women's World Championships Marathon.

Splits: A World Championships Marathon Moment Captured—and Adored

A single photo illustrates all those finish line feels.

[photo credit: Kevin Morris]

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And speaking of interesting moments captured at the World Championships... Unless you're REALLY not a track & field fan, you've no doubt heard (or, more likely, seen) the moment when a television videographer stepped right into the path of the men's steeplechase final. I'm still waiting to find/read an in-depth interview with this man to see just what he was thinking (or not thinking) when this happened.

A cameraman became an accidental obstacle in the men's steeplechase.

Whoops.

Credit...

[Lucy Nicholson/Reuters]

Have you ever experienced obstacles in a race?

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Opinion: The Day the Shoes Blotted Out the Sun

Oiselle CEO Sally Bergesen asks: Who are we short-changing when we choose to ignore the shoe tech dilemma?

[Sound off in comments below, please.]

Defying claims that plant-based diets lack for protein or hinder athletic performance, vegan athletes worldwide have proved otherwise, including some of the most accomplished competitors in the world. The latest to prove the naysayers wrong: Vegan runner Mike Fremont, who turned 100 years old in February and celebrated with a run around Vero Beach in Florida.

Fremont adopted a vegan diet at the age of 69 after receiving a daunting cancer diagnosis. He turned down what his doctors told him was life-saving surgery in favor of switching to a whole food plant-based diet. Now, Fremont, the oldest known vegan runner, holds the marathon distance world records for single-year age groups of 88 and 90.

Make sure to keep scrolling this article to read mini-profiles of surfers, professional tennis players, NFL & NBA players, etc. all of whom are THRIVING on a vegan diet, including ultra-runners Scott Jurek & Matt Frazier and sprinters Morgan Mitchell & Elijah Hall.