Kieran Lumb 5th in elite men's mile, top Canadian at 1st world road running championships

Kieran Lumb nearly set his fourth Canadian record in a month on a day he admits to not running an A-plus race.

The Vancouver native was fifth in a field of 35 in the elite men's mile (1,609 metres) at the first World Athletics Road Running Championships on Sunday in Riga, Latvia.

In the second road mile of his career, Lumb reached the finish in a personal-best three minutes 56.98 seconds, less than one second behind the Canadian record of 3:56 by Graham Hood from Dec. 13, 1997. Hood ran the Olympic 1,500m on the track in 1992 (Barcelona) and 1996 (Atlanta) and is a former national record holder in the distance.

"It was solid, not an A-plus performance. I came in thinking there was a good chance if I had a good race, I'd be able to medal," Lumb, who focused on the 1,500 for much of this season, told CBC Sports after Sunday's race. "Maybe I could have been a little more clever, tactically, with this race.

"There was a big headwind the last 800 metres and I found myself in a position of not being in the lead but [near the] front and taking a lot of the wind. In hindsight, I should have tucked in behind someone. "But in the mile everything happens so quickly, you have to react, make those tactical decisions second nature and [for me] they're not quite second nature. I think they will be eventually."

No one saw this coming