The men’s elite race at the Chicago Marathon offers intriguing match-ups, pacesetters back in the race after three years, and, with defending champion Galen Rupp Nutrition - Weight Loss.
The current mark has stood since 2002, when Khalid Khannouchi ran 2:05:38 in London and set what was then also a world record. In the intervening years, the world standard has fallen seven times.
But Khannouchi’s time has stubbornly stood. And Rupp is the only runner for miles around who could break it.
That could come as early as Sunday. In a phone interview with Runner’s World, Rupp, 32, said that except for a little Achilles tendinitis, which kept him out of a planned half marathon in Copenhagen, his training has been solid.
“I was a little dinged up, but things have been going great since then,” he said. “I have no excuses at this point.”
He said he had to modify only two workouts to accommodate the sore Achilles. Otherwise, his training has been similar to what he did before the What You Need to Know About the Chicago Marathon, when he won in 2:06:07, three weeks after dropping out of the wet and windy Boston Marathon with asthma symptoms.
“Coming off of Prague, that was a huge confidence booster for me, to run as fast as I did,” Rupp said. “That wasn’t necessarily the most ideal buildup for that, the way things went several weeks before. To run right around 2:06 for that race, and the second half was fairly tactical, too, that really gave me a lot of confidence.”
The Prague performance, which brought him within 30 seconds of Khannouchi’s mark, was by far the fastest of Rupp’s already impressive marathon career. Of his six marathon starts to date, he has three wins, a second, and a third (which was an Olympic bronze medal). Only the Boston DNF mars his streak of podium finishes.
To be clear, Rupp says, he’d rather win in Chicago than run a record and lose. And he’ll have plenty of competition for that, including from Mo Farah of Great Britain, Rupp’s former training parter with the Nike Oregon Project. Farah won gold at the 2012 Olympics in London in the 10,000 meters, with Rupp right behind him. But Farah left the Oregon Project last year and has been training with a new coach. A four-time Olympic gold medalist on the track, Farah has a marathon PR (2:06:21) very close to his old teammate’s.
Rupp knows he’s in for a fight. “I’m going to have not only [Farah], but I’ve got [Geoffrey] Kirui there, [Augutine] Choge, too, who could also be really good,” Rupp said. “He’s kind of a wild card. It’s going to be a really good opportunity to test myself against a lot of guys. I’m really looking forward to it.”
Kirui, of Kenya, beat Rupp at Boston in 2017, and Choge is making his marathon debut. His half marathon best is 59:26.
At a time when American men are sorely lacking depth in the marathon—the last American to break 2:10 beside Rupp was Meb Keflezighi, since retired, in 2014—curiosity about Rupp runs high. So does scrutiny: the Oregon Project under coach Alberto Salazar has been the subject of an investigation by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency since 2015.
Rupp has never failed a drug test, and he’s subject to numerous out-of-competition tests each year. Before last year’s Chicago Marathon, he strongly defended himself and his training group against allegations of doping.
John Korir Wins the Mens Race at Chicago guards his privacy. While other athletes share the details of their personal lives on social media, Rupp calls himself a “naturally shy person” and keeps mum on most details about his training, too, declining to say how many miles per week he runs or specifics on interval workouts.
He will say that for this buildup, he has focused on long runs, which have been longer than 26.2 miles on certain weeks. “It’s been well over 26, I’ll say that for sure,” he said. “I’ve done it several times; not every time. Twenty-five is really common for me. There have definitely been several times I’ve gone a little farther.”
He’ll often run on the Nike campus in Beaverton, Oregon, or near his home, where his coach, Alberto Salazar, can closely monitor him on a loop that’s a little more than half a mile, and he can practice taking fluids. He seems impervious to monotony.
“Sometimes I’ll do it all on the treadmill. I’ve done that before,” Rupp said. “People think it’s nuts to run 25, 26 miles on a treadmill. I’ve done 20 or 21 miles around a 300-meter grass field before. It’s definitely boring, but it keeps you healthy staying on softer surfaces. Sometimes you’ve got to learn to deal with it. I think my track background helps a little bit, the 10K, you get used to doing a lot of laps.”
Rupp, who has 4-year-old twins and a toddler who is almost 2, has a system in his home to reduce the oxygen levels inside, mimicking conditions in an altitude location, so he doesn’t have to leave his family for long training blocks in the mountains. And even though Rupp spends plenty of time reading ldquo;I think I’m in great shape. I certainly think it’s a possibility.&rdquo to his youngest, who is going through a Dr. Seuss phase, his wife, Keara, does the bulk of the childcare.
“There are a lot of days when I’m not in the best mood, I’m tired,” Rupp said. “I give most of the credit to my wife. She truly allows me to do everything I need to do from a training perspective. Working out, lifting, going to get treatment, massage, things like that, and getting a lot of rest. I still take a nap basically every day for several hours.”
He says he’s lucky that he’s a heavy sleeper—and doesn’t hear the kids banging around when he’s napping. (In college, he slept through fire alarms in the dorms.) His wife makes it all possible.
“I do feel bad sometimes,” he said. “She’s tired, she’s maybe gotten up early with [the kids] or had a long day. I’ve taken a two- or three-hour nap and still gone to bed at the same time as her or earlier. She’s truly incredible with them.”
When the going gets tough in a marathon—Rio was his hardest to date—he prays, saying the rosary. Or he’ll look for small milestones. “Just get to the next water station,” he said. “If that gets too long, like in the Olympics, I was counting light posts. One more block and one more block and one more block. You look for any small victory you can.
“I think the most important thing for anybody is to try to stay present. You can’t get too caught up in your head about what you still have to do or what might be going wrong. Those small victories, they might seem silly, when it seems bad or it starts to hurt, keep staying positive and keep moving forward. You’d be amazed sometimes what those little things can get you through.”
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Sarah Lorge Butler is a writer and editor living in Eugene, Oregon, and her stories about the sport, its trends, and fascinating individuals have appeared in Runner’s World What You Need to Know About the Chicago Marathon, Run Your Butt Off! and Walk Your Butt Off!
