Chicago Marathon elite pacing schedule (60:40 | 66:00 lead groups)

Panuel Mkungo is Ruth’s personal pacer.

This while pacing nonsense for this race has been a big cluster F. All of these single athlete pacers cannot be good for the race/sport.

60:40 suggests an earnest Kiptum WR attempt.

Rupp and Mantz could stick to diff pacers, split early and converge in the last 10k.

Generous spread of pacers provides a great opportunity for 4-5 Americans to get the Oly standard with smart racing.

I will be made a fool of and I'll gladly recite this post in a thread but. IF what Chris Chavez is saying is correct and the pace is going out at 2:01. These are my odds.

Over 2:03:45 - Less than 1%

Sub-2:03:45 - 80-90%

Sub-2:03 - 75-80%

Sub-2:02 - 60-75%

Sub-2:01/WR - 50-60%

Sub-2:00 - 20-30%

Granted with the Sub 2 he'd have to split 1:00:40/59:19...But, I'm not over or underestimating his capacity. Nervous but, let's see how these next 7 hours go.

Hassan to follow the 60min pace ;o)

If a Pacer can get to 40k at 2:01.20 pace, might as well finish and run one of the fastest times ever LOL, Who is this Pacer?

And it says 3 will do this?

Why the heck are there so many pacers

At first the race only agreed to pacers for Kiptum. Big pushback from Nike about their slowpokes Rupp and Mantz. So they tried to do an end-run around the race. It was a big cluster you know what.

I see the WR go down today. 60:40 is 2:01:20 pace. Having 3 pacers that shall go way beyong half (we have to see if this happens) means the WR is on the mind of at least Kiptum.

I'd say we see the first 2:00:xx time.

In the women's race we might see something in the 2:11-2:13 range again.

I hope Rupp & Mantz are healthy and we see at least 2:06s.

American women could be an AR, too, although Bates talked about the AR before Boston, too, and came up almost 4 minutes short. To give her props, IIRC Boston was headwind this year. Sisson seems like a possible 2:17 anyway after that great race last year.

Wow. I am hyped.

I say:

Kiptum 2:00:35.

Mantz 2:05:56

Rupp 2:06:48

Sisson 2:17:23

Bates 2:18:49

Hyped for this.

It's interesting that there's no in between for the top guys. It's either go out at World Record pace or go out under Course Record pace. There's a lot of guys who are going to get spit out running a 60:40 first half but might've been able to do something with 61:30. Wonder what group Rupp will go out with. 62, 63, 64? Mantz has a decision to make too. Go out conservatively with the 64 group or be in the 63 group.

The new women's WR looks insane on paper but we saw 2:11 get attacked in Chicago last year so maybe there shouldn't have been as much shock. I think we'll see a WR or something close. The women's half is now sub-63 & we're seeing a lot of 63/64. With good endurance & the right races (cool weather + pacers), it doesn't seem out of the norm to start seeing more and more sub-2:14 marathons. You have a whole host of US men running those types of times.

It’s a time trial, not a race. Runners targeting a world record, others looking for Olympic standard. And ‘personal pacer’ for top women?!

Can’t say this makes for compelling TV, but at this point in prep for the Olympics, I’m not surprised and can’t fault the elite runners for asking for this.

In my opinion Mantz should go out with the 1:03:00 group. He has 27:25 speed for 10k this year, so he should be very comfortable running 29:50s.

I'm most excited by what Sifan Hassan will do today. If Chepngetich runs somewhere in the 2:11/2:13 category, is Hassan there with her?

I reckon someone of Hassan's talents can certainly run somewhere in the 2:14/2:15 region, whether or not she's ready for that today remains to be seen. Can't wait to watch!

2:14 was the original pace Hassan was going for (per the rabbits), so interesting to see she's being a lot more aggressive than that

Typical Nike attitude - especially when it comes to protecting Alberto’s boys.

Is there no OTQ pace group going through at 69:00 or just under? Surprised they wouldn't have that in addition to the elite pacers

Not bad.

Just wanted to come back as I had Kiptum right down to the second 🫠