5 key storylines from the Boston Marathon elite men’s field: Korir confident, Maier’s coming our party, Rupp not done

BOSTON – Media day for the 130th Boston Marathon was Friday in Copley Square and as always, LetsRun.com had boots on the ground. After spending 90 minutes talking to the top athletes, coaches, and agents, we discovered why track star Nicholas Kipkorir chose Boston for his marathon debut, why Clayton Young thinks he could PR despite an abbreviated buildup, and why Alex Maier believes now is the time for American distance fans to remember his name.

Below, a look at our biggest takeaways from speaking with the elite men in Boston, finishing with an update on 39-year-old Galen Rupp.

*All LRC Boston Marathon interviews *All LRC Boston Marathon coverage

We also recorded a live podcast from Boston on Friday taking an in-depth look at the elite races at the 2026 Boston Marathon. You can watch that below or get it on-demand as a podcast by joining the LetsRun Supporters Club.

Defending champ John Korir has upped his mileage and he and his camp are sounding very confident

When we caught up with defending champ John Korir and his coach Ron Mann, they were full of confidence.

“My training has gone very well and I’m ready for this race,” said Korir. “…I’m feeling good.”

His 76-year-old coach Ron Mann, the former NAU and Louisville coach, was also bullish.

“[The build has] been very good. He’s done a great job of preparing for this race,” said Mann.

Korir comes into Boston after running more mileage than ever before. He told us he upped his mileage from a peak of 250-260km per week to 270-280 (270 km is 167.67 miles). Mann also talked about the mileage increase but threw out a lower number — “at one point he was at about 155 miles” said Mann, who called it a 10% mileage increase.

Running more over the years has been critical for Korir’s improvement according to Mann, who said Korir was only running about 70 mpw when they started working together.

Mann, who went to Kenya for a critical 10-day stretch in March, said he’s really loving coaching the pros after a long NCAA coaching career.

“My wife tells me, ‘you’re not retired, you’re repurposed…This is your passion, go do what you love doing,” said Mann.  “There’s still a lot of passion in this 76-year-old body and so if I don’t use that, that’s a travesty. And so what I’m trying to do now at the sunset of my career if you will, is to try and formulate these ideas in my head, and I don’t need to impress anybody.”

Mann said coaching the pros is more enjoyable than coaching in the NCAA.

“I like coaching the pros a lot better actually. I mean, I love coaching college, but I’m not sure I could coach in today’s world and you’re seeing some of the best coaches in the NCAA and track & field are stepping away from the sport,” said Mann.

Mann said that by coaching a top Kenyan he can do mission work while visiting and “profess my faith” and “do a lot of good stuff.”

Mann famously coached John Korir’s older brother Wesley to a Boston win in 2012 said Wesley predicted John’s success a long time ago.

“He actually did say that, I mean, at one point as we got closer to 2016, he said, you know, I got a little brother that’s better than I am,” said Mann.

Alex Maier hoping to make a name for himself with a big race on Monday

If you’ve been paying attention to the US distance running scene in the last year, you should know Alex Maier’s name by now. If you don’t, here’s the backstory. Maier was one of the top runners in the NCAA while at Oklahoma State, finishing 2nd in the NCAA 10k and 5th at NCAA XC in 2022, but was overshadowed a little as a senior in 2023 as part of OSU’s dream team – he was 15th at NCAA XC but only fifth on his own team. Now he trains as part of Alistair and Amy Cragg’s Puma Elite team in North Carolina, for whom he won last spring’s Dusseldorf Marathon in 2:08:33. So far in 2026, he has run 59:23 at the Houston Half (#2 all-time by an American) and finished 4th at the NYC Half (59:51).

Considering Maier ran 88 seconds faster in Houston this year than last year (60:51), Maier feels he is significantly fitter than he was heading into Dusseldorf and is hoping to turn some heads with a big run in Boston.

“I’d love to be top 5,” Maier said. “I know that’s a big goal, that’s a lofty goal. I’d like to just get my name out there. I feel like I’m still not mentioned really when it comes to the discussion of who the top American marathoners are. So I’d like to walk away from Boston with, okay, that’s a name that people have to pay attention to now.”

Given how competitive the US field is in Boston this year, Maier knows it could take a pretty quick time to do that – but he feels he is capable.

“I think it’s going to be quick, sounds like there’s going to be a tailwind. You never know with Boston, right? There’s no pacers, obviously, it’s a race that’s much more about competing. But I feel like you’re going to have to run like a 2:06, 2:05, if you really want to put yourself up there.”

Track star Nicholas Kipkorir is debuting in Boston against high school teammate John Korir

Kipkorir, the 27-year-old Kenyan, is one of the most interesting athletes in the 2026 Boston field. An accomplished track runner – he was 4th in the 2021 Olympic 5,000 and was the 2022 Diamond League champion – he was meant to run Worlds on the track last fall but was subbed out of the team shortly before the meet after racing a half marathon. He put his fitness to use by running 58:23 to win the Copenhagen Half Marathon and decided to set his sights on the marathon in 2026.

Kipkorir trains under coach Patrick Sang in Kaptagat (he is in a separate camp from Eliud Kipchoge and Geoffrey Kamworor but they often train together) and his agent Michel Boeting said that he has responded very well to marathon training. For proof, look no further than Kipkorir’s 58:08 at the Lisbon Half on March 8, 2nd behind Jacob Kiplimo’s world record.

The question, of course, is whether he can translate that to the full marathon. Boeting said that he and Sang initially proposed a race like Hamburg or Rotterdam for Kipkorir’s debut – a flat course and slightly easier field where he could get a feel for the distance. But Kipkorir was insistent that he run Boston, a race he had grown up watching.

“Boston is in my heart,” he told Boeting.

One other fun fact about Kipkorir: he is a high school classmate of defending Boston champ John Korir. They overlapped for two years at St. Francis Kimuron High School near Iten (which is also David Rudisha’s alma mater). Who was faster?

It wasn’t close. Boeting said that John once ended up on a stretcher after trying to run 10k with Nicholas.

Clayton Young feeling optimistic despite abbreviated buildup

Young has not had the smoothest road to Boston, missing 18 weeks of running due to an ankle injury and switching sponsors from Asics to Brooks – something he admitted as a distraction given he had to negotiate the contract himself (Young does not have an agent). But he struck an optimistic tone on Friday, saying that he would not be surprised to run even better than he did in 2025, when he was 7th in Boston in a pb of 2:07:04.

Why was Young so optimistic?

“Long runs are the biggest indicator of marathon performance, in my opinion,” Young said. “And those have clicked. I’ve had some really good, long marathon efforts at the end of 25-mile runs on a hilly loop.”

Young also noted that he hit higher peak mileage than in any previous build – four weeks of around 130 miles. But he said he won’t know for sure how much the injury-shortened build affects him until Monday (his build was around 10-11 weeks for this race; his typical build is anywhere from 12-16).

“It’s hard to tell [but] that mileage felt really good and I was really happy about that,” Young said. “But it was not over as many weeks.”

Young said that he has missed training with American record holder Conner Mantz, who typically serves as a great measuring stick for his fitness but had to withdraw from Boston due to injury. But Casey Clinger, who ran 2:08:43 in Tokyo on March 1, has proven to be a strong replacement.

“We’ve joked – but I think it’s a reality – that [Clinger] could probably hop in on Monday and easily run faster than he did in Tokyo,” Young said. “He’s looking really good.”

Galen Rupp hoping to make progress in his first Boston Marathon since 2018

The last time Rupp ran this race was 2018 when he, like half of the elite field, wound up dropping out due to the horrendous weather. Rupp, who finished 2nd in Boston in 2017, had been among the favorites in that race, but he enters Boston as under-the-radar as he ever has for a major marathon.

Rupp’s results leading up to Boston were not good – 62:01 for 27th at the Houston Half, 64:28 at the NYC Half – though he said he felt terrible due to a sinus infection in the latter race. If he were not named Galen Rupp, we probably wouldn’t even be mentioning him.

But Rupp, who turns 40 next month, is committed on running through the 2028 Olympic Trials and is not losing hope. He said he has been able to stay healthy since running 2:09 in Chicago last fall, and he feels he is making slow progress. He is trying to be more patient than he was while trying to train through back and hip injuries from 2022-24.

“I am where I am right now,” Rupp said. “It’s not like it’s going to be this quick bounce-back to where I was. But as long as you’re continuing to improve, training’s continuing to get better, it’s a daily mentality, you’ve gotta keep chipping away at it, inching your way up…Sometimes it just takes time after some of the things I went through.”