Olympic Marathon Trials: The Race is Live and a Guy Named Shrader is Leading

Once every four years there is an American marathon that only a select few can run in. You can’t gain entry by raising money for a charity or winning a lottery. Finish outside the top 10 and you don’t even get a participation medal. Finish in the top three and your life changes forever — you get to call yourself an Olympian.

The country’s top marathoners are set to battle in the Olympic Trials Marathon Saturday in downtown Atlanta. It’s a brutally hilly, winding course that is going to test competitors as few trials marathons have before, setting the scene for a fascinating 26.2 mile chess match in which third place is as good as first and fourth is pure agony.

It won’t necessarily be the fastest runners who will make the Olympics, but the smartest.

Is Galen Rupp, the defending champion in this race and a bronze medalist in the marathon in 2016 in Rio, fully recovered from surgery?

Can Sara Hall repeat her 2019 Berlin performance? Can Desiree Linden pull off another comeback, two years later?

Will any of the hordes of women who are making this the biggest trials marathon grab one of the top three places and sneak onto the plane to Japan this summer?

The race comes amid a resurgence in interest in long distance running in this country. Running clubs are holding watch parties. Handicapping the race has become a favorite parlor game among runners of every ability, who have watched the best runners in the country, especially on the women’s side, become true stars.

We will have all the action as it unfolds. The men go off a little after noon. The women start at 12:20.

For the Men, One Loop Down, Two to Go

The men have completed the first loop and there’s a guy named Brian Shrader who is having a lot of fun out there, leading the way, about 50 meters ahead of a chase pack.

Shrader, has never broken 2:13, so it’s hard to see him hanging on to this lead. Running alone and chasing a pace that is four minutes ahead of your personal best usually doesn’t work so well.

So who should you pay attention to? Keep an eye on Scott Fauble, who is in that lead pack following Shrader. Fauble is fearless — he was leading the Boston Marathon after 22 miles last year and seemed unintimidated by the Africans who surrounded him. Then they surged and he could not, though he finished in 2:09:09.

He battled back and leg muscle strains in the second half of last year and missed his tune-up half marathon with the flu in January. But his team, NAZ Elite, posts all his workouts and on February 15, he ran 15.14 miles at 5:07 pace at 7,000 feet. If he runs the race he ran in Boston, he makes the team.

A 16-Year-Old in the Lead Women’s Pack

Tierney Wolfgram, a 16-year-old cross country phenom, is in the top pack after two miles. She qualified for the trials by running the Twin Cities Marathon in 2:40:23, some 20 minutes slower than Jordan Hasay, who is on her tail.

Her current pace of 5:39 per mile would have her finishing in 2:25:57.

Wolgram is the youngest woman in the field at the trials.

Here Comes the Chalk — Rupp and Korir Moving Up

It took a little more than three miles but the chalk is moving into position. Rupp and Leonard Korir are settling in just behind the leaders.

They are running about 4:55 miles.

Born in Iten, Korir is the hot new thing in U.S. marathoning. He ran his first 26.2 in Amsterdam in the fall and put up the 2:07:56, the fastest ever American debut. He runs for the U.S. Army and didn’t do a tuneup so his health coming in was unclear.

He clearly has wheels but Amsterdam is flat and fast. This is not a speed race — it’s a championship event where third is the same as first and 4th is the same as 50th, which makes it a puzzle for Korir and anyone else capable of going low. He has run a 59:51 in the half-marathon. If you are someone who is not naturally as fast, like Scott Fauble or Jared Ward, you are terrified of Korir running away from you, but also skeptical that his speed can hold up on a hilly grinding course.

450 Women Begin Their Race to the Olympics

The women are off. This is the biggest field the race has ever seen, with 450 women toeing the start line in Atlanta.

The women entering the race with the fastest times include Jordan Hasay, Sara Hall, Emily Sisson, and Kellyn Taylor. But it would be foolish to count out Sally Kipyego, Emma Bates, Molly Huddle or Des Linden. The question is who can handle the conditions – a windy, hilly, chilly course. It will be a tactical 26.2 miles, one that could go to any of the top runners in the field.

Expect to see quite a race behind the elites too. About 80 percent of the runners who qualified for the trials in Atlanta did so with a time between 2:37 and 2:45, known as the ‘B’ qualifying standard.

In the First Mile, it’s Abdi, and then Luke Puskedr

Abdi Abdirahman is 43. He’s made the Olympics four times and has ran as fast as 2:07:42.

If there is anyone who is not afraid of the moment it’s Abdi, who ran 2:11:34 in New York in the fall. so it was fitting that Abdi went right to the front after the gun.

The wind was doing a number in his singlet, so he quickly gave way to Luke Puskedra, who came through the first mile in 5:04 into the wind even though he retired recently but showed up in Atlanta anyway. After Puskedra it’s a bunch of runners having fun who won’t likely be there at the end.

Who Wants to Try the Nike Alphafly Nike%?

Nike gave each runner who qualified for the U.S. Marathon Olympic Trials their newest Alphafly Next% shoes. Eilud Kipchoge broke the two-hour marathon barrier wearing a similar version of the shoe.

The only catch? The runners only received them a day or two before the race. So will runners take the risk of trying a new shoe during the biggest race of their lives?

Some were debating the question just minutes before heading to the start line.

Regardless, the swoosh is everywhere as many seemed to be sticking to an older version of the Vaporfly. An analysis by The New York Times found that the advantage these shoes bestow is real — and larger than previously estimated.

A Lot of Bottles and A Lot of Wind

“We said we wanted to give a party, and everybody is coming.”

Those were the words of Rich Kenah, executive director of the Atlanta Track Club, host of the Olympic Marathon Trials.

For organizers, the race with nearly 700 participants is something of a logistical nightmare — because so many of the runners have customized fluids waiting for them along the route, which means roughly 4,000 bottles organized at fluid stations that are five blocks long. The bottles are organized by color and number to make sure each runner ends up with the proper liquid — assuming they don’t blow away.

It’s seriously windy in downtown Atlanta on this brisk morning, with 19-mile -per-hour gusts forecast from the northwest. The course includes three roughly eight-mile loops so the runners will have the wind at their back as much as they have it in their face. But as any runner will tell you, the harm the wind does to tired legs feels much more sever than any assistance it provides.

This Field is Much Bigger Than Anticipated

The streets of Atlanta will be particularly crowded today as nearly 700 runners — about 480 women and 215 men — are expected to compete.

That’s a huge number, reflecting changes in rules, innovative shoe technology and a sea change in women’s running. Amateur women are running faster than ever, and, through communal networks online, showing others how to do so.

Alongside the few dozen professional runners who are expected to compete for a spot on the Olympic team by finishing in the top three, there are hundreds of amateur runners from around the country.

They are accountants and anesthesiologists, mothers and coaches, teachers and television producers. Some are participating in their first Olympic trials, and some in their fifth. Some are still in college. Some are in their mid- and even late 40s. At least one is still in high school. Many are pulling one another along with calls of “I did this, so you can, too.”

Can Galen Rupp and Des Linden Get Back Onto the Podium?

Everyone has the same question around this race: Who do you like?

To borrow a strategy from horse racing, let’s start with the favorites, or rather the proven veterans.

Here are two sentences that are going to sound very strange together. Galen Rupp has been fighting injury and battling back from surgery for much of the past year. Galen Rupp is the closest thing to a lock to making the Olympic team.

To not believe in Rupp is to not believe in someone who in the sweet spot age-wise for a marathoner (he’s 33) and who has won an Olympic silver and bronze medal in the 10,000 meters and the marathon. He also ran 61:19 in his tuneup half-marathon earlier this month. That is very solid and faster than his top competition. Rupp has focused completely on making the Olympic team. Don’t believe that? At last fall’s Chicago Marathon, he dropped out after 23 miles with a calf strain. That takes discipline and is a tip-off to what Rupp’s priority was for 2020 — getting to the Olympics.

On the women’s side Des Linden knows how to find her way into the top three in a trials marathon. She’s done it twice before. But to do it a third time she is going to have to find a way to run better than she has run since she won Boston in 2018, and she hasn’t come close lately to the personal best she ran in Boston way back in 2011.

She has often complained of being tired the past year, which may have something to do with her increasingly busy schedule as a running celebrity since her win in Boston. Linden was on the fence about running the trials. If she isn’t having a great day, she could back off and save herself for Patriots’ Day, or she might just dig deep and tear the heart of anyone who thinks she can keep her from the podium.