After the lead pack of Kenyans and Ethiopians streak past in Sunday’s Bank of America Chicago Marathon, they’ll be followed soon later by a group, or actually several groups, of American men, whose goals are more modest than winning the race or setting course records. Instead, these U.S. runners will set their sights on lowering their previous personal best or qualifying for the 2012 Olympic Trials.
Out of the view of the pace vehicles and camera trucks, they’ll nonetheless be running a race no less compelling than that of the men who will vie for victory and the $75,000 first-place purse.
“I’ve PR’d in every marathon I’ve run except the year I ran Boston a month after getting hit by a car, and I’d like that trend to continue,” said Pat Rizzo, who might carry the mantle of hometown favorite, having grown up and competed in Schaumburg, a western suburb of Chicago. “Ideally, something in the 2:12-2:13 range would show me I’m moving in the right direction,” he said.
A year ago, Rizzo made another move, following Horace Greeley’s admonition and heading west, to Boulder, after a stint in Michigan with the Brooks Hansons Distance Project. The result was a 2:15:48 here last October, good for 10th overall and a two-minute PR. Eschewing a spring marathon, Rizzo raced over shorter distances, setting a track 10,000 PR of 29:06.54 and clocking half marathons of 1:05:04 and 1:06:19 in Seattle and Chicago respectively.
“Chicago is definitely the race to run fast in,” he said. “The only challenge is I may be running by myself a lot of the way. There are pace groups going faster and slower than 2:12, but I may be solo for the first half and just have to pick off people who have gone out too fast and died over the last half.” Rizzo can be encouraged by the fact that his former Hansons teammate, Brian Sell, did the same thing in 2006, finishing sixth in 2:10:47, a run that set him up to make the Olympic team the following year in New York.
A trio of Americans – James Carney, Fasil Bizuneh, and Nick Arciniaga – will form the lead American pack, shooting for a 2:10 or better finish. “Martin Fagan is going to pace us through halfway in 64 and change,” said Carney, whose marathon PR of 2:15:50 set at Rotterdam this spring does not equal his performances at shorter road distances. “After that, the three of us are going to take turns leading and working together.”
Among the three, a sub-2:10 clocking would be the smallest jump for Arciniaga, who followed his eighth-place, 2:13:46 finish at New York last year with a 1:58 improvement at Rock ‘n’ Roll San Diego in June. Like Rizzo, Arciniaga is a former Hansons runner who moved to Flagstaff and joined the burgeoning group training under Greg McMillan. The switch to altitude and warmer temperatures has obviously agreed with the native Californian, who feels his training leading up to Chicago is as good as any he’s had for a previous marathon. “But we’ll have to wait until Sunday to see how that pays off,” he said.
Indeed, he and the rest of the elite Americans in the field, whether looking for PRs or Trials qualifiers, will get a financial payoff from Chicago’s Elite Development Program, which offers prize money to the top 15 U.S. finishers as well as $2,500 and $1,000 bonuses to those men breaking 2:19 and 2:21.
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