Sunday's Marathon Project race in AZ is the same, only different, and very exciting

Sunday morning’s Marathon Project race is a time-trial with a


difference. It’s a knockoff of Eliud Kipchoge’s two “exhibition” races. It’s entrepreneurial and profit-centered, but not profit-making. Most of all it’s a holiday gift to North America’s top marathon runners and the fans who enjoy following them. 

I’m surprised by how much it has intrigued me. I’m eager to watch both the live stream (10 a.m. Eastern time Sunday) on USATF.TV+ (subscription required), and the 90-minute taped replay at 7:30 p.m on the NBC Sports Network.

On the surface, the Marathon Project (MP) has many parallels with the Kipchoge extravaganzas (Nike Breaking2, and Ineos 1:59 Challenge). It’s got a small, limited field; pacers; a flat, loop course; and ideal weather. Some of the entrants have said they’re running “to win,” but that’s mostly smoke. They’re running for fast times. Follow the money.

The MP is different from Kipchoge’s exhibitions in one key way: It’s sanctioned and record eligible. If anyone runs fast, their times will be accepted by World Athletics and USATF. On Thursday morning, course-layout veteran David Katz was adjusting several hairpin turns into more rounded affairs, and certifying the course distance.

However, the biggest difference between the MP and prior time-trial events is the business structuring. Kipchoge had billion-dollar companies enticing him to the start line. They wanted him to run fast, sure, but mainly they wanted to attach their names to a huge sports-marketing opportunity. 

Kipchoge would not be Roger Bannister running 3:59 in near isolation at Oxford’s oddly-named Iffley Road Track. When Kipchoge ran, the world was watching.

The world won’t be watching Sunday morning. The MP is funded by runners for runners. No one’s got a marketing budget. This is a DIY deal, new and novel. That’s one of its attractions.

The race has one simple goal: to help a handful of runners make enough money to continue their training through another 4-year cycle leading up to the 2024 Olympics. Many have contracts that expire at the end of this month--the end of the prior Olympic cycle (2017-2020).

The MP was set in motion last summer when Ben Rosario texted Josh Cox. Rosario, coach of the HOKA NAZ Elite team in Flagstaff, AZ, was coming to realize that his runners would have no big races in fall 2020 or spring 2021. “We’ve got to do something for our marathon runners,” Rosario said to Cox. Both are former elite marathoners who retired without reaching the Olympics or the highest ranks of their sport. They would like to help others succeed where they didn't.

Cox is also athlete agent to a number of runners entered in Sunday’s MP. He agreed with Rosario. The more the two talked, the more reasons they saw for a December event. They brought on Matt Helbig, a St. Louis running-store owner, experienced race-management hand, and longtime friend of Rosario’s.

The three formed a private company, and kicked in roughly $30,000 apiece. To date their expenses are “north of $175k,” Cox told me in a lengthy email. That’s not a key number. Much more crucial: How about the revenue side of the equation?

Measuring and smoothing out the course turnabouts

The MP couldn’t allow large-scale participation … with accompanying entry fees. It has very rigid Covid restrictions in place. It couldn’t claim anyone was going to break 1:59. It couldn’t even claim a field of Olympians. None of the U.S.’s six qualifiers from the Atlanta Marathon Trials are expected.

Cox tried to rustle up some sponsors, but it wasn’t easy. Brooks came on board a couple of weeks ago; the company is a solid supporter of American runners. On Wednesday, Rosario said several more sponsors would be announced before Sunday.

Also on Wednesday, through a Zoom press conference, the organizers announced, for the first time, that they would be able to offer prize money of $5000, $2000, and $1000 for the podium finishers. Rosario apologized for the small sums: "That was all we could squeeze out," he said.

That’s why I chuckled to myself when the top men--CJ Albertson, Cam Levins, Scott Fauble, Martin Hehir, and Jared Ward--proclaimed that they were racing for the win. Right. And so am I. Who doesn’t want to win? 

In fact, the prize money represents only a small fraction of the possible time bonuses on the line. Josh Cox puts this number in “the hundreds of thousands” for Sunday’s race. The top runners have contracts that reward them for reaching ambitious time goals. Ergo, in Sunday’s MP race, time counts more than finish position. 

If the guys are smart, they might self organize into one of those triangles that paced Kipchoge. It doesn’t matter who wins. It could matter a lot if several runners can get under 2:09. And the best way to do that is to fight together like the three Musketeers. 

In the women’s race, Sara Hall has set herself a near-impossible task. She wants to run under the American record, 2:19:36, and will have a first-half pacer (69:40) to nudge her along. You could call this brave or foolish, given her current best, 2:22:01. I’ll call it “financially aware.”

No one has told me the following, but here’s a likely scenario. Hall is at the end of a 4-year Asics contract. Among other things, it contains a handsome bonus for making the Olympic team; she didn’t. There’s also a big bonus for setting an American record in the marathon; she still could … on Sunday.

Hall is 37.5 years old, doesn’t know what her next contract might look like, and realizes she probably won’t get any faster than she is in 2020. It’s now-or-never time for her. She sets the marathon record Sunday morning, or it doesn’t ever come her way. 

It seems unlikely that any of the other women entrants will follow Hall’s pace. She’s got reason to run solo, where the men have reason to run together. Hall will chase the record, hoping for the kind of day that could send her daughters to the best colleges. At least that's what I would do in her situation. It will be thrilling to watch--also nail-biting and perhaps agonizing.

Keira D’Amato could go all-in and chase Hall, but it seems unlikely. On Wednesday, she wasn’t yet sure what shoes she’d be wearing. Translation: Her agent was trying to put together a shoe contract for her (she doesn’t currently have one), with time bonuses included. She ran her PR, 2:34:24, at the Marathon Trials. She can run much faster.

This week Josh Cox acknowledged to me that he’d be making a small profit on the MP race -- at somewhat less than the hourly rate he pays his babysitters. I wish the number were bigger. Then other risk-takers might be more willing to take a chance on other innovative events. We could use more.

I’m not sure there will be an MP2, and I’m not sure we’ll need one--not if the marathon world has returned to something close to “normal” in nine months or so. I only know that Sunday morning will be more exciting than I had expected it to be. There are a lot of good story lines here. It will be fun to watch.

And if someone makes a little money, well, that’s a good thing for all.


First Time Marathon Runners: Despite Light Training, They Face No Heart Risks, But Gain Blood Vessel Benefits

As first-time marathoners flooded into the sport over the last 25 years, some observers worried that their inadequate preparation might leave them with heart damage and/or other problems. Indeed, one early study showed that marathon finishers who trained under 35 miles a week had nine times more troponin leakage--a measure of heart-muscle injury--than those who trained over 45 miles a week. While the authors stated “There is no data to suggest that there are long-term sequelae,” the troponin finding looked ominous.

Now a new British report based on a group of London Marathon runners seems to lay the heart worry to rest. It shows that first-time marathoners who run roughly 25 miles a week in training enjoy a modest reduction in blood pressure and “no evidence of myocardial fibrosis [scarring] or persistent edema” after completing a first marathon in an average time of 4:31.

The research team, including London Marathon medical director Sanjay Sharma, concluded: “Despite ongoing concerns regarding the cardiovascular safety of marathon running … we found no evidence of myocardial injury in first-time marathon runners achieving an average finishing time.” A free full-text version of the paper is available here from Frontiers in Physiology. 

To investigate potential heart harms of a first marathon, the researchers gathered and tested 68 novice marathoners six months before the 2016 London Marathon and two weeks after. All subjects received an exercise performance test, as well as extensive heart measurements, including electrocardiography and a heart MRI. 

Subjects were young by design, with an average age of 30, so they were unlikely to have underlying atherosclerosis. Thirty six were men, and 32 women. All but two of the 68 runners completed the marathon.

The runners were advised to follow the London Marathon’s 16-week training program for first-time marathoners. Since a third of them wore personal digital tracking devices when running, they were able to provide objective evidence of their actual workout compliance. These training logs revealed that the runners did 78 percent of the suggested mileage. 

This amounted to about 2.5 hours a week of training (about 15 miles) at the outset, and about 4.5 hours (roughly 25 miles/week) at peak training three weeks before the London Marathon.

The male subjects finished London in an average time of 4:14:30 and the women in 4:43:40. This was slightly slower than London’s overall average finish times among runners who presumably trained more, but were also likely 5-10 years older.

The pre-marathon and post-marathon testing revealed no heart damage, as noted. It also showed that the runners’ average blood pressure had dropped by 4 points (systolic) and 2 points (diastolic). The paper noted that this is “comparable to the effects of antihypertensive medication,” and would likely reflect an 11 percent lower risk of stroke and 7 percent lower risk of heart disease in a young group with an already low risk profile. 

Somewhat surprisingly, the runners showed no increase in basic fitness post marathon training as measured by vo2 max testing. This could be, the study team speculated, because the runners were still not fully recovered from their marathon effort.

It’s likewise possible that the runners’ unsupervised training was so modest that it simply didn’t increase their cardiovascular fitness, which generally gets the biggest bang from relatively fast running. The runners also showed no change in pre- and post-marathon BMI (average, 23.5) or body fat percent (average, 22.5 percent).

The study team noted two other post-marathon changes with possible benefits to the runners: They had lower “aortic pulse wave velocity” and a lower level of blood creatinine. The first is a measure of artery flexibility vs stiffness. “The lower the aortic pulse wave velocity, the more elastic, healthy, and youthful the artery,” explained first author Andrew D’Silva, a London-based cardiologist. “The higher it gets, the stiffer the arteries, which can happen in ageing but also through disease processes like high blood pressure and diabetes.”

Creatinine is a measure of kidney strain or injury. Some previous marathon blood-test analyses, performed immediately after the finish, have revealed high levels of creatinine. This presumably results because the kidneys have to work overtime to clear the byproducts of muscle-breakdown. The new study didn’t draw blood until two weeks post-marathon, when subjects’ creatinine was lower than six months pre-marathon. 

“This drop in creatinine that we observed may mean that kidney functioning was enhanced by 17 weeks of regular running, and not impaired,” said D’Silva.

D’Silva believes the new study makes an important contribution precisely because it monitored “typical first time marathon runners” who aren’t motivated enough to follow a serious-runner training program. If anyone were likely to suffer heart damage while marathon running, it would be an under-prepared crowd. But this didn’t happen.

Instead, D’Silva observed: “The runners got beneficial improvements in the blood vessels (blood pressure, aortic pulse wave velocity) and no sign of heart damage.”

In Marathon Trials, Tierney Wolfgram, 16, Racing Cathy Schiro Record from 36 Years Ago


Schiro, 1984 Marathon Trials
As the youngest entrant in the 2020 Marathon Trials, 16-year-old Tierney Wolfgram is getting lots of attention. It’s not that anyone expects her to finish in the top 3, but youth provides its own fascination, and the average age of women in the Trials is 31. In addition, Wolfgram has her eyes set on the American high-school and junior record for the marathon

In that regard, her goal is almost impossible. She’s chasing Cathy Schiro’s performance from the inaugural U.S. women’s Olympic Marathon Trials in 1984. Schiro’s mark has stood the test of time, because it’s one of the toughest marathon marks in the U.S. record books--2:34:24.

The two have followed very similar paths. Wolfgram won the 2017 Minnesota state cross-country meet as a freshman. When Schiro was a freshman in 1981, she won the New Hampshire state meet for the second time in a row. She went on to garner three more state titles for a grand total of five.

As a 15-year-old high school sophomore, Wolfgram decided to tackle the 2018 Twin Cities Marathon. She finished sixth in 2:40:03 to notch her Trials qualifier. When she turned her attention back to cross-country, things didn’t go well. She dropped out of both her state meet and Nike Cross Nationals.

Tierney Wolfgram
Schiro ran the Kinney Nationals (which preceded Footlocker) as a frosh, soph, and junior, finishing 19th, 10th, and 3rd. In the winter of 1983/1984, her coaches, New England road veterans Tom and Marcia Dowling, presented her with a choice: to continue running track, or to give the marathon a try.

She opted for the latter, entering the Hampton, NH, Marathon in February, 1984. There, as a 16-year-old, she clocked a 2:45:16, good enough to qualify for the first Marathon Trials. (The OTQ was 2:51:16.) She skipped the spring track season to continue her marathon training, generally logging 60 to 70 miles a week with long runs that reached 22 miles. 

Wolfgram’s running was injury-plagued last year, with a metatarsal fracture in the spring and a tibia fracture in September that knocked her out of the cross-country season. By December she was healthy enough to return to serious marathon training. At that point, she moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico, for some altitude and better weather than in Minnesota. 
Schiro racing as high schooler
from Dover NH. Jeff Johnson photo

By January, she was training around 80+ miles per week. On January 19, she ran 1:16:55 in the Rock n Roll Arizona Half Marathon on a course that turned out to be 285 meters short. In a February podcast with Carrie Tollefson, she said she had gotten up to 100 miles in a week and was eyeing Schiro’s record. Her mother and father have been alternating two-week stints with her in Albuquerque.

(Another young female marathoner, Alana Hadley, ran 2:41:58 as a 16-year-old in 2013. She improved to 2:38:38 the next year to qualify for the 2016 Marathon Trials in Los Angeles. There, she dropped out, and she has since stopped racing competitively.)

Schiro says she reached the May 12, 1984 Trials in Olympia, WA, “pretty unaware of professional racing, the other runners, their times, and so on. I only knew I had trained hard, that my coaches believed in me, and I loved to run the distance.” In Olympia, the Trials organizers assigned her 54-year-old Sister Marion Irvine (who had qualified with a 2:51:00) as a roommate.

Schiro, still 16, didn’t start the marathon with a strategy. She certainly wasn’t thinking about making the Olympic team. She and her coaches decided only on a pace plan: try to hold 6:00 pace as long as possible. 

That put her in the middle of the pack early on. Then she began moving up. And just before 20 miles, something remarkable happened. Joan Benoit had a solid lead. Julie Brown was running a strong second. And Lisa Larsen (later Weidenbach and Rainsberger) held third. Only Larsen didn’t look so good.

And a little 5’1” sprite from Dover, New Hampshire, was closing in on her. For several moments, it actually looked as if Schiro might nab the third spot on the podium.

That didn’t happen. “I was too inexperienced at that point in my career,” Schiro (now O’Brien) remembers. “I had probably overextended too much. I didn’t know that you had to be careful about running aggressive even if you felt good.”

Schiro faded to ninth. Larsen finished fourth (as she would in the next two Trials) behind a fast-closing Julie Isphording. Even in ninth, Schiro’s time was an astonishing 2:34:24. It remains the American record for a junior runner, for a high-schooler, and for a 16-year-old Trials competitor. 

Tierney Wolfgram won’t find it easy to beat Schiro’s performance, especially not on the tough Atlanta course. Still many will be cheering for her to run strong and have a long career. You can debate whether or not 16-year-olds should be focusing on the marathon. But once they’ve made that decision, it’s hard not to root for them.

Schiro. Jeff Johnson photo
Postscript: Six months after her Marathon Trials appearance, Cathy Schiro enjoyed an unmatched cross-country season. In the Kinney Regionals in famed Van Cortlandt Park, she ran 16:46 on the 5K course, a record that still stands. Two weeks later, she won the Kinney Championships. In 1988 and 1992, Schiro finished third and second in the Marathon Trials, making two U.S. Olympic teams. Her best Olympic performance was 10th in the 1992 Barcelona Games. In 1991, she cracked 2:30 in the L.A. Marathon, running 2:29:38.


Currently, Schiro lives and runs (gently) in Durham, NH. Her son Patrick is a star distance performer at Dartmouth, while his younger brother, Andrew, has begun winning high school state championships on the track.