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‘I’m Just Overjoyed’: Boston Marathon Racers Rejoice After Lost Year
Thousands of competitors ran the 2021 Boston Marathon. The prestigious race restarted this year after being canceled in 2020 because of the pandemic.
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Participants are asked to keep their mask on until they reach the start line. Good job, good job. Congratulations to all the the folks that qualified. And you’re off! I’m feeling so overwhelmed. I’ve been training for this thing since, I don’t know, 2019, it feels like, because it got canceled in 2020. That was supposed to be my first time racing the Boston, so I’ve been waiting, like, two years to run it. And so I feel like I’ve been — Ohh, I’m just overjoyed. All that training, this is the big dance. This is what it pays off. Oh, my goodness. After the pandemic, after all we’ve been through, I am so happy to be here. I am super happy that Kenya won both men and women. I am so excited. And it feels great. It really feels great. You’ve got a lot of people behind you. See what you’ve done? You are Boston strong. I recently had an elder passed away up in our state, Emmett Eastman. He was a great inspiration to me. The guy ran up all the way until he was 80, and he was an international runner. And he talked about Boston when I was a kid and I thought I could never run that. And here I am today. Oh, this crowd doesn’t need any encouragement. You know what to do. The paralympic program. And once again they’re off. I saw all of the Boston survivors and they just motivate you, and the crowds motivate you, and you just keep going. There’s no reason not to go. There is no crying at the Boston Marathon.
After a year and a half wait, the world’s oldest and most storied annual marathon returned to the streets of Boston on Monday, not in its usual spring slot but in an unaccustomed season more associated with New York’s race.
The coronavirus pandemic led organizers to cancel the 2020 event and push the 2021 race for the first time from Patriots’ Day in April to October, on the day known alternatively as Columbus Day and Indigenous Peoples’ Day.
“It’s been two years, and I’m a mom, I have two kids — it’s been hard,” Margaret Klimek said through tears just after she finished her fourth Boston Marathon. “It just feels so good to be out here doing this.”
The men’s and women’s races were similar in that they were won by Kenyans unaccustomed to winning major marathons. But they played out in dramatically different ways.
On the men’s side, C.J. Albertson, an unheralded American, raced to a two-minute lead and improbably stayed there until the hills in the race’s late stages. Then Benson Kipruto of Kenya caught and passed him and raced to the win alone in 2 hours 9 minutes 51 seconds, 46 seconds clear of the field. In the women’s race, an unexpected winner, Diana Kipyokei of Kenya, emerged from the pack at 18 miles, took the lead, was caught, then pulled away again for the win in 2:24:45. It was her major marathon debut.
Overall, it was a triumphant return for the Boston Marathon. Edna Havlin, a runner from Brazil, summed the day up best, shouting “We’re back!” as she crossed the finish line to the cheers of the Boston faithful.
The women’s champion, Diana Kipyokei of Kenya, prefers the surname spelling Kipyokei — which is now reflected in the official race results. But marathon organizers said she told them of her preference over the weekend, after her race bib had been printed with Kipyogei, a spelling that has been used in some of her past competitions.
Reporting from the marathon
Kristina Rivera was wearing a Boston Marathon jacket with “Finally caught my first unicorn” — a nod to the marathon’s symbol and her first Boston race — stitched across the back. “My bus got lost this morning,” she said, confirming reports that some buses got lost on the way to the starting line. “It’s an untraditional race given that it’s in October — just finishing it …” she said, trailing off. “It’s amazing.”
Deb Haaland, President Biden’s secretary of the Interior, was among this year’s more recognizable amateur runners.
Haaland wrote in an opinion article for The Boston Globe that she was running the marathon, which is taking place on Indigenous Peoples’ Day, as a tribute to “missing and murdered Indigenous peoples and their families, the victims of Indian boarding schools, and the promise that our voices are being heard and will have a part in an equitable and just future in this new era.”
Haaland became the first Native American cabinet secretary when she was confirmed in March.
Of the 26.2 miles, Haaland wrote, “my feet will pound the ancestral homelands of the Massachusett, the Mashpee Wampanoag, and the Pawtucket people and will follow in the footsteps of Indigenous runners who have participated in this race over its 125-year history.”
The marathon normally takes place in April but was moved to October because of the coronavirus pandemic. The Boston Athletic Association, which was criticized by activists for holding the race on Indigenous Peoples’ Day, issued a statement on Monday acknowledging that the course runs through the homelands of Indigenous people.
Representative Katherine Clark of Massachusetts embraced Haaland midrace and offered support, as she shared on Twitter.
Amanda Nimkar, Christine Meninno and Calvin Nimkar came from Swampscott, Mass., to show their support. “Seeing the city come alive again, it’s been a long hard year and a half or so,” Nimkar told me. “It’s been good to see everyone come out for each other. They give me strength to do other things in my life even if it’s not running. Everyone does it their own way, as long as they do it.”
Wearing bib No. 500, Danica Patrick — the first woman to ever lead at the Indianapolis 500 — finished her first Boston Marathon in 4:01:21.
Reporting from the marathon
Jie Zheng has traveled from Virginia to run the Boston Marathon every year since 2006. She said she has loved every race, but those following the bombing in 2013 have had particular significance. “The running community, we want to support each other. It was important to keep coming to Boston to show the running spirit — that we are not getting scared, we are all family together.”
A moment of silence was held at 2:49 p.m. to remember those lost in the Boston Marathon bombings more than eight years ago.
Reporting from the marathon
Another example of a different Boston Marathon: After a water station, runners are met by volunteers with hand sanitizer and face masks.
Ran the marathon
I’ve lost track of which year had the loudest spectators on Boylston Street. Has to be 2014, one year after the bombing. But these folks had two and a half years to rest their lungs, and boy did they use them. Boston always brings it like nowhere else. Never could have done it without them.
Gina Fiandaca of Austin, Texas, ran her 51st marathon today (her 17th Boston Marathon). “Boston is the granddaddy of all marathons and inspiring.”
Reporting from the marathon
As they make their way down Boylston street, runners limp. They hobble. They drag their legs. Some are crying from the pain and the joy. “That’s just too many miles to run,” I heard one man say.
Reporting from the marathon
After crossing the finish line to cheers, Edna Havlin, a runner from Brazil, threw her arms up in victory. “We’re back!” she shouted. “I knew I wanted to be part of this comeback,” she told me.
Reporting from the marathon
Margaret Klimek just finished her fourth Boston Marathon, achieving a personal best in the process. After the race, Klimek, 38, sat on the ground in tears. “It’s been two years and I’m a mom, I have two kids — it’s been hard,” Klimek said through tears. “It just feels so good to be out here doing this.”
The screams can be heard from blocks away.
As the route bends around Central Street in front of Wellesley College, a small private liberal arts college that sits at the halfway point of the Boston Marathon, hundreds of students cheer so vociferously that the passage has become known as the Scream Tunnel.
Signs adorn the barricades that line the street, saying things like, “Hey CK run your little buns off!,” “Sarah Frey the struggle isn’t real today!” and “You’re halfway there!”
But one part of the beloved tradition is different this year, spelled out on a handful of signs thrust above the students’ heads. “Don’t kiss me,” they read with a playful twist.
Since the race’s inception, the encouragement and kisses offered at Wellesley have been a hallmark of the race, offering runners an extra boost to push through the remaining half of the race.
This year, because of the coronavirus pandemic, the Boston Athletic Association strongly encouraged participants and spectators to practice “personal responsibility,” which may include “refraining from kissing a stranger around the halfway mark,” the organizers wrote.
Other traditions, like the playful signs, almost didn’t make it either.
“We just started school, and I didn’t know what Wellesley or the B.A.A’.s rules for spectators would be, so I was toeing the line between taking requests,” said Sydne Ashford, the house president of Munger Hall, the residence hall that is responsible for the signs.
Although people messaged the Scream Tunnel’s Facebook page, it wasn’t until mid-September that Ashford and other volunteers officially opened the request form. They ended up making over 300 signs at the behest of family and friends of runners, with favorites including a “Go, sexy grandpa, go” and “Baby’s first marathon,” for a woman who is running pregnant, Ashford said.
Monday’s race also marked the underclassmen’s first MarMon — or marathon Monday — after the pandemic forced organizers to cancel the race in 2020 and postpone it in 2021.
“It’s wild,” Karishma Gottfried, 20, said of experiencing her first marathon Monday as a junior. “I didn’t realize how exciting it would be. My hands are sticky from the sweat of all the runners high-fiving me.”
As runners zoomed by, the students of Wellesley screamed and cheered, high-fiving the competitors and blowing kisses. And while the mouth-to-mouth contact was all but absent, there were some who did not obey the rules.
One student held a “Kiss Me I’m Irish” sign above her head and managed to get a peck from a runner as he passed. The cheers, already deafening, grew louder.
David Parkinson just ran his 12th Boston marathon. His wife beat breast cancer twice during the pandemic and he said he ran the marathon for her.
Barbara Singleton and Beth Craig, a mother-daughter team running on Monday as a wheelchair duo, are poised to complete their fourth marathon in Boston as “Team Babsie,” in honor of Singleton’s nickname. It is believed that Craig will be the first daughter to push her mother across the finish line.
Singleton, now in her 70s, was diagnosed with early onset multiple sclerosis when Craig was 15 years old. “She’s my hero; she’s endured so much,” Craig told “CBS Mornings.” Of racing, Craig said, “She’s sort of the heart, I’m just the legs in the back.”
The pair, who started running together seven years ago, was inspired by Dick and Rick Hoyt, the father-son wheelchair duo who finished more than a thousand road races together and were best known for competing in the Boston Marathon. Team Babsie is running in honor of Dick Hoyt, who died in March at 80, and is raising money for the Hoyt Foundation.
“Babsie and I are proud to race this year in the 125th Boston Marathon as a tribute to Dick and Rick for all they have done to widen the doors of inclusion so we can participate in so many events like this,” Craig wrote on a team fund-raising page. “We honor and remember Dick Hoyt, a man that changed the direction of our lives.”
Craig said on CBS that the Hoyts had allowed her and Singleton to be “devoted to each other as mother and daughter again.”
Reporting from the marathon
For many runners, it’s been a long road to Boston. At Sunday’s expo, competitors and their families decorated a huge message wall, the backdrop of which was a map of the route. “I made it in spite of getting Covid,” one message read.
Reporting from the marathon
Not everyone was cheering the runners as they neared Wellesley College today.
Spectators young and old (and some with four legs) were thrilled to return to the streets of Boston to show their support for runners in this year’s marathon.
Shalane Flanagan successfully continued her quest to run all six major marathons with a time of under three hours over a six-week span. Having finished Berlin, London and Chicago, the former Olympic silver medalist made Boston No. 4 in a time of 2:40:34, good for 33rd place among women.
Flanagan, 40, plans to do a virtual version of the Tokyo Marathon at home in Oregon in a week, followed by the New York City Marathon on Nov. 7.
In 1966, Roberta Gibb became the first woman to complete the Boston Marathon at a time when women were prohibited from doing so because they were considered “physiologically incapable.”
Now, more than 55 years later, Gibb has broken another gender barrier by becoming the race’s first woman to be featured as a sculpture and placed along the Boston Marathon route.
Last week, “The Girl Who Ran” was unveiled by the 26.2 Foundation, a nonprofit that promotes marathoning, and installed in downtown Hopkinton, Mass., where the race begins. The sculpture sits between the starting line and the point where Gibb, after hiding behind some bushes so as not to be seen or caught by authorities, jumped into the race wearing a blue hooded sweatshirt so she could better disguise herself.
The 26.2 foundation commissioned Gibb, who studied at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and has a background in sculpture, herself to be the creator.
“We were thinking this could be a symbol of all the women pioneers beyond running who have made these breakthroughs as over the centuries,” Gibb said.
The life-size, bronze sculpture depicts Gibb as she crossed the finish line, wearing a pair of her brother’s Bermuda shorts, a bathing suit top and a pair of men’s running shoes, which caused her feet to badly blister. She molded the face to reflect the pain she felt from her feet and the exhaustion.
“I didn’t glorify it or make it smooth — I made it a little rough, because that is how you feel when you run a marathon,” Gibb said. “I wanted it to look like, ‘Oh god my feet are killing me!’”
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By The New York Times -
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We spoke to runners about what motivated them to compete in the Boston Marathon this year.
Diana Kipyokei of Kenya won the Boston Marathon on Monday in her major marathon debut. At 27, her previous biggest victory was the Istanbul Marathon.
The race began in a typical pattern, with a large lead group forming and runners gradually dropping away. The pack was still 20 strong by the halfway mark. The race didn’t really begin until 18 miles in, when Kipyokei surged ahead.
Netsanet Gudeta of Ethiopia, a former world cross-country champion, went after her and caught her within a few miles. Sometimes when a lone leader is caught in a marathon, it’s the end of the line for her. But at 24 miles, after the two had run side by side, it was Kipyokei who again took the lead.
The veteran Edna Kiplagat of Kenya, a pre-race favorite and a two-time world champion as well as a New York and Boston winner, soon caught Gudeta and gave chase to Kipyokei. She gained some time but could not close the whole gap.
Kipyokei finished her unexpected victory, in a field with many more accomplished runners, in 2 hours 24 minutes 45 seconds. Kiplagat, 41, finished second in 2:25:09. Kenyans took the top four spots, with Mary Ngugi third and Monicah Ngige fourth. Nell Rojas was the top American in sixth.
Benson Kipruto won the men’s race Monday at the Boston Marathon, which was held for the first time since 2019, in an unfamiliar fall setting.
Kipruto, a 30-year-old Kenyan, had won the Prague and Toronto marathons, but lacked a signature victory before Monday.
C.J. Albertson, an American who was seventh in the most recent Olympic trials and was not considered a major contender in Boston, caused a stir when he raced out to a big lead ahead of the main pack, by as much as 2 minutes 13 seconds by the halfway mark. Such early leads seldom last long, but Albertson stubbornly stayed out front for mile after mile.
But the elite runners behind him started cutting into the lead, and after 20.5 miles, it was gone. The 15-strong pack that caught him included the major contenders Filex Kiprotich, Wilson Chebet and Asefa Mengstu. That’s when the race really began.
And the trigger was Kipruto, who put in a big surge on his own at 22 miles and seized the lead, with little resistance. He soon had a 30-second lead and pulled away with confidence. No one seemed willing to chase him, and he won going away in 2 hours 9 minutes 51 seconds.
Ethiopians were second, third and fourth, with Lemi Berhanu 46 seconds behind Kipruto and just a second ahead of Jemal Yimer.
Albertson, running on his birthday, unexpectedly hung on to finish 10th. “My belief is that I am the best downhill runner in the world,” he said of the race’s opening stages. “I wasn’t running hard, I was just running to what my strengths are. I’m not going to fly up the uphills like some of the other runners.”
Danica Patrick is no stranger to racing, but on Monday she will be competing in a different kind of race as she runs her first marathon.
“I have only ever had one bucket list item. 1! That is to do a marathon,” she wrote on Instagram. “So, why not do the most famous and apparently hardest one … Boston.”
Patrick, who retired from racecar driving in 2018, ran in bib No. 500, a nod by race organizers to her trailblazing accomplishments at the Indianapolis 500 and Daytona 500. She finished with a time of 4:01:21.
Patrick is the honorary team captain for Team Speed of Light, the fund-raising arm of a foundation started by the former New England Patriot Matt Light that helps young people develop skills for their future through the outdoors.
“It’s no secret that I love a tough challenge,” she wrote on a team fund-raising page for the race. “I’ve never ran a marathon, so why not do the most historic and iconic one first.”
Patrick shared her training — and what she’s learned from it — with her followers. She noted the benefit of being in tune with her hydration and nutrition, what she’s wearing to run, the temperature and available shade. But Patrick also realized the mental game that is distance running, sharing on Instagram, “when I need my mind to shift from pain to something good … with some effort, I can.”
Runners typically have to qualify for the Boston Marathon, completing at least one 26.2 mile race before. By running to support a charity, Patrick is able to run Monday’s race as her first. She is running with a group that includes her sister, Brooke Selman.
“Can’t wait to join my fellow runners for the race of a lifetime,” she wrote.
After 20.5 miles, C.J. Albertson’s lead in the men’s race is finally gone. He started to slow significantly and was swallowed up by a 10-strong pack including the major contenders Filex Kiprotich, Benson Kipruto, Wilson Chebet and Asefa Mengstu. So Albertson will not win the Boston Marathon, but you’ve got to hand it to him for hanging on as long as he did.
Marcel Hug of Switzerland won his fifth Boston Marathon wheelchair event on Monday, but a missed turn may have been costly for him.
Hug left the field behind from the first push, and was never even remotely challenged. With more than a seven-minute lead, it seemed to matter little that he briefly missed a turn near the finish.
But the course record is 1 hour 18 minutes 4 seconds — which Hug himself set in 2017 — and he stood to pick up a $50,000 bonus had he broken it. Instead he crossed the line in 1:18:11. It looked quite possible that were it not for the wrong turn, the bonus would have been his.
Hug was supposed to turn right onto Boston’s Hereford Street, just before the final left turn onto Boylston Street. But he followed a lead car past Hereford, then stopped and backtracked once he realized his mistake.
“Just a stupid mistake for myself,” Hug said in an interview on WBZ-TV. “I was just focusing on the car, just pushing as hard as I can. And then the car went straight. I followed the car but I should go right. It’s my fault. I should know the course, I’ve done it several times. I’m really upset about myself.”
“I’m really happy about this race and my performance,” Hug added. “But I’m also upset with this. It should not happen.”
Hug reversed the results of this year’s Chicago Marathon, where he was defeated by Daniel Romanchuk of the United States. That Chicago race, incredibly, was just one day ago. Romanchuk finished second in Boston, 7:35 behind, with Ernst van Dyk of South Africa third.
Hug won four gold medals at the Tokyo Paralympics, in the marathon and three track races. At 35, he also has three New York and three Berlin wins to his credit.
In the women’s wheelchair race, it was another blowout by a Swiss pusher.
Manuela Schar won her third Boston Marathon, pulling away from the gun and never looking back. She finished in 1:35:21. The five-time winner Tatyana McFadden was among those in her wake, in second place, 14:59 behind.
Schar also won Boston in 2017 and 2019 and won a gold medal in the 800 meters at the Paralympics in Tokyo.
Ran the marathon
This year, runners aren’t waiting around in clumps behind Hopkinton High School or on the start line for each wave to begin. It’s get off the bus and start running when you’re ready.
In the women’s wheelchair race, it was another blowout by a Swiss pusher.
Manuela Schar won her third Boston Marathon, pulling away from the gun and never looking back. She finished in 1:35:21. The five-time winner Tatyana McFadden was among those in her wake, in second place, 14:59 behind.
The Boston Marathon, normally run in April, returned after more than a year off because of the coronavirus pandemic. The wheelchair racers kicked things off, followed by the professional men and women and then a big rolling start of recreational runners who were thrilled to be back on the course.
About 10 miles into the men’s race and C.J. Albertson is still way out in front, by 1:43 over the pack. His chance of winning is still very small, based on history and form. The pack of stars is still moving easily and apparently unconcerned behind him, and it includes some of the world’s best marathoners, who know what they are doing. If Albertson somehow steals the race, it would be most unexpected.
If there has been one iconic image at the Boston Marathon over the years, it was Dick Hoyt pushing his son Rick in a wheelchair along the course route.
Rick Hoyt, a quadriplegic with cerebral palsy, is passionate about sports, and the father and son completed more than 1,000 races, including the Boston Marathon nearly every year from 1980 to 2014.
“When my dad and I are out there on a run, a special bond forms between us,” Rick Hoyt told The New York Times in 2009 with the help of a computer voice program.
After his father’s retirement from racing, Rick continued to compete by being pushed by others. Dick Hoyt died in March at 80.
Now Rick, 59, has announced his retirement as well. Family members told The MetroWest Daily News that he now lives in an assisted living facility and cannot leave for long enough to travel to the marathon and complete it. Rick said in a recorded statement to The Boston Globe that he has had repeated episodes of pneumonia. “I will run shorter races when appropriate,” he said.
Troy Hoyt, a grandson of Dick and nephew of Rick, ran the marathon on Monday in honor of his late grandfather. His father, Russell Hoyt, was the official starter of the hand cycle and duo participant race.
Marathon organizers will present an award in honor of Dick and Rick Hoyt this year to “someone who exhibits the spirit of Team Hoyt’s legacy.” There is also a bronze statue of the pair near the starting line of the Boston Marathon. “Yes You Can!” the plaque reads.
The men’s wheelchair winner is Marcel Hug of Switzerland in 1:18:11. It was his fifth Boston win and came despite his losing a few seconds after missing a turn near the finish.
Hug reversed the results of this year’s Chicago Marathon, where he was defeated by Daniel Romanchuk of the United States. That Chicago race, incredibly, was yesterday.
Romanchuk finished second, 7:35 behind.
After five kilometers, C.J. Albertson has taken a one-minute lead in the men’s race. But don’t award him the title yet. Though an accomplished runner — he was seventh in the most recent Olympic trials — it would be quite a surprise to see him stay out front for too long. Still, it’s a brief moment of glory for him.
With the world’s six major marathons — Berlin, London, Chicago, Boston, Tokyo and New York City — squeezed into a six-week window this fall, most top runners had a tough call trying to decide which race to pick.
Then there was Shalane Flanagan.
The women’s champion of the 2017 New York City Marathon, Flanagan these days coaches Nike’s Bowerman Track Club in Portland, Ore. But she saw an opportunity in the closely packed schedule created by the coronavirus pandemic, which pushed three spring races into the fall. She decided to run in all six major marathons, and to try to complete each one in under three hours — roughly a pace of under 6 minutes 50 seconds per mile.
After finishing the Chicago Marathon Sunday in 2:46:39 — and winning the women’s 40-44 division — she is halfway there.
Now comes the hard part.
Flanagan, who grew up in Marblehead, Mass., hopped on a plane to Boston on Sunday afternoon and will be on the starting line of her hometown marathon Monday morning in Hopkinton.
“It’s so typical of Boston to be the super hard part,” Flanagan said during an interview last week.
If she can walk after this weekend, she will do a virtual version of the Tokyo Marathon at home in Oregon in a week. Then it’s off to the New York City Marathon on Nov. 7.
That’s a heavy workload after two major knee reconstructions in 2019. Her patellas have hamstring tendons from cadavers.
“I missed pushing myself,” Flanagan, 40, said of life after the end of her competitive running career. “It was just fun to have a big goal again.”
“We all reach a point where we know we can’t make that podium anymore, but it’s difficult at that point to just walk away and not challenge yourself anymore,” said Kara Goucher, the former Olympian who has been competing in very long trail races the past few years.
Flanagan tried to mimic a shorter version of the Chicago-Boston double last month, running 20-plus miles on a flat course one day, then 21 miles at a 6:40-per-mile pace on hilly terrain the next day. Changing her 17-month-old son’s diapers and working in her garden after the first run served as a stand-in for the hectic journey from Chicago to Boston.
“I know I am a better person if I run,” she said. “I just needed something else other than running for the sake of running.”
Rolling Start Begins
Reporting from the marathon
James Senbeta is a wheelchair marathoner from Chicago. “My first year was the year of the bombing, and I had to do an exam right after the race because he wouldn’t give me the make-up.”
Ran the marathon
It’s just your basic school bus full of fast masked folks today. These bus rides to the start are generally super quiet — lots of people catching a little extra sleep and trying to conserve energy. Not this year. This one is loud. Everyone is chatting about running the past year and a half, and about all the other marathons they have run or missed. For dedicated runners, this is like a tribal reunion.
New York is bigger. London, Berlin and Chicago are faster. Tokyo stands out as the biggest continent’s biggest race. But Boston is to marathoning what the Masters is to golf and Wimbledon is to tennis — the sport’s signature event, where a single victory often defines a career.
For most of the recent past, African runners have reigned supreme in the world’s oldest and most prestigious marathon, and it’s likely they will again this year. If history is a guide, the race will have to include some unique circumstances for a runner who is not from Ethiopia or Kenya to prevail.
In 2014, Meb Keflezighi of the United States won an emotional race one year after the 2013 bombing at the finish line. In 2018, Des Linden, another American, and Yuki Kawauchi of Japan prevailed during a freezing Nor’easter that made the race more a test of will than of speed.
A marathon that takes place during a pandemic probably qualifies as a unique circumstance, given the limitations on travel and the packed marathon schedule this fall that has spread the top talent among five major races. Still, there are several talented runners from East Africa who will be tough to beat: Lelisa Desisa of Ethiopia and Benson Kipruto of Kenya in the men’s race; Workenesh Edesa of Ethiopia and Angela Tanui of Kenya in the women’s.
That said, with temperatures expected to be in the 60s, this should not be a particularly fast race, unless there is a major tailwind. Linden, who this year became the first woman to break three hours for 50 kilometers, is in the field, and so is Scott Fauble, who lives and trains at altitude in Flagstaff, Ariz., and ran a 2:09 in Boston in 2019. Jordan Hasay, another fast American woman, has finished third twice and could be dangerous.