Top US marathoner in Chicago Marathon for 1st time

Top American marathoner Ryan Hall plans to run his first Chicago Marathon later this year as a crucial part of his training leading up to the 2012 Olympics.

Hall announced his plans Thursday and said he would also like to set a U.S. record in the debut.

Hall, 28, is coming off what he described as the best marathon of his life in Boston this year, finishing fourth in 2 hours, 4 minutes and 58 seconds. That’s the fastest any American has run 26.2 miles, though course conditions meant it didn’t qualify as a U.S. record.

“I’d be icing on the cake to get an official American record on this course,” he said of the Oct. 9 race. In a nod to Chicago’s famously flat course, he added: “You come to Chicago to run fast.”

Hall said the deciding factor in his decision to run in Chicago was that it fit into his planning schedule as he prepares for 2012 Olympics in London. The U.S. Olympic qualifier in Houston is only three months after the Chicago Marathon.

“I look at it as the perfect amount of time between the Chicago Marathon and the Olympic trials,” Hall said. He said he would recuperate by taking a week off with no training after Chicago and then another week of light workouts before resuming a full training regimen.

Hall’s entry sets up a possible showdown with another elite marathoner taking part, Moses Mosop of Kenya, who placed second in Boston this year with a jaw-dropping 2:03:06, just four seconds behind fellow Kenyan Geoffrey Mutai.

Hall, of Mammoth Lakes, Calif., said one thing he enjoys about his high profile as this nation’s best marathoner is trying to dispel the notion that Africans inevitably win all the big marathons.

“It’s fun for me to start to shift that stereotype (and show) that Americans, we can run with these guys,” he said.

At the Boston Marathon, Ryan said he played the role of the rabbit, setting a blistering fast pace that helped lead to a winning time well under the world-record time, though Mutai’s 2:03:02 also didn’t qualify as an official record.

As the pace setter, Ryan said he didn’t have the juice for the crucial last minutes in Boston to have a viable shot at first. In Chicago, he wants to practice a strategy involving occasional surges but also conserving energy to allow for a home-stretch push.

The Chicago Marathon is considered among the world’s top five marathons, and it’s one of the biggest, drawing around 45,000 participants and more than a million spectators.

Another reason he decided to run in Chicago, Hall said, was to honor his friend — two-time Chicago Marathon champion Sammy Wanjiru, who died earlier this year. Hall said he would donate any prize money in Chicago to help fight poverty in Wanjiru’s native Kenya.