Brigid Kosgei Has Asked for a 65:30 First Half at the Chicago Marathon

Brigid Kosgei has asked the pacers in Sunday’s Chicago Marathon to take the lead women through halfway in 65:30, LetsRun reported after talking to the elite field at Friday’s media day. Run evenly, that is 2:11:00 pace, a time only two women in history have beaten, and it would bring Kosgei through halfway 89 seconds sooner than she did on her way to the 2:14:04 world record she set on the same course in 2019.

Kosgei, now 32, has not raced in Chicago since that record, which stood until Tigst Assefa ran 2:11:53 in Berlin in 2023. She comes back with the fastest personal best in the field and some of the best form of her career, having won the Tokyo Marathon in March in a course record of 2:14:29. Tokyo was won from a much steadier start: Kosgei reached halfway in a group of six in 1:07:37 and did not get away from Sutume Kebede until after 30K, so the split she wants on Sunday is more than two minutes quicker than the one that won her that race.

Her official half-marathon best is 1:04:49, from Ras Al Khaimah in 2020, only 41 seconds faster than the split she now wants to run with another 13.1 miles still to come. Her only race since Tokyo was the Great North Run on Sept. 13, which she won in 1:06:15 while treating it, as she put it afterward, as a chance to “test my body and see how it will be for the Chicago Marathon.” Our profile of Kosgei has the full story of her career.

Hawi Feysa, who won here last year in 2:14:57, told LetsRun she is aiming for the same halfway split, so Kosgei may well have company. Last October she went through in 1:07:30 and ran the second half three seconds faster. In Tokyo she finished third, 3:10 behind Kosgei, and she told LetsRun she went into that race after a bout of food poisoning and with a minor knee problem that had followed her through the preparation. Feysa is part of coach Gemedu Dedefo’s group with Assefa and did most of her training for Chicago alongside her, and watching her training partner run so fast in Berlin last month has added to her belief. More on the defending champion is in her elite field profile.

In Berlin on Sept. 27, Assefa went through halfway in 1:04:57, the third-fastest opening half ever run in a women’s marathon according to World Athletics, and was running at close to world record pace until she slowed sharply after 40K with what turned out to be a partial tear of her Achilles tendon. She finished in 2:11:04, the third-fastest marathon in history. Fotyen Tesfay went out in 1:05:05 in Barcelona in March and ran 2:10:51 on her debut, and Ruth Chepngetich’s 64:16 in Chicago in 2024 led to the 2:09:56 that is still the world record and the course record.

Sharon Lokedi, who has won Boston in each of the last two years and is running her first flat marathon, is planning something more conservative. LetsRun reported that she is looking at 66:00 to 66:30 for the first half, hoping to have enough left at halfway to pick up the pace over the second half. “I know I’m fit, but I just don’t know [what that means for time] specifically,” Lokedi told LetsRun.

Race morning now looks a little cooler than it did earlier in the week, with the National Weather Service’s hourly forecast on Saturday putting it at 60 F at 7 a.m. with a dew point of 55 F and humidity at 85 percent, warming to 64 F by 9 a.m. A woman holding 2:11 pace would finish at about 9:41 a.m. We have the full race-day forecast here, and the rest of the women’s field is covered in our race preview.

Final pace groups are being set at Saturday’s technical meeting, and the professional women start alongside the men at 7:30 a.m. CT on Sunday. Our guide to how to watch the race has the TV and streaming options. We will be following every split on our live blog from the start.