The American Marathon Records Could Fall in Chicago on Sunday

Conner Mantz broke the American marathon record on the Chicago course last October, running 2:04:43 to take 55 seconds off the 2:05:38 that Khalid Khannouchi had held since 2002. Mantz will not be in Grant Park on Sunday, but Charles Hicks, Clayton Young and Vinny Mauri will, and each of them ran 2:05:54 or faster in April. Hicks’s 2:04:35 in Boston was quicker than the record itself.

Emily Sisson’s women’s record, 2:18:29, was set on the same streets in 2022, and it is a harder target this weekend. How fast the leaders are sent out, a pace expected to be announced on Friday, will shape the Americans’ morning nearly as much as their own fitness.

The Men’s Record: 2:04:43

Mantz built his record on almost perfectly even halves, 1:02:19 and 1:02:24, and finished fourth. That is 4:45 per mile (2:57 per kilometer) for the whole distance. He missed the Boston Marathon this spring with two sacral stress fractures and returned at the World Half-Marathon Championships in Copenhagen on Sept. 20, where he placed 12th in 60:08 and led the American men, RunBlogRun reported.

Clayton Young went on the Nobody Asked Us podcast with Des Linden and Kara Goucher in early September and said he would go after the record, and he has stuck with that plan even after a scan found a 12-centimeter tear in a hamstring tendon four days after the Great North Run. His 2:05:41 best came in Boston. On a record-eligible course his fastest is the 2:08:00 he ran in Chicago in 2023, so he would need to take 3:17 off it.

Vinny Mauri ran 2:05:54 at the Glass City Marathon in Toledo in April, and it was the first marathon he had ever raced. He has declined to name a target time for Sunday. “I’m going to go to Chicago, and I’m going to swing for the fences,” he told LetsRun, and on whether he would join Hicks and Young if they chased the record from the start, he said: “I feel like I’d be stupid not to.”

Hicks has the fastest time of the three, 2:04:35 for seventh at the Boston Marathon, in the race where Zouhair Talbi ran 2:03:45, the fastest marathon ever by an American. Boston’s start and finish are too far apart, and the course loses too much elevation, to meet World Athletics’ criteria, so neither mark counts. Hicks has only run two marathons, and the people he wants to beat on Sunday are the other Americans. “I was second American in New York. I was second American in Boston. I want to be first American in Chicago,” he told Citius Mag late last month. “You can’t run an American record without being the first American, right?”

Galen Rupp, the 2017 Chicago champion, has a 2:06:07 from Prague in 2018. Abbabiya Simbassa (2:06:53), Haftu Knight (2:07:38) and CJ Albertson (2:08:17) are also on the elite entry list, along with Matt Richtman, who won the 2025 Los Angeles Marathon in 2:07:57 on a course that is not record-eligible.

The Women’s Record: 2:18:29

Emma Grace Hurley will be running her first marathon, and she comes in with more momentum than any American woman in the field. Her 1:06:23 in Copenhagen on Sept. 20, three weeks before Chicago, earned fifth place at the World Half-Marathon Championships and lifted her to third on the U.S. all-time half-marathon list. In March she ran 24:29 at the Shamrock Shuffle, also in Chicago, for an American 8K record. “I am confident that my fitness is right around the 2:20 mark,” she told LetsRun, adding that “it’s not about the time” and that, as a debutant, “I don’t know what I don’t know.”

Running 2:20 would still leave Hurley about a minute and a half outside the record. Sisson ran 2:18:29 behind Ruth Chepngetich in 2022, reaching halfway in 69:26 and coming home faster, and took 43 seconds off the mark Keira D’Amato had set in Houston that January. It works out to 5:17 per mile (3:17 per kilometer) all the way.

Of the Americans with marathon times, Sara Hall has run closest, 2:20:32 in 2020. Susanna Sullivan set her 2:21:56 best on this course in 2024 and placed fourth at the 2025 World Championships in Tokyo, and Des Linden, Sara Vaughn and Natosha Rogers (2:23:28) are entered as well.

Weather and Pace

Saturday night is only forecast to cool to around 62 F, according to the National Weather Service, with a partly sunny Sunday climbing to a high near 72 F, and the race has said its alert system will start at yellow, its level for less than ideal conditions. LetsRun’s preview estimated the warmth could add 25 to 65 seconds to a top men’s time, a range that brackets the 55 seconds by which Mantz broke Khannouchi’s record.

Defending champion Jacob Kiplimo has a 2:00:28 best, and if the leaders are sent out near two-hour pace they will reach halfway more than two minutes ahead of where Mantz was last year. Anyone chasing 2:04:43 will most likely have to do it in a group behind them, which is exactly the race Mauri has said he wants to be part of.

The professional race starts at 7:30 a.m. CT on Sunday, Oct. 11, and our complete race guide has the start times and how to watch. Our live blog will carry the splits as they come in, and our YouTube watch-along goes live about half an hour before the start.