2026 Chicago Marathon Elite Field: Clayton Young

Clayton Young has raced the Chicago Marathon three times, and every visit has taken a big bite out of his best time. On Oct. 11 he lines up there for a fourth time, now a 33-year-old Olympian with a 2:05:41 to his name, and he has said publicly that he is coming for the American record.

Clayton Young at a Glance

• Born: Sept. 14, 1993 (age 33), raised in American Fork, Utah
• Coach: Ed Eyestone, Brigham Young University
• Sponsor: Brooks (since March 2026, after seven years with ASICS)
• Marathon PB: 2:05:41, Boston, April 2026 (point-to-point course, not record-eligible)
• Record-eligible marathon PB: 2:08:00, Chicago, Oct. 2023
• Half-marathon PB: 1:00:52, Houston, Jan. 2025
• 10K road PB: 27:58, Aug. 2025
• Championship results: 2nd, 2024 U.S. Olympic Trials (2:09:06); 9th, 2024 Paris Olympics (2:08:44); 9th, 2025 World Championships, Tokyo (2:10:43)
• Major marathon results: 7th, Chicago 2023 (2:08:00); 7th, New York City 2024 (2:09:21); 7th, Boston 2025 (2:07:04); 11th, Boston 2026 (2:05:41)
• Titles: NCAA 10,000m champion (2019); U.S. 8K and 20K road champion (2023)
• Chicago history: 2:16:07 (2021), 2:11:51 (2022), 2:08:00 (2023)

From 136th at the Trials to the Olympic Team

Young grew up in American Fork, south of Salt Lake City, and went to BYU to run for Eyestone, with a two-year church mission in Raleigh, N.C., in the middle of his college career. He was 23rd in the NCAA 10,000m in 2018, and a year later he won the title in Austin in 29:16.60, closing with a 55.88 last lap. BYU put three men in the top four that night, and the one in fourth was Conner Mantz, who has trained alongside Young ever since. Young finished at BYU in 2019 with a master’s degree in engineering.

Young’s marathon debut, at the 2020 Olympic Trials in Atlanta, was a 2:29:46 that left him 136th. His next two marathons were both in Chicago, 2:16:07 in 2021 and 2:11:51 in 2022. In February 2023 he had knee surgery, which he has called the lowest point of his career, and by October he was back in Chicago running 2:08:00 for seventh. He sat 16th at halfway in 63:42, then ran 64:18 for the second half and picked up nine places on the way to the finish, with a time inside the 2:08:10 automatic standard for the Paris Olympics. Mantz was 13 seconds ahead of him in 2:07:47.

He won his first national titles in 2023 as well, at 8K in July and at 20K in September, where he outran Mantz by one second in New Haven. The following February at the 2024 Olympic Trials in Orlando, the two of them were together over the last two miles and Mantz got to the line first by a second, 2:09:05 to 2:09:06. Six months later at the Paris Olympics they finished eighth and ninth on a hilly course on a warm day, Young in 2:08:44. No American had ever run faster at an Olympic marathon than either of them did that day.

Six Straight Top-10 Finishes

Only 12 weeks after Paris, Young was seventh in New York in 2:09:21. He took seventh again at the 2025 Boston Marathon in 2:07:04, his first run under 2:08, finishing two seconds behind his former BYU teammate Rory Linkletter. He was ninth again at the World Championships in Tokyo that September, running 2:10:43 in heat and humidity on his 32nd birthday, despite going down in a fall around 10K. He worked his way back to the leaders, and over the last 4K he moved past Zimbabwe’s Isaac Mpofu to secure the place.

For 18 weeks over the winter an ankle injury stopped him running altogether, so an arc trainer and an anti-gravity treadmill carried his fitness until he could get back on the roads in mid-February. In March he left ASICS for Brooks, a deal he negotiated himself. His Boston buildup ended up at around eight weeks, half his usual.

He ran 2:05:41 there, the fastest time of his life, and in a race where John Korir broke the course record and Zouhair Talbi ran 2:03:45, the fastest marathon ever by an American, it was good for 11th. “I’m really happy to be a 2:05 guy,” he told the Deseret News afterwards, though the result did bother him for one reason: it broke his run of top-10s.

What to Expect From Young in Chicago

Boston’s net-downhill, point-to-point course does not count for records, so the time Young has to beat is the 2:04:43 Mantz ran in Chicago last October. That is 4:45 per mile (2:57 per kilometer) all the way, and it would take 3:17 off his best on a record-eligible course. Young named the target on the Nobody Asked Us podcast in early September, about two weeks before an MRI changed his preparation.

That scan came four days after he finished seventh at the Great North Run on Sept. 13 and showed a 12-centimeter split tear in a tendon at the top of his hamstring. He told Outside Run that his doctors’ first advice included skipping Chicago, and that he chose to keep training and see how the leg responded. He has since run a 22-miler that finished at 5:00 mile pace and a double threshold day at 4:30 to 4:40 per mile. MH has covered the tear and what the research says about it in more detail.

Four American men in the field have run under 2:07. Charles Hicks is the fastest of them on paper after his 2:04:35 behind Talbi in Boston, Vinny Mauri ran 2:05:54 in his debut in Toledo in April, and Galen Rupp, whose best is 2:06:07, is also entered. Mantz is not on the start list. Up front, the field is led by defending champion Jacob Kiplimo, who ran 2:00:28 in London in April, so the leaders are likely to go out well ahead of American record pace and the Americans will have to choose their own speed behind them.

Moving up late has been a feature of Young’s best races, from his climb through the Chicago field in 2023 to that last-4K pass in Tokyo. The hamstring has made him rethink it, since it let go in the final 250m in South Shields. “Whereas before, I would have a lot of confidence in my ability to close races, I think I might have to close them further out than what I’m used to,” he told Outside Run.

The professional race starts at 7:30 a.m. CT on Sunday, Oct. 11, with Eyestone, who has coached him since his BYU days, part of NBC 5 Chicago’s commentary team. MH’s own watch-along goes live on YouTube about half an hour before the gun, and our guide to how to watch the Chicago Marathon has the rest.