The marathon is a lot longer than miler Matthew Centrowitz’s usual race distance—25.2 miles longer.
Centrowitz, who won the Olympic gold medal in the 1500 meters at the 2016 Olympics in Rio, was at the Chicago Marathon to pace the top American woman through a 1:09 halfway split. In the early miles of the race, that was supposed to be his friend and frequent training partner in Park City, Utah—Keira D’Amato.
But when D’Amato dropped out at 10K with pain in her left foot, Centrowitz kept going. He fell in ahead of American Betsy Saina. (The eventual top American finisher, Susanna Sullivan, Sarah Lorge Butler.)
When Saina started fading after halfway, Emma Bates tucked in behind Centrowitz, and he led Bates for about 10 miles, from mile 15 almost all the way to the finish. Bates ran 2:24:00, and Centrowitz crossed the finish line in 2:24:36.
Reached after the race, Centrowitz, who retired from track racing after the 2024 season, said “fun” was the primary word to describe his first marathon.
“Being in the retired life now, it was like, no pressure,” he said. “I’m a miler, I’m no longer a professional athlete, and this is something new and exciting and totally out of my wheelhouse.”
While he heard his name called a few times out on the course, the crowds—which were roaring the entire way—were yelling for the American women. “Rightfully so, a lot of the encouraging stuff was geared towards them,” he said.
It might be one and done for Centrowitz, who is almost 35, at the marathon distance. He has no interest in training for a marathon to see how fast he could go. Especially as he started to suffer the final two kilometers—equivalent to five laps of the track.
“I was running within myself, literally, up until 37, 38K. My breathing was under control,” he said. “And it just got really, really hard all of a sudden. And when I went to grab my bottle at 40K, my quad grabbed on me.”
Centrowitz said he stopped for a second, grabbed his drink, and started back running with a “really slow shuffle” to the finish. He guesses that really slow shuffle was 6-minute pace. (It’s all relative.)
If that seizing of the quad happened at 2:24 pace, he said, “at 2:12 pace? God knows what my legs would be doing to me.”
He will continue to run with the growing elite community in Park City. He goes on easy runs with Grant Fisher, who won two bronze medals at the Olympics in Paris this summer, and Conner Mantz and Clayton Young, who were eighth and ninth in the marathon at the Games. With D’Amato, Centrowitz can hang for her tempo and interval workouts.
The bigger motivation? He wants to stay in shape for his growing family. He and his wife, Lyndsay, are expecting their first child next month, a son. If his child should happen to enjoy track, Centrowitz wants to be able to train with him.
But he doesn’t know how much he’ll be running through the Park City winter with a newborn, unless he’s on the treadmill.
“I kind of wanted to do [Chicago], in a funny way, wanted to keep the dad weight off,” he said.
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Health & Injuries is a writer and editor living in Eugene, Oregon, and her stories about the sport, its trends, and fascinating individuals have appeared in Runner’s World Health - Injuries, Run Your Butt Off! and Walk Your Butt Off!
