Almgren says he thinks he can run 2:01 eventually
The world half marathon champion has not finished a marathon yet, and he is already talking about the second-fastest time in history.
Andreas Almgren thinks he can run 2:01 eventually. That is the line Jonathan Gault pulled out of the New York Marathon press conference, where Almgren was one of the names on the dais ahead of Sunday's race. He has never finished a marathon.
Gault's presser roundup also had Conner Mantz telling the Americans to dream bigger, a Worlds medallist revealing she is not in the testing pool, and what Gault calls a possible "blood bath" of Ethiopian doping cases. Almgren's 2:01 was the one that travelled.
What the build actually looked like
In a CITIUS MAG interview, Almgren said the buildup went better than expected. His longest run was 40k, with two of those done at altitude in Flagstaff, on terrain he says had more elevation gain than the New York course. The workout he is proudest of was a 32k at 3:05 pace with 260m of climbing at 7,000 feet, sitting in the middle of a two-week stretch averaging 220k with quality and altitude work. Two easy days later he did a 45k run with double threshold work.
He also says he got through all of it with "basically no GI issues or anything like that" from fueling, which for a marathon debutant is the part that decides whether the fitness shows up at 35k.
He has watched the tape. He says 2025 and 2023 were two very different races, and he expects a move at least when the field comes into Manhattan off the Queensboro Bridge.
What he says he is racing for
Not a time, and not a place. "I don't I don't care about the time whatsoever," he said, and he has no position goal. What he wants is to be in a mental position to challenge for the win for as long as possible.
Almgren is the world half marathon champion and he arrives in New York as the man to beat, as we covered earlier. Both Gault and David Monti carried the same line from him about how he feels going in, that he does not know if he has ever been this excited for a race.
What it actually means
The 2:01 is a statement about what he believes his ceiling is somewhere down the line, not a target for Sunday. New York is not a 2:01 course and he has said himself the clock is not the point this weekend. The number worth watching is whether a man whose longest ever run is 40k is still in the front group when the race turns into Manhattan.
to be like mentally in a position where I can go and challenge for the win for as long as possible.
I don't know if I've ever been this excited for a race.
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