Galen Rupp, 40, runs 2:06:55 in Chicago, a US masters record by more than three minutes
Eight years after his personal best, Rupp finished 48 seconds outside it. Research on veteran marathoners suggests that is far less slowing than age alone would predict.
Galen Rupp set an American masters marathon record at the Chicago Marathon on 11 October, finishing 11th in 2 hours 6 minutes 55 seconds, five months after his 40th birthday. Race officials confirmed the record after the finish, NBC Chicago reported.
The previous US best for a man aged 40 or over was 2:10:02, run by Elkanah Kibet at the 2024 Olympic Trials. Rupp took 3 minutes 7 seconds off it, according to Marathon Handbook.
Rupp won Olympic silver over 10,000 m in London in 2012 and marathon bronze in Rio in 2016. He won Chicago in 2017 and is still the last American man to have done so.
Back from hip surgery
The time is more striking given the two years before it. Rupp had hip surgery in 2024, after finishing 16th at the US Olympic Trials, and went 17 months without racing. His comeback marathon, in Chicago a year ago, took 2:09:41.
In April he ran 2:08:15 at the Boston Marathon, already inside Kibet’s mark, but it could not count: he was still 39, and Boston’s point-to-point course is not eligible for records.
His Chicago time was his fastest marathon for five years, and only 48 seconds outside the personal best of 2:06:07 he ran in Prague in 2018, at 32.
How much should eight years cost?
Researchers usually estimate the effect of age on endurance from age-group world records, but those records belong to different people. A 2021 study in Frontiers in Physiology took a different approach: it followed 40 runners who had broken three hours for the marathon in five consecutive decades, from the 1970s to the 2010s.
On average their speed fell by 0.67% a year, about a minute a year in marathon time. The authors concluded that with consistent training, the decline can be held to under 7% a decade, at least until 60.
Had Rupp slowed at that rate since Prague, he would have run around 2:13 in Chicago. He was about six minutes quicker. The comparison is rough: the runners in that study were amateurs whose best times averaged 2:23, and their decline was measured over three decades rather than from 32 to 40, when it tends to be gentler.
An analysis of masters world records led by the same researcher compared running, swimming and cycling. After 60, records in the 10 km run and the 1,500 m swim fell away faster than the one-hour track cycling record, suggesting cyclists keep their performance longer into old age.
Against the world’s best over 40
Rupp’s time also ranks among the fastest by any man over 40. Marathon Handbook notes that the world best in the age group belongs to Ethiopia’s Kenenisa Bekele, 2:04:15 at the 2024 London Marathon, aged 41. Until Spain’s Ayad Lamdassem ran 2:06:25 in 2022, no man over 40 had run as fast as Rupp did in Chicago.
Amos Kipruto won the men’s race in 2:01:09. Rupp was the fourth American home, ten seconds behind Vinny Mauri.
