Meb Keflezighi felt just as confident he can make the 2016 Olympic team two days after finishing eighth overall and second among Americans at the Boston Marathon as he did before Boston.
“I was saving my energy for the last mile and a half [in Boston],” Keflezighi said in a phone interview Wednesday. “Unfortunately, I didn’t get the chance. I feel confident going to the trials.”
Keflezighi, the 2014 Boston Marathon winner, was in the lead pack around the 22-mile mark on Monday when he said he stopped for the first of five times, throwing up because he had trouble getting a drink down.
He finished in 2 hours, 12 minutes, 42 seconds, in damp, windy conditions. Keflezighi’s winning time in better weather last year was 2:08:37, when he spent much of the race on his own while others chased.
On Monday, Keflezighi finished behind one countryman, fellow three-time Olympian Dathan Ritzenhein. Ritzenhein placed ninth at the 2008 Olympic marathon and fourth at the 2012 U.S. Olympic Trials, where the top three made the London Olympic team.
Ritzenhein is seven and a half years younger than Keflezighi and owns a faster personal best of 2:07:47 from the 2012 Chicago Marathon. He ran Boston for the first time Monday, finishing seventh (1:22 faster than Keflezighi) in his first marathon since 2013.
“Dathan is getting his confidence back to his normal competitive drive,” Keflezighi said, adding of the Olympic trials, “It depends who you ask who the favorite is individually.”
Keflezighi may still be the favorite. He was the only U.S. man to run a sub-2:10 marathon last year, if including Boston, a downhill, point-to-point course that doesn’t count for record purposes. Only Ritzenhein has been faster so far in 2015.
The trials are Feb. 13 in Los Angeles, site of Ryan Hall‘s dropout around the halfway point of the Los Angeles Marathon on March 15.
Hall, 32 like Ritzenhein, was the only man to make each of the last two U.S. Olympic marathon teams. But he has finished just one marathon since taking second to Keflezighi at the 2012 U.S. Olympic Trials. And in that one, he clocked 2:17:50.
It will likely take at least five minutes faster to finish in the top three at trials and make the 2016 Olympic team. Four U.S. men other than Keflezighi and Ritzenhein clocked sub-2:12 in 2014.
Keflezighi said he received text messages from Hall before and after the Boston Marathon.
“[Hall said] I’m always inspired by your performance, well done,” he said.
Keflezighi, a man motivated when others count him out, still believes the oft-injured Hall can be a factor at the trials.
“The talent is there,” Keflezighi said. “If he really wants it, it’s there. I’m not in Ryan’s head, but we know what he is capable of doing. That never leaves your body. I hope I am an example. I got injured, a pelvic stress fracture or ruptured quads. You come back. If you come back, do the work, I would not be surprised if he’s on the [Olympic] team. You have to go back to what worked for him.”
