With less than 24 hours to go, Chicago is set for the Chicago Marathon, drawing competitors and spectators from all over the world.
“I'm from Toronto,” said runner Audrey Pattacks. “I'm really nervous it's my first time.”
“I'm from Brazil it will be my first marathon,” said fellow first-timer Rafael Vendremine. “I'm a little afraid but very excited.”
It's a diversity of cultures and causes as the marathon raises funds for charities, raking in more than $15 million last year.
Moses Mosop came to the Bank of America Chicago Marathon two years ago in uncertain shape. An Achilles tendon injury had limited his training and Mosop figured his fitness level that race day was about 85 percent.
Then he won the race in a course record time of 2 hours, 5 minutes, 37 seconds on a warm day, saying afterward, "When I was 100 percent, maybe I would run 2:02."
The 28-year-old Kenyan hasn't been 100 percent since.
Mosop, also trying to become the sixth man to run four marathons below 2:06, is part of a Sunday field with plenty of candidates to play beat the clock once the pacesetters are finished. There are four other men — three Kenyans, one Ethiopian — with personal bests below 2:06.
Last year's winner, Tsegaye Kebede, has chosen to run New York because it gives him three extra weeks to recover after finishing fourth in the World Championships Aug. 17 in Moscow. Kebede lowered Mosop's course record to 2:04:38 while becoming the first Ethiopian men's champion in Chicago, breaking a nine-year Kenyan winning streak.
The women's race features a rematch of the stirring 2012 battle that saw Ethiopia's Atsede Baysa beat Kenya's Rita Jeptoo by one second. The two traded the lead twice in the final quarter-mile before Baysa prevailed in a sprint finish.
Three-time Chicago winner Liliya Shobukhova of Russia, fourth last year, has taken this year off for the birth of her second child.
Jeptoo, mother of a 3-year-old, appears to be hitting full stride at age 32. Her time at Chicago last year (2:22:04) is a personal best, she blistered a fast desert course in February for the fifth-fastest half marathon in history (66:27) and she won a second Boston title in April — seven years after her first.
