Clayton Young didn’t get the American record on Sunday in Chicago, but he still turned in the kind of run that tells its own story.
Young finished seventh overall and was the top American at the Chicago Marathon, stopping the clock in 2:05:23. That was good for the second-fastest marathon ever by an American, and it came less than a month after he tore his hamstring.
The target was clear from the start: Conner Mantz’s American record of 2:04:43, set last year in Chicago. Young, Mantz’s training partner and fellow former BYU runner, had said on the “Nobody Asked Us” podcast in early September that he wanted to take the mark in the same race where Mantz had set it. He came up short, but not by much in the broader sense of what this race required from him.
“Gutting it out all the way to the finish line, taking it a mile at a time,” Young told NBC Chicago after the race.
Young also said he was “a little worried” before the start because of how his body felt. Once the race got rolling, though, he trusted what he had left.
“I just got to pray and hope and have the faith that the body will hold up to the finish line and when I asked the most of it, that it would respond,” he said. “And it just kept responding with everything I threw at it and big shoutout to my competition out there.”
Even without the record, the result gave Young a personal best and a top American finish in one of the sport’s biggest races. He framed it plainly after crossing the line.
“We missed the goal,” he said. “Conner Mantz, you’ve still got it, and big props to him, my teammate and training partner, and we’ll have another swing at it soon but it feels good to walk away as top American and to place seventh again at one of my world major marathons.”
Young’s path to Chicago was anything but straightforward. At the Great North Run half marathon leading into this race, he suffered a 12-centimeter split tear in his hamstring in the final 250 meters. An MRI later confirmed the injury.
From there, Young said in an interview with CITIUS Mag that he went into “testing mode.” He wasn’t ready to scratch Chicago, and he told his coach, Ed Eyestone, not to give up on him.
The first doctor he consulted recommended a PRP shot and four weeks off, which would have shut down the record attempt. Young sought a second opinion, and that doctor gave him a path to keep evaluating the hamstring. He was able to run 22 miles, according to an Instagram post, and decided to keep Chicago in play while taking things day by day.
By the time he spoke at a press conference days before the marathon, Young said he was healthy enough to race.
“I wouldn’t be here if my hamstring didn’t feel good, and I do want to make it clear that I don’t want to be a proponent for people running through injuries on their marathons,” he said. “I definitely want to be clear that we’ve taken this very methodical approach, this very careful approach, a step at a time. In a way it’s kind of been like a marathon.”
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