By Paul Snyder
December 11, 2024
Over the past five road racing seasons, only once has it been truly obvious who the top American marathoner was in a given year: 2021 Molly Seidel. As a quick refresher, Seidel snagged an out-of-left-field bronze medal at the COVID-delayed Tokyo Games in August, then hit the tarmac again in November to place fourth in New York City in an American course record.
That’s not to say other American road dawgs haven’t had themselves great years. (Keira D’Amato’s 2022 campaign or Conner Mantz’s rise to the top of the U.S. ranks come to mind.) It’s just that the way we evaluate a great season for a marathoner is tricky.
They simply don’t normally give us enough data points to do much other than point to a significant highlight or two. High finishes at world majors are weighted heavily. Global medals are the ultimate trump cards. And the occasional broken record doesn’t hurt, even if times are seeming less meaningful by the day. That’s basically it. In the event of a “tie” after tallying up these types of accolades, we’ll go with whoever ran faster at Berlin or Valencia or whichever dragstrip is en vogue at the moment.
But CJ Albertson gives us something interesting to think and write about in this newsletter: that total work product matters. Because he puts so many more marathons on his calendar than basically any of his peers, he’s once again forcing us to rethink conventional wisdom in the road-running world.
Last weekend, Albertson made the short trip over to Sacramento for the California International Marathon, where he “used up [his] last ounce of fitness…then had 12 more miles.” What “blowing up” means for a runner like Albertson is that he still took second place behind Tsegay Weldlibanos’s 2:07:35 victory and crossed the line in 2:10:06. He was the first American by almost two minutes. A performance that could be the year’s crowning achievement for many a domestic pro was, for CJ, a mere footnote on the season.
It was his fifth marathon of the year and his third since mid-October. He placed fifth at the Olympic Trials, seventh at Boston and Chicago, tenth in NYC, then second at CIM. Time is less of a concern than place, but for the record, every one of those races was finished between 2:08:17 and 2:10:53. By time, Albertson is the third-fastest marathoner of 2024, and his slowest time would still put him in the top 10.
You could easily make the case that Conner Mantz, Clayton Young, and hell, at this point Biya Simbassa all enjoyed higher highs than Albertson throughout their 2024 campaigns. Sports science dorks are probably clenching their fists and weeping thinking about the hypothetical 2:06 he might’ve had in his legs had he trained differently or prioritized fewer races. But marathons – at least in CJ’s world – are made meaningful by running with your heart and your ‘sack, not by adhering with laserlike focus to advanced metrics, careful biomonitoring, or prototype technology.
Compared to track and field, enjoyment of which already skews pretty hard into numbers territory, marathon fandom runs the risk of being entirely reduced to statistics. How fast did you run? Where did you place? How far back from the winner? And that’s just on the professional level, where we don’t give much weight to even crazier number-crunching like age-grading performances.
But remember, as a fan, it’s supposed to be entertaining. And you shouldn’t need to be proficient in Microsoft Excel or statistical analysis in order to make a defensible claim about who you think is the best American male marathoner. Billy Beane and his advanced metrics can stick to baseball where he belongs.
Here’s another way to think about it: CJ Albertson is an employee (well, technically an independent contractor) of Brooks Running and has spent a heckuva lot of time modeling their shoes and yellow-pink racing kits at or near the front of major races. If pro runners had performance reviews, the bigwigs in Seattle would be giving Albertson top marks for his ability to do the one thing that really matters to them: get the Brooks name and logo out in front of many sets of eyes very frequently. Between that and the number of Strava kudos a 26.2-mile entry racks up, CJ Albertson is essentially acting as one of the world’s biggest running influencers without having to make 15 insufferable videos a day on TikTok.
But let’s look at Albertson’s season for what it was: consistent, gutsy, and fun as hell to witness. If three marathons and one or two off-distance outings is the industry standard season for American marathoners these days, we need to commend those who do even more while still running well, for no reason other than it’s entertaining to follow.
Just about every other sport out there provides a range of avenues for greatness. Part of what makes “which player is better?” conversations around a sport like basketball nominally interesting is that the numbers only tell a portion of the story and the debate ultimately becomes one of style and personal preference. The intangibles can be a little harder to find in running, but guys like CJ make a compelling case for themselves that there are X factors you have to consider within the rote activity of running from point A to point B.
With marathoning, especially as the upper echelon of performances becomes faster and less comprehensively human, (unless you have really weird form or something) it’s hard to stand out for succeeding in a unique way. Albertson is far from the GOAT. He’s definitely not even a guaranteed selection for BAMMOTTF (best American male marathoner of twenty twenty-four). He is, however, putting together a successful and memorable career without being a 2:02-level talent or a likely global medal threat. When CJ hangs ‘em up, hopefully many years from now, he’ll be able to say with conviction that, like Frank Sinatra, he did it his way.
The lesson here isn’t that the only thing better than running five marathons in 2024 is to run six in 2025. Really, it’s that there are many ways to define success. Just because you’re a 2:25 lady or a 2:10 gent doesn’t mean that your career has to consist of doing your best Eliud Kipchoge impression twice a year for a decade. And if you find a version of professional running that works for you and your unique skills and interests, you can become too successful to be denied.
Paul Snyder
Meme-disparager, avid jogger, MS Paint artist, friend of Scott Olberding, Citius Mag staff writer based in Flagstaff. Supplying baseless opinions, lukewarm takes, and vaguely running-related content. Once witnessed televison's Michael Rapaport cut a line of 30 people to get a slice of pizza at John's on Bleeker at 4am. You can follow Paul on Twitter at @DanielDingus.
