Vinny Mauri On The Treadmill Training That Has Everyone Talking Before His 2026 Chicago Marathon Debut + American Records Odds

My guest for today’s episode is Vinny Mauri — and the last time we had him on, he had just run 2:05:53 in his marathon debut on a bike path in Toledo, Ohio, self-coached, without a pacer, without a shoe contract, and with no course clocks anywhere on the route. He looked up at the finishing clock expecting to see 2:09 and it said 2:05. He had no idea.

A lot has happened since then. He signed a professional contract with ASICS. He hired Hawi Keflezighi as his agent. He kept his hours at Second Sole running store in Niles, Ohio, where he fits customers for shoes and occasionally gets asked by someone how training is going. He has not raced once. And he has built one of the more unconventional marathon training blocks any American professional has put together ahead of a world major — seven consecutive weeks of 26-plus mile long runs, a 138-mile peak week, a September day that became 45 miles on the treadmill at Planet Fitness, and an 86-mile stretch across three consecutive days that included 36 miles at 4:56 pace.

The central question of the block was simple: how do you make 26.2 miles feel short?

This conversation was recorded one week before the Bank of America Chicago Marathon — his first world major, his first race since Toledo, and the first time in his career he can honestly say he arrived at a start line healthy and ready. He is joining a field that includes Clayton Young, who has publicly committed to going after Connor Mantz’s American record, and Charles Hicks, who ran 2:04 in Boston this spring. Vinny’s position on the American record conversation is: There is an extremely high probability it gets rewritten on Sunday.

In this conversation we get into:

– Why Chicago
– Why no races since Toledo
– How he handled the process of signing with Hawi Keflezighi and landing on Asics
– Why he’s chosen to keep his hours with Second Sole
– The architecture of this training block
– His work on fueling better
– Treadmill vs. the roads
– Why he doesn’t train much at goal marathon pace
– A guest question from Emma Grace Hurley
– Where he lands on the American record talk and hype
– The moment of the race that he’s visualized the most
– A Planet Fitness partnership?
– What he wants people to takeaway from his 2026

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