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Gasparilla half-marathon will be one of last stops for fabled distance runner Meb Keflezighi

 
First-place finisher Meb Keflezighi waves a flag over his head at the finish line of the 2009 New York City Marathon. [AP photo]
First-place finisher Meb Keflezighi waves a flag over his head at the finish line of the 2009 New York City Marathon. [AP photo]
Published Feb. 25, 2017

TAMPA — The final stretch of Meb Keflezighi's fabled running career will include a section of Bayshore Boulevard. From there, his finish line looms, a few more miles — and months — in the northerly distance.

The wildly popular Olympic medalist says this fall's New York City Marathon will be his last competitive race. At 41, Keflezighi's speed and metabolism are mildly regressing. He simply can't train as feverishly as he once did.

And there's a numerical symmetry that seems to tie it all together, like a bow on a glorious body of work.

New York will be his 26th marathon, which of course spans 26.2 miles. He will be 42 on race day, same as the number of kilometers in a marathon.

"I started my first marathon in 2002 in the New York City Marathon," said Keflezighi, who will compete Sunday in his first Publix Gasparilla Distance Classic half-marathon. "It was such a painful experience that I said I never wanted to do it again, ever. I just didn't realize there would be 25 other ones in between."

Sunday's race will be Keflezighi's first competitive event since last summer's Rio Olympics, when a brutal run (he had to stop several times due to stomach problems) ended with him slipping at the finish line and doing three push-ups before rising to applause.

He finished 33rd (2:16.46), only six months after placing second at the U.S. Olympic Trials (2:12.20) on an unseasonably warm Los Angeles day.

"This is gonna be my first time to run the Gasparilla," said Keflezighi, an observer at last year's Gasparilla and a frequent area visitor (his in-laws live in South Tampa).

"The beauty of the half-marathon is you know you're gonna finish. The marathon, you never know what you're gonna encounter. I feel strong. I'm still in marathon training versus half-marathon training, meaning that I don't have the speed, the turnover, and obviously my age doesn't help either."

Fortitude, however, remains his greatest ally.

One of 10 kids, Keflezighi and his family were refugees from Eritrea — a war-ravaged country in the Horn of Africa — who arrived in the United States from Italy in 1987. He won four NCAA running titles at UCLA before embarking on a marathon career marked by grief and grit.

The 2004 Olympic silver medalist in the marathon, he broke his hip in the '08 Olympic Trials but still finished eighth. One of his best friends, Ryan Shay, collapsed and died in the same race.

In 2014, a month shy of his 39th birthday, he became the first American man in more than 30 years to win the Boston Marathon. He defied odds again last February with his runnerup finish at the Olympic Trials.

These days, Keflezighi, a married dad of three, has modified his training to include far more elliptical work and fewer long runs. Honey has all but supplanted sugar in his diet, which is high on brown rice and fruits. Now, he says, his goal is to get to the starting line healthy.

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And reach his proverbial finish line with a flourish.

"Boston will be my 25th (marathon), and New York will be my 26th. There's got to be a stop line at some point," he said. "And I'll be 42 years old, so I think it's a good time to be able to stop competitively."

Contact Joey Knight at jknight@tampabay.com. Follow @TBTimes_Bulls.