Zouhair Talbi Has Unfinished Business At The NYC Marathon + Chasing The Podium

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Chris Chavez (0:26)

What's up, everyone? You are listening to The CITIUS MAG Podcast. I'm your host, Chris Chavez, and every week, we go beyond the results to bring you conversations with the biggest names on the track, the roads and behind the scenes from world-class athletes and coaches to innovators shaping the sport. If it's happening on the track, we're covering it with real insights that sharpen minds, deep dives into the moments that define careers, and the kind of access to the pros you won't get anywhere else. So let's get into it, because we love Track and Field.

My guest for today's episode is Zouhair Talbi, and if you've been following American Marathoning this year, you already know his name. We had him at number 2 in CITIUS MAG's way too early, 2028 US Olympic Marathon Trials power rankings. That was right after he ran 203.45 at the Boston Marathon in April, where he finished 5th overall and broke Ryan Hall's 15-year-old American Course Record. Now we're just days away from the New York City Marathon where he's got some unfinished business. New York 2023 was Zouhair's second career marathon. He went out with Tamirat Tola and a group that was attacking the course record. He covered some searches, but by 34K his body had completely shut down. He went from running 440 pace to 630, unable to run faster. He decided to pull off to the side of the road, and he describes it as one of the biggest experiences of his career. He went back to his hotel within the hour and was already thinking of what he would do differently. Since then, I would say he's had a pretty good career. What he did do differently was build, both patiently and systematically, over the last 3 years. This block was his longest since turning to the marathon because he had 5 months to work with from Boston to New York. If you recall, his build up to the Boston Marathon this past spring was a bit abbreviated because he had run 205 at the Houston Marathon back in January. In this one, he had about 7 weeks at 130 miles or more, very similar to what we heard in our episode with Joe Klecker. He put together 2 of his fastest ever 40k long runs. He also went out to the Great North Run and won that half marathon in 59.47 and it gave him a pretty good fitness signal that he was in the right direction heading into the final phase of training. So in this conversation, we go through the full build, what changed from the Boston block, how he's thinking about New York's decisive moves or where in the race those could happen. We also get into the dynamic of racing Conner Mantz, Andreas Almgren as a wild card, and we take a broader look at the Olympic qualifying conversation. So without further ado, here is Zouhair Talbi.

All right, now I welcome back Zouhair Talbi, 203.45 guy.

I'll give it to you from your Boston performance.

How's training been going? It's been a while since we've gotten a chance to chat. You've put together a whole big summer training block, getting ready for New York City Marathon. How are things going?

Zouhair Talbi (3:42)

Yeah, thank you for having me. Yeah, I definitely took some time off after Boston.

And yeah, I have like five months in front of me. So I definitely start slower and build, you know, no skipping steps and just building the foundation in the first few months. And, and now I'm like in the final stage where, you know, I'm doing more speed, more specific workout for the marathon. So training been good. Yeah.

Chris Chavez (4:20)

What's different about this block versus the Boston block?

Zouhair Talbi (4:24)

The duration. That's the first thing. I think Boston block was short. It was about two months because I run Houston Marathon in January and took a few, you know, downtime. Then I start building from there.

It's more like for Boston, it was more like, hey, I'm finishing up my training, where now it's like I'm resetting. It took like about a month where, you know, for after Houston, I maybe took like one week, then I start back in training. Now I took a month, then I start slowly building back again. I think the duration, what's more different, I will say, the intensity, the mileage. I think I increased a little bit more in, you know, just the intensity of the workouts, the mileage, because I have a lot of time in front of me. So I had, you know, time to improve and just, you know, just explore more what my body can handle in training.