Most of would settle for one sub-3:00 marathon. Heck, slipping in under a Boston qualifying time of 3:40 or 3:10 would be just fine. But Doug Kurtis’ bar is a little higher. The 61-year-old Detroit native will attempt to run his 200th sub-3:00 marathon at the city's marathon on Sunday.

The feat will be a victory lap for Kurtis, one of America’s most accomplished distance runners. During a decades-long career, Kurtis has qualified for five Olympic marathon trials, become one of a small cadre of runners who has clocked a sub-3:00 marathon in five different decades, and finished an astonishing 76 marathons under 2:20--the most of any runner in history. Kurtis completed 12 of those sub-2:20s in 1989, an experience he details in the October issue of Marathon & Beyond.

In an article for the Detroit Free Press, Kurtis says this Sunday’s race will be the final accomplishment of his running career.

“After 38 years of running marathons I’ve decided this is a good place to stop putting in the 70-mile-plus training weeks that it takes for me to run this fast,” he writes.

The odds of the masters runner hitting sub-3:00 this weekend are good. Kurtis has a hometown advantage. All of his 17 previous Detroit marathons have been under 3:00. And he ran a sub-3:00 marathon in May, according to his article, which chronicles some of his Detroit finishes, including the first in 1979 (2:22:33) and his six straight victories between 1987 and 1992.

If he succeeds this year, Kurtis will set a new record for the longest span between a runner’s first and last sub-3:00 marathon, a mark he already holds. He ran his first sub-3:00 in April 1974 and his most recent in May 2013, a span of 39 years and 20 days.



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