by Race Results Weekly
MERCY ME! CHELANGAT TO MAKE MARATHON DEBUT IN OTTAWA ON SUNDAY
By David Monti @d9monti
(c) 2025 Race Results Weekly, all rights reserved, used with permission.
OTTAWA (23-May) — Mercy Chelangat, the 2022 NCAA 10,000m champion for the University of Alabama, is finally ready to step up to the marathon. The 27 year-old Kenyan, part of the Hoka Northern Arizona Elite team in Flagstaff, Ariz., will run the 42.195-kilometer distance for the first time here on Sunday at the 51st Tartan Ottawa International Marathon, and she’s excited that she chose the Canadian capital to make her marathon debut.
“We had like a couple of options, and we liked this one because it’s closer; I didn’t have to travel really far,” she told Race Results Weekly in an interview this morning. She continued: “I don’t really like a lot of pressure, so I really didn’t want to put myself in a (World Marathon) Major and have that kind of pressure put on me. So, we just decided to do this one.”
Still, Chelangat will be running with some fast women, including Kenyans Visiline Jepkesho (2:21:37 personal best) and Philes Ongori (2:23:32), and Ethiopians Meseret Gebre (2:23:11) and Bontu Bekele Gada (2:23:39). She said that she has a simple race plan.
“Just try to hang if my legs will allow me,” Chelangat said with a laugh. “I will try to hang as much as possible because we have some pacers who are going to help us, so I’m just hoping to hang with them as much as I can.”
To get ready for Sunday’s race, Chelangat returned to her native Kenya in February and March and began to lay down her base. Before this training block, she had never run 100 miles a week. But, after informally joining-up with some training groups in Kenya that kind of mileage became the norm, according to her coach Jack Mullaney.
“Right after the Houston Half in January she went back home to Kenya,” Mullaney said in an interview. “For about six weeks she started hopping in with a few marathon groups over there. I think she really understood what it meant to be a marathoner when she did that. She was over there training and I happened to text her and I said, ‘Mercy, that was a hundred-mile week this week.’ She goes, ‘Oh, it was?'”
Mullaney explained that except for her long run and rest days, she was basically doubling 10-K every day.
“Seeing the level of what it takes to be an elite marathoner was really pivotal for her to take that next step in training,” Mullaney said. She’s now put in eight 100-mile weeks in the lead-up to this before she started tapering.”
After returning from Kenya, Chelangat did one race as a fitness test. Still deep into her marathon miles, she ran a solo 1:10:32 at the OneAmerica Mini-Marathon, a half-marathon in Indianapolis on May 3. She ran the first eight miles conservatively, then cut down to a 5:10 per mile pace by the finish. She clocked 1:10:32 and felt very comfortable. But, all of the accumulated miles had left her fatigued and needing a lot more food.
“Really tired,” she said when asked how her body had responded to marathon training. She continued: “I’m really hungry in the mornings now; I eat a really good breakfast. I make sure I’m eating through the day, for sure.”
Chelangat and Mullaney are clearly on the same page as far as the goal pace for Sunday. Both said that 5 minutes and 30 seconds per mile (or a little faster) through 30-K would be great. That should give her enough remaining energy to drop down a little for the last 12 kilometers and shoot for a 2:23 finish. The women’s course record here is 2:22:17 by Gelete Burka of Ethiopia in 2018.
“She can really turn her brain off for the first half to 30-K of this thing and just tuck in behind the pacers,” Mullaney said. He continued: “We feel like 5:25 to 5:30 (pace) is a pretty good range for her on Sunday.”
But like every first-time marathoner, Chelangat sees getting to the finish line as her primary goal.
“Finishing is going to be a success for me, because this is a new distance for sure,” said Chelangat. “So, I don’t know how my body and my legs will respond. Now I’ve done my part of training, I’ve done everything I could, but we don’t know. Getting to the finish line will be success for me, for sure.”
PHOTO: Mercy Chelangat of Hoka NAZ Elite at the pre-race press conference for the Tartan Ottawa International Marathon (photo by Jane Monti for Race Results Weekly)
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