With the help of three pacesetters, the Ethiopian great will run the final half of the Rock ‘N’ Roll Arizona marathon on Sunday, aiming at the mark of 59 minutes, 16 seconds set by 18-year-old Kenyan Samuel Wanjiru in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, last Sept. 11.

It would be the 19th world record set by the diminutive runner, who won Olympic gold medals at 10,000 meters in 1996 and 2000 and is a four-time world champion, then switched to road racing after a fifth-place finish in Athens. He has learned to make no promises.

“If it happens, wonderful. If not, what can I do?,” Gebrselassie said Friday. “This is not my first competition. It’s not my last competition. I will try for it next time. We’ll see.”

Nearly 34,000 runners are expected to compete in the marathon and half-marathon, being held for the third year through the streets of Phoenix, Scottsdale and Tempe by the organization that stages a similar event in San Diego. Rock bands will be stationed every mile along the way.

“I love the music,” Gebrselassie said. “It gives you energy.”

“I think he had a wake-up call,” Shorter said. “…It’s a different kind of race, and I think maybe he didn’t take it quite as seriously as he might have, but you can bet he learned a lot of lessons.”

Shorter believes Gebrselassie wants the half-marathon mark to show his prowess going into the London Marathon in April, a race loaded with big-time talent.

“I think he’s smart,” Shorter said. “Good athletes like Haile play psychologically with their opposition. The best example I can give you is just before the ’72 Games, Lasse Viren went out and intentionally broke the world record for two miles on the track. It was to show everybody he was in shape and to get everybody’s attention. I sense something similar to that going on here.”

Gebrselassie downplays the chances of a world record marathon in London.

“London this year, it will be a bit difficult because there are going to be so many stars,” he said. “When there are so many stars, you don’t run for a time. It’s more strategy.”

His biggest goal, he said, is a marathon gold medal at the Beijing Olympics in 2008.

A short film of Gebrselassie’s 10,000 victory in the Atlanta Olympics was shown at a news conference on Friday. He said afterward that those were happier times, because now he has the responsibility of running two schools, with a total of nearly 900 students, and a real estate company with 300 employees in Ethiopia.

His best times, he said, are when he runs.

“Running is my life,” he said. “I need to eat. I need to have clothes, and also I need to run. Running is something very special. When I don’t train a day, that day is just a bad day for me.”