By Dave Ungrady | Universal Sports

Marathon world record holder Haile Gebreselassie has never competed in the Boston Marathon, the most revered of all 26.2 mile races. But he says he plans in the near future to run the worlds longest running consecutive marathon, which takes place for the 113th time on Monday. He also hopes to add the New York City and Chicago Marathons to his list of conquests, and dreams of someday winning a Marathon Majors title.

In the meantime, the 36-year old Ethiopian will concentrate on running marathons such as Berlin, London and Dubai because he feels his world-record setting days are not over.

“Yes, I would like to run Boston because it’s one of the biggest marathons in the world,” he said by phone from Addis Abba, his hometown in Ethiopia. “And New York is such a wonderful city, the atmosphere is just perfect. I will do them sooner or later. But first I’d like to set more records.”

That means running more marathons now that feature world record friendly courses and do not require travel to the United States.

“It is very difficult, because of the time zone changes and the jet lag,” he says.

Gebreselassie has run only three road races in the United States. He set a world record in the half marathon (58.55) in Phoenix, Az. in 2006. Samuel Wanjiru broke the record in 2007 (58:33).

Gebrselassie ran the first 10 miles of the Detroit Free Press/Flagstar Marathon in October 2007 in a promotional appearance that coincided with attending a fundraising dinner to support the Ethiopian North American Health Professionals Association. He also won the New York City Half Marathon in 2007.

For now, Gebrselassie prefers easier courses and more manageable travel conditions on the eastern side of the Atlantic Ocean, including in London, Berlin, Dubai and Amsterdam. He has set his world records at the last two Berlin Marathons, running 2:03:59 in September 2008 and calls Berlin’s course flat and good.

“When you talk about marathons, you need a special place, one you know very easily,” he says. “It is a place where you need to know the difficult parts and the easiest parts. I studied the course in Berlin.”

Gerbrselassie won Olympic gold medals in the 10,000m at the 1996 and 2000 Olympic Games and won the event four times at the world championships. He did not start running marathons until 2002. In his first 26.2 race, he finished third in London.

Gebrselassie has won six of the nine marathons he has officially entered. He credits his success to smart training and a youthful spirit. He covers up to 150 miles per week but does no track speed work, choosing instead to work on speed on a stationary bicycle.

He also spends much time developing a life away from running. He has built two schools in Ethiopia of 2,000 students at each location from kindergarten to ninth grade.

“Two-thousand students at a school in American is big,” he says. “But not in Ethiopia. “The school is not a business for me. It is for satisfaction. One of my dreams is somebody from one of my schools some day becoming president of Ethiopia. You never know.”

He also is building a hotel in Addis Ababa that he hopes will earn a five star rating and will ideally be operated by the Hilton or Sheraton hotel companies.

“I still have time for my running,” says Gebrselassie, who has three daughters and a son with wife Alem. “What can I do? I cannot just stop some things what I am doing. I have to handle everything. I am happy.”

The major marathons in the United States—New York, Chicago and Boston–have all shown interest in Gebrselassie, with New York the most persistent, according to his agent, Jos Hermens.

They will all have to be patient for marathon’s king to make a much awaited, and seemingly inevitable, debut appearance in a full U.S. marathon, even if it’s in his 40s.

“I never think about when I stop running,” he says. “Let it come by itself. If you are old mentally you are old physically. I feel I’m still young. Age is just a number.”