Last December, Sam Grotewold, who leads the professional running program at New York Road Runners, started scratching out a list of people he hoped to lure to the New York City Half Marathon.

Three months later — and three years after the last time nearly 25,000 people finished this race — the field for Sunday’s New York City Half is absurdly stacked.

Never in Grotewold’s wildest dreams did he think the group would include the following: Des Linden, the 2018 Boston Marathon champion; Galen Rupp, a two-time Olympic medalist and the winner of the 2017 Chicago Marathon and the 2016 and 2020 U.S. Olympic Trials marathons; Rhonex Kipruto of Kenya, the 10-kilometer road world-record holder; Sara Hall, who set the American record in the half-marathon in January and has reached the podium at both the London and Chicago marathons; Emma Bates, who finished second in the Chicago Marathon in October; and Ben True, who won the New York City Half in 2018.

“You have your ideas, that this would be an interesting story to tell or person to have in the race,” Grotewold said in a recent interview. “We had 250 to 300 credible qualified athletes who threw their hat in the ring. A lot of people wanted to run.”

The group will be on the starting line Sunday for the return of one of the country’s largest half-marathons. The 2020 New York City Half was one of the first major races to fall to the coronavirus pandemic. Last year’s race was also canceled.

The New York City Half has plenty of selling points for elite and amateur runners alike. Eye-popping views along the journey from Prospect Park in Brooklyn to Central Park in Manhattan, especially as runners cross the East River over the Manhattan Bridge. Big crowds. Crisp, but often not frigid, late winter weather. And this year organizers in London again shifted their marathon to the fall, clearing the calendar for some top runners.

But that only partly explains its appeal to elite runners, and the benefits that serious middle-of-the-pack folk can gain from it, especially those who are running one of the big spring marathons, like Boston, which will take place on April 18.

Indeed, it’s one of a handful of half-marathons where the biggest names can collect a five-figure appearance fee, which is especially appealing when many are just getting back into the swing of regular participation in major races.

Linden, who plans to run Boston in April like always, said the half has served different purposes depending on the year.

“I’ve used it as a fitness gauge after putting in months of work, just seeing where I’m at and if there’s anything I take away that points to what we can tweak over the last month of training,” Linden said. “And this year it’s really just an opportunity to get in a race, something I haven’t done in awhile.”

Of course, there are plenty of runners at every level for whom the race is the pinnacle of their spring seasons.

Rupp, the top American marathoner of his generation, is not running a spring marathon. He has rarely raced in New York, but he is planning to run the half, and then focus all his energy and the next four months on preparations for the marathon at the track and field world championships this summer.

“He was maybe the first athlete we reached out to,” Grotewold said. “It fit with his schedule.”

It also helped that Rupp is no longer coached by Alberto Salazar, the disgraced former coach of the Nike Oregon Project. Salazar is serving a four-year suspension for ​​doping violations that included trafficking in testosterone and tampering with the doping control process. Earlier this year, an arbitrator upheld a lifetime ban that the United States Center for SafeSport issued for an alleged sexual assault of an athlete. Salazar said he had “never engaged in any sort of inappropriate sexual contact or sexual misconduct.”

Then there is Hall, the Energizer bunny of elite road racing. Hall, who has made a habit of piling up distance races, finished eighth in the Tokyo Marathon on March 6 with a time of 2 hours 22 minutes 56 seconds. She plans to run the New York City Half, then the Boston Marathon, probably the New York Mini 10K in June, and the marathon at the world championships.

Hall said in an interview last week that the main lure of the New York City Half was “the fun of it.” She was sad to have missed racing in 2020, and in 2021 she tested positive for the coronavirus, which disrupted her training and racing schedule. Also, she has never run this race, even though she has notched several other high-profile wins in New York.

“It is a great prep for Boston, just competing over a hilly course,” said Hall, who is not focused on a particular time. “I’m just focused on competing more than the clock.”

So what can a middle-of-the-pack runner learn from the elites about how a half-marathon fits into a larger training schedule?

Ben Rosario, who leads the team of runners from Hoka NAZ Elite in Arizona, said anyone running the half-marathon as a precursor to a full marathon later in the spring should not back off from a marathon training plan. While that probably eliminates the opportunity to run a fast time for 13.1 miles, a slower half-marathon can serve as a valuable training stimulus.

For example, in 2020, Aliphine Tuliamuk ran the Houston Half Marathon in preparation for the U.S. Olympic trials marathon weeks later. The week of the half, Tuliamuk did a 15x1-mile workout.

“She only got 19th in the race, but 1 hour and 9 seconds on tired legs wasn’t too shabby,” Rosario said.

Six weeks later, Tuliamuk won the Olympic trials marathon.