Running News Daily

Japanese Yuki Kawauchi has become the first person to run 100 sub-2:20 marathons

Guinness World Records (GWR) has recognized Japanese marathoner Yuki Kawauchi for becoming the first person to run 100 sub-2:20 marathons. Kawauchi hit triple digits at Japan’s Hofu Marathon in December, where he ran to a second-place finish in 2:10:26, and he recently posted his 101st sub-2:20 result after running a PB of 2:07:27 at Sunday’s Lake Biwa Mainichi Marathon in Otsu, Japan, where he finished 10th. 

GWR awarded Kawauchi a certificate in 2018 after he ran the 78th sub-2:20 marathon of his career and overtook American Doug Kurtis for the most in history. That same year, Kawauchi won the Boston Marathon (crossing the line in 2:15:58), and in 2019, he ran the 100th marathon of his career. At that point, he had broken 2:20 94 times.  

Due to the pandemic, Kawauchi didn’t race as much as he normally would last year, but he did manage to run four marathons (for comparison, he ran 10 in 2018 and eight in 2019). He broke 2:20 at each of his races in 2020, and he is currently on a 15-race streak of marathons in which he has broken that barrier.

Kawauchi´s last marathon over 2:20 came in October 2018, when he ran 2:27:43 at the Venezia Marathon in Italy. Amazingly, he has run a whopping 109 marathons in his career, meaning he has only failed to break 2:20 on eight of those occasions. 

"It might not to be difficult to run under 2:20 once,” Kawauchi said at an online press conference. “But even if it’s easy to achieve it once, in order to achieve that 100 times, you have to be able to continue the sport for a long time, you have to be able to participate in a lot of races, and more than anything you have to stay healthy. Otherwise, you can’t make it happen.”

He continued, adding modestly, “With that said, I’m not the fastest in Japan, I’m not the strongest in Japan. But I’ve diligently continued this since I was six years old and it’s resulted in this record.”

Kawauchi turns 34 on Friday, and although he’s getting older, he is still capable of running PBs, as he showed at the Lake Biwa Marathon. He touched on this in the press conference, and he said he is confident he can continue to run this quickly for many years to come.