Running News Daily

'This is my favorite course' - Tamirat Tola reveals what gives him confidence ahead of New York Marathon title defence

Tamirat Tola is counting on experience to drive him to another New York Marathon victory as bids to make further history.

Ethiopia's Tamirat Tola is looking to become the first man ever to win both the Olympics and in New York marathons in the same season as he gears up for the New York City marathon on Sunday, November 3.

The Ethiopian faces a herculean task to defend his title despite his remarkable 2024 season. 

A year ago, the Ethiopian distance runner captured his first marathon major in New York City, and in July, he became the first man from his country to win an Olympic marathon title since Sydney 2000. Now a national hero, he wants to defend his title in New York and is banking on the Paris experience.

"This is my favorite course. My coach gave me very hard training coming in; that’s very important for me. My body is OK. On Sunday we will see,” Tola told Olympics.com.  The 33-year-old bagged bronze both at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and the 2023 London Marathon.

Tola is confident of crossing the finish line first and believes his mentality will make the difference. "I arrive with confidence; I feel good mentally, so I think I can win. I expect I'll have a good race. And I can see if there's anything that I can improve on moving forward," the 2022 World Championships gold medalist added.

Tola is trying for history on Sunday even though no man has successfully defended his title since Geoffrey Mutai won two in a row in 2011 and 2013 (the 2012 race was canceled); while only Peres Jepchirchir on the women’s side has won the Olympics and New York in the same year (2021).

Peres Jepchirchir reveals her next stop following dissapointing Paris 2024 Olympics showdown

Peres Jepchirchir has revealed her next step as she eyes redemption following her dissapointing 15th-place finish at the Paris Olympic Games.

Former Olympic marathon champion Peres Jepchirchir is targeting the world half-marathon record as she heads to the Vedanta Delhi Half Marathon, a World Athletics Gold Label event, scheduled for Sunday, October 20.

Jepchirchir, the reigning London Marathon champion, has not raced since her exit from the Paris Olympic Games where she faded to 15th place in a time of 2:26:51. The Kenyan long-distance running ace will be looking to bounce back in a commanding way with a world record.

The women’s world record currently stands at 1:02:52 and was set by Letesenbet Gidey on October 24, 2021, at the Valencia Half Marathon and Peres Jepchirchir has plans to obliterate it and take back her crown when she steps on the track. A huge prize purse also awaits her as she seeks to make history in the Indian city.

The men’s race will be headlined by Joshua Cheptegei, the current world record holder in the 5000m and 10,000m. The reigning Olympic 10,000m champion will also be out to attack the world record and make an impact as he continues enriching his decorated athletics resume.

“This country holds a special place in my heart, as it’s where I made my international debut in 2014. It’s been a good season for me, and I am certainly looking at a course-record timing at the Vedanta Delhi Half Marathon. The energy and passion of the Indian running community are truly inspiring, and I’m excited to be part of this prestigious event,” Cheptegei said ahead of his return to the streets of the Indian city.

Meanwhile, a total amount of $260,000 prize money has been set aside for top finishers with the winners set to walk away with $27,000. In addition to this, there is an Event Record Bonus of $12,000.

Delhi Half Marathon: Joshua Cheptegei to headline elite field

The Vedanta Delhi Half Marathon, which is part of the World Athletics Gold Label Road Races, will be flagged off from Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium on Sunday, October 20.

Ugandan sensation Joshua Cheptegei and Kenya’s former Half-Marathon World record holder Peres Jepchirchir are all set to light up the streets of Delhi!

Joshua is the current world record holder for both the 5000 meters and 10,000 meters and holds the world’s best time over the 15-kilometer distance. He is the reigning Olympic champion in the 10,000 meters and won the gold with a new Olympic record of 26:43.14.

Joshua is also a three-time World champion in the 10,000 meters and claimed gold in both the 5000 meters and 10,000 meters at the 2018 Commonwealth Games and the 2019 IAAF World Cross Country Championships. Notably, Cheptegei is only the tenth man in history to simultaneously hold the 5000-meter and 10,000-meter world records, both of which he set in 2020.

Interestingly, Cheptegei made his international debut in India at the TCS World 10K Bengaluru 2014, finishing second. His return to India for the Vedanta Delhi Half Marathon promises to be a highlight of this year’s race.

Speaking about his return to India Joshua said, “This country holds a special place in my heart, as it’s where I made my international debut in 2014. It’s been a good season for me, and I am certainly looking at a course-record timing at the Vedanta Delhi Half Marathon. The energy and passion of the Indian running community are truly inspiring, and I’m excited to be part of this prestigious event.”

Kenya’s former Half-Marathon World record holder and three-time world half-marathon winner Peres Jepchirchir will lead the women’s contingent. Peres won the London Marathon 2024 with a time of 2:16:16 secs, breaking the women’s only Marathon world record. She also won the 2021 New York City and 2022 Boston Marathons.

Among the other notable participants, Asian Championship Bronze Medalist Sanjivani Jadhav stands out in the women’s category. Sanjivani, who won the 10,000-meter Portland Track Festival in the USA with a personal best of 32:22:77, recently claimed a silver medal at the 5000-meter event at the National Open Athletics Championships in Bangalore.

She has previously won gold at the Vedanta Delhi Half Marathon in 2018 and 2022 and took silver in 2016 and 2020. Defending champion Kavita Yadav will provide Sanjivani with tough competition in pursuing the title.

“This will be my third Vedanta Delhi Half Marathon, and my aim will be to win this race once again. I have been training hard and I will try my best to break and create as many records as I can,” said Sanjivani Jadhav.

In the men’s category, Defending Champion and talented youngster Abhishek Pal, who recently won the 10,000-meter title in the National Open Athletics Championships 2024 in Bangalore, will take the lead. He will face tough competition from another youngster, Asian Games 2023 silver medalist in the 10,000 meters, Kartik Kumar.

He recently triumphed at the 10,000-meter USA Championship Track Fest 2024 with a remarkable time of 28:07:66. Kartik is also the VDHM 2022 and 2023 editions silver medalist.

“I am aiming to break the national record in what will be my fifth Vedanta Delhi Half Marathon. I have won the competition, but while I am once again, my mind is set on breaking the national record and going under 60 minutes,” said the defending champion Abhishek Pal.

Nagoya Women’s Marathon 2025 opens doors to Kenyan runners

Nagoya Women’s Marathon invites Kenyan runners to join its 2025 race, offering virtual participation and luxurious finisher awards.

Organizers of the Nagoya Women’s Marathon have extended a special invitation to Kenyan runners encouraging them to participate in the highly anticipated 2025 race.

Recognized by Guinness World Records for hosting over 20,000 participants, the event is set to take place in Nagoya, Japan, with an online virtual marathon for international participants unable to travel to the race site.

Registration for the virtual marathon opens on October 18 and will remain available until October 31 allowing 500 entrants to join the race from their home countries.

With Kenya’s rich history of marathon champions, the invitation is expected to draw considerable interest.

“We will be delighted to open entries to international runners for Nagoya Women’s Marathon 2025, recognised by Guinness World Records as the largest women’s marathon in the world with over 20,000 participants,” the Marathon’s Race Director said.

“As a sport, running has the ability to bring together people from different countries, backgrounds and cultures, and we look forward to opening our doors to runners from Kenya, which has a world-famous runner community."

Kenyan athletes have long dominated the world stage in distance running, with runners like Brigid Kosgei and Peres Jepchirchir consistently achieving impressive marathon victories.

With this invitation, the organizers of the Nagoya Women’s Marathon hope to add a new level of competition and excitement to the event by allowing Kenyan women to compete alongside elite Japanese and international athletes.

For those who may not be able to make the journey to Japan, the event’s organizers are offering a virtual alternative for 500 women worldwide.

The Nagoya Women’s Online Marathon 2025, which will take place between February 9, 2025, and March 31, 2025, allows runners to complete the full 42.195 kilometers on a smartphone application, providing an opportunity to compete from any location.

“We recognize the importance of sustainability and accessibility in modern sports,” the Race Director explained.

“This virtual race option, born during the travel restrictions of the COVID-19 pandemic, allows women from around the world to engage with the event, even if they cannot physically attend in Nagoya. We believe this alternative offers a world-class platform for women to shine, no matter where they are."

All participants, whether competing in person or virtually, will receive the same prestigious finisher prizes, including a special commemorative tumbler from Baccarat, a French luxury lifestyle brand.

To mark its 260th anniversary, Baccarat has collaborated with the Nagoya Women’s Marathon to provide a unique gift, celebrating the success of every runner.

The elegant tumbler’s design, kept under wraps until now, will be unveiled at the Marathon Expo the day before the race.

The Nagoya Women’s Marathon, launched in 2012, has become a symbol of excellence in women’s running, featuring elite athletes from around the world.

It holds a World Athletics Platinum Label designation, attracting top-tier competitors and fans alike.

Last year, Yuka Ando made headlines by becoming the first Japanese winner in three years, setting a personal best time of 2:21:19.

The organizers are optimistic that the inclusion of Kenyan athletes will add an exciting layer of competition to the race, further elevating its international reputation.

There Are Going to Be People Walking:’ A Look at the Grueling Olympic Marathon Course

Getting to run by all those historic spots requires some epic climbs and descents.The final weekend of the 2024 Paris Olympics will host back-to-back days of thrilling marathons. These prestigious races, set against the backdrop of two of France’s most iconic landscapes—Paris and Versailles—will weave through a tapestry of history, culture, and breathtaking scenery. They begin on August 10 with the men’s race, and then, in a nod to the 40th anniversary of the first women’s Olympic Marathon in Los Angeles, the Paris Olympics will conclude on August 11 with the women’s race for the first time in history.

Here are some of the key details you’ll want to know:

What sites will the runners pass?

It’s not a bad way to tour the area, and it’s quite different than the Paris Marathon that is held each April. Athletes will find themselves tracing a route that dances through nine arrondissements (neighborhoods) of Paris along the banks of the Seine. The runners will begin at the Hôtel de Ville, or city hall, and then pass landmarks such as the Palais Garnier opera house, Place Vendôme, the Louvre museum, and past the Trocadéro. 

Next, they will leave the city to run through historic French towns, including Sevres, on their way to Versailles. The return to the city is a different route and will take them through the Forêt Domaniale de Meudon, a forest. When back in the city, they will be on the Left Bank and run past the Eiffel Tower as well as Parisian neighborhoods. The race ends at the Esplanade des Invalides, in which Napoleon is buried.

This route is based on significant French history. In October 1789, between 6,000 and 7,000 Parisian women, joined by men, marched from the Hôtel de Ville through the city to Versailles. It was because of that march that Louis XVI agreed to ratify the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizens. The marathoners are symbolically running in their footsteps. 

How tough is the course?

Unlike some more recent Olympics and U.S. Marathon Trials races, this course isn’t a circuit of repeated loops. Instead, it’s a full loop starting in Paris and loops down to Versailles outside of the city. 

While the elevation profile for the first nine miles looks fairly tame, once the runners are past the halfway mark the landscape changes. The most notable course feature is the three uphill stretches—they’re incredibly steep and very long. 

The first big hill comes just before the 10-mile mark, and it climbs at a 4 percent grade, which is roughly the same as Boston’s famed Newton hills. The difference with the Paris version is that it ascends for about 1.25 miles before it levels off for a bit. (Boston’s longest hill is less than half a mile, according to Sean Hartnett, emeritus professor of geography at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, who specializes in marathon routes and other running competitions.)

The next hill at the 12-mile mark is at 5 percent, steeper than anything on the Boston course and 900 meters long. But those two are just appetizers for the real challenge. That hits just after the 18-mile mark. 

Runners will have to climb for 600 meters, at an average grade of 10.5 percent. Yes, picture putting your treadmill at 10 percent and trying to run up it at marathon pace. Hartnett calls it a “doozy” and struggles to find courses to compare it to. The Bix 7 in Davenport, Iowa, perhaps? Then he gives up. “It’s unlike anything in any competitive road marathon,” he said. (You can view a detailed description of the 15K-33K section as mapped by Hartnett here.)

In total, the route will include 1,430 feet of elevation gain. Possibly more challenging is the 1,437 feet of descent. The make-or-break point for the route might be just after that final brutal uphill, when they are bombing downhill—at some points at a gradient of 13.5 percent. Runners will have to be efficient going down, without pounding so much they trash their quads before the final flat stretch before the finish. To put the course into some more perspective, the World Marathon Majors that are considered the hilliest—Boston and New York City—each have an elevation gain of a little over 800 total feet. And for one final nugget, the average grade of the Mount Washington Auto Road Race is 12 percent. The course record for that 7.4-miler is at around 8:00 pace. 

This course will make the fastest marathoners in the world look almost human at times.

How do the marathoners feel about the course?

Pat Tiernan, an Olympian for Australia who is running the marathon, made two trips to Paris from his training base with Puma in North Carolina to examine the course. His first trip, in early April, was just to get a feel for the course. The second, in late May, was to train on it. 

“The first thing you notice,” Tiernan said in a phone call with Runner’s World, “is that it’s going to be a brutal course. There are going to be people walking.” 

If you look closely at the official Strava route, you can spot some U.S. Olympic marathoners on the leaderboards of the course’s toughest segments.

On April 10, U.S. team member Clayton Young did a 12.80-mile run on the hilliest section of the course, where he “pushed the uphills, chilled the downhills.” During the steepest climb—right before the mile 18 split—Young tackled a .44-mile segment in 3:09, giving him a modest average pace (for a world-class marathoner) of 7:01 per mile. But if you look at Strava’s “grade adjusted pace,” which factors in elevation, that 7:01 converts to 5:03 mile pace. His average heart rate was 179 beats per minute.

Dakotah Lindwurm, a U.S. team member for the women, also previewed the course in April in a run she called, “Tour de La Olympic hills ?].” She racked up an impressive 16 “course records” during her 10.87-mile workout, and on the same steep segment that Young ran, she averaged 7:43 pace with a grade-adjusted pace of 5:21 per mile. 

Emily Sisson, the U.S. record holder in the marathon, has been training for both the hills and the flats. “We’ve been doing a lot of stuff on hills, because [we] want to come out of the hills into the last 10K feeling good,” she says. “That’s also why you don’t want to slack on 10K work, because it could be quite fast at the end. So kind of trying to do it all.” 

Tiernan agreed with Sisson on the unique challenge. If marathoners go too hard through the hills, they could struggle at the end, he said. If they go too easy through the hills and subsequent descents, they might be out of touch by the final 10K. He said the Paris course is as “if you were to do a 10K road race, then go and run a hard 10K hill cross country course, then a 10K road race.” 

If nothing else, it could make for some surprises on the podium.

When exactly are the races?

The men’s event happens on Saturday, August 10. If you want to watch live, get your favorite espresso ready. The event begins at 2 a.m. ET/11 p.m. PT in the U.S. The following day for the women’s race, the 2024 Paris Olympics fully conclude in honor of the 40th anniversary of the first women’s Olympic marathon event, won by Joan Benoit-Samuelson. The start time is also at 2 a.m. ET/11 p.m. PT.

Who are the major names in each race?

Both races are packed with star power in the form of returning Olympic champions, world record holders, and World Marathon Majors winners. The biggest storyline in the men’s race is whether Eliud Kipchoge, the two-time Olympic marathon gold medalist who many consider to be the greatest of all time, will be able to retain his crown in what may be his final Olympics at age 39.

The women’s event is even more stacked and should make for quite the event to cap off the 2024 Olympics. Newly ratified world record holder Tigist Assefa of Ethiopia will have to match speed and strategy against the likes of Hellen Obiri and Peres Jepchirchir of Kenya and the Netherlands’s Sifan Hassan, who is running the marathon after racing in the 5,000 and 10,000 meters on the track. 

Men’s Marathon Contenders

Eliud Kipchoge, Kenya (2:01:09)

Kenenisa Bekele, Ethiopia (2:01:41) 

Benson Kipruto, Kenya (2:02:16)

Tamirat Tola, Ethiopia (2:03:39)

Conner Mantz, USA (2:07:47)

Clayton Young, USA (2:08:00)

Women’s Marathon Contenders

Tigist Assefa, Ethiopia (2:11:53)

Sifan Hassan, Netherlands (2:13:44)

Peres Jepchirchir, Kenya (2:16:16)

Emily Sisson, USA (2:18:29)

Hellen Obiri, Kenya (2:21:38)

Rose Chelimo, Bahrain (2:22:51)

Fiona O’Keeffe, USA (2:22:10)

Sharon Lokedi, Kenya (2:22:45)

Did you know there is a mass participation race?

If not, now you do. It’s called the Marathon Pour Tous, and we’re pretty jealous we can’t run this one. There will be a full marathon and a 10K on the same route as the Olympic marathon on the evening of August 10. Yes, a night race in the City of Lights. More than 20,000 participants are expected for each event.

50 laps and then a marathon: Sifan Hassan chases the ‘impossible’ dream at Paris Olympics

The Olympics is a time to marvel at the incredible but the sheer size of the opportunity should ensure an element of caution among athletes.

Not so for Sifan Hassan, the Dutch middle and long distance runner, after she announced her bid to pull off a historic treble at the Paris Olympics when she will compete in the 5,000m, 10,000m and marathon events.

The Olympic champion in Tokyo over 5,000m and 10,000m, Hassan had entered the 1,500m, too, before dropping that event on Wednesday.

Hassan provoked excitement in the sport three years ago when she attempted an exhausting Tokyo treble.

She would add bronze to her two golds in Tokyo when she rallied in the 1,500m heats after falling over, before settling for bronze in the final after a fierce battle with Faith Kipyegon and Laura Muir.

That bronze, while adding a dash of disappointment in the Tokyo rush for three golds, was a gift to the sport in hindsight. It delivered a shove, compelling Hassan to roll the dice and taste 26.2 miles on the roads.

The marathon and the roads bring acclaim and fortunes rarely afforded on the track and the hope was that Hassan, with her formidable track speed, would graduate in time. Yet her transition was seamless: She made her debut in London last year, pulling off one of the most staggering comebacks.

Hunched over and stationary in the middle of the race at 19km, Hassan desperately stretched to rid her aching body of lactic acid. Not only did it vanish, but she found a spring to outkick Alemu Megertu and win by a mere four seconds in two hours, 18 mins and 33secs.

More was to come, with victory and the second-fastest women's marathon of all time (2:13.44) in Chicago, before a respectable fourth in Tokyo this year. It begs the question as to why Hassan would risk scuppering hopes of marathon gold by subjecting her legs to 20km (the 5,000m has two rounds) on the track. Notably, the marathon course will present a number of hills, which could see each race unfold into a tactical affair with the opportunity for a sprint finish.

Even with 4mins 4.08secs in the 1,500m this year, Hassan would revel in the opportunity to test Ethiopian world record holder Tigst Assefa (2:11:53) and Kenyan trio Peres Jepchirchir, Helen Obiri and Sharon Lokedi over a late dash.

But the 31-year-old, whose face can be seen across many of the metro stations in Paris for an eye-catching Nike campaign, insists the attempt is nothing more than intrigue. And for that. she should be praised, in a sport where so many play it safe.

“I’m a very curious person,” she remarked. “Is life all about a gold medal? I'm very curious to do many events. I think it's impossible. So I want to see if it is, so I have to try. In Tokyo, it was successful after the three events. I discovered myself, also.

“Curiosity, when I try new things, is actually what keeps me going in my career. My journey is more important, the other things come after. I love the journey as much as the challenge.

“Did I balance speed on the track with enough endurance in the marathon? Let’s find out together. It’s not easy to face the unknown but my curiosity has driven all my training towards this goal. I will try my best to succeed.”

Hassan starts her campaign in Paris in the 5,000m opening round on Friday and will return on Monday for the final, should she qualify.

The 10,000m final is set for 9 August, meaning less than 48 hours of rest before lining up for the marathon.

“For anyone else this would be insane!” American track legend Michael Johnson wrote on social media. “I don't believe there's ever been an athlete who enjoys racing more than Sifan Hassan.”

And her attempt has left many of her fellow athletes in awe, with 1,500m world champion Josh Kerr impressed by her versatility.

“I don't think I could do that on the women’s side... to do a triple like that, the training is so gruelling for the marathon,” said Kerr. “She’s so well rounded that being able to have enough speed in the rank to do track races, it’s two rounds in the five, she’ll be out there having fun. Very impressive.”

“It's good sometimes when I'm nervous ... I do better,” Hassan laughed. Her rivals will hope she is not.

Paris 2024 Olympics: Peres Jepchirchir makes audacious verdict on Kenya's podium chances in the women's marathon

Peres Jepchirchir has rated Kenya's chances in the women's marathon at the Paris 2024 Olympics as she prepares to represent the country alongside compatriots Sharon Lokedi and Hellen Obiri.

Peres Jepchirchir is chasing history at the Paris Olympic Games, where she intends to be the first woman to defend her Olympic marathon title.

Jepchirchir has been sharpening her talons with title defense on her mind and she believes in her training and abilities to achieve the rare feat.

The newly-crowned London Marathon champion also admitted that the Kenyan team is strong and should be downplayed. She disclosed that all of them have run on tough courses, just like the one in Paris and have managed to claim top honors.

For instance, Hellen Obiri is a two-time Boston Marathon champion while Lokedi won the 2022 New York City Marathon and finished second at the 2024 Boston marathon champion. Meanwhile, Jepchirchir has also won the Boston and New York City Marathons and she believes they can all impress at the Olympic Games.

“The course is not easy but I thank God for the Kenyan team that comprises I, Hellen Obiri and Sharon Lokedi. I have run the Boston Marathon and New York City Marathon and won,” Jepchirchir told Africa News.

“Obiri has won the Boston Marathon twice and Sharon won New York and was second in Boston. I believe in them and myself because all of us have run on tough courses and this will not be the first,” she added.

The trio has been impressive this season, with Jepchirchir breaking the women-only world record that has since been ratified at the London Marathon.

Obiri and Lokedi were in action at the Boston Marathon, where the former claimed the win as the latter took second-place in the hotly-contested race.

They all head to the Paris Olympic Games with the hope of making a mark and leaving a legacy with Jepchirchir having all the weight on her shoulders to make history.

Hellen Obiri to approach Olympic marathon with 'caution' as she chases her first gold medal

Hellen Obiri is aware of the tough competition awaiting her at the Olympics as she seeks to take a different approach to the race with her main goal being to claim a gold medal.

Two-time Boston Marathon champion Hellen Obiri will be taking a different approach in the Paris Olympic Games as she competes in the marathon.

Obiri was selected in the team alongside defending champion Peres Jepchirchir and Sharon Lokedi and has admitted that triumphing over her compatriots will be a tough ordeal.

Speaking to Nation Sport, the reigning New York City Marathon champion insisted that she knows every competitor has trained well and prays for good health and fitness as she eyes her first Olympic gold medal.

She is now on her final stages of training and so far, things are looking up for the two-time Olympic 5000m silver medallist.

“I’m delighted that I’m heading to the Olympics for the fourth time. I want to achieve what I have been dreaming, which is a gold medal, and as I finalise my training, I pray I remain healthy and injury free,” Obiri said.

“The Kenyan team is strong. I will be approaching the race with caution because everybody has trained hard and wants to win.”

Obiri made her full marathon debut at the New York City Marathon where she faded to finish sixth in the tight race. However, that did not stop her from pursuing her marathon dream as she proceeded to the Boston Marathon last year.

She was no fluke as she claimed top honours in the race before winning the 2023 New York City Marathon. The two-time world 5000m champion successfully defended her title at this Boston Marathon.

She has since been selected to represent Kenya at the Olympic Games and will be looking to add the only medal missing in her trophy laden cabinet, an Olympic gold medal.

The former world 10,000m silver medallist has been consistent in the marathon and she will certainly be a favourite as the athletes line up for the marathon.

Sharon Lokedi finally gets the chance she deserved after late inclusion in Kenya’s Olympics team

Marathoner Sharon Lokedi will be heading to the Paris 2024 Olympics after profiting from Brigid Kosgei’s misfortune, having been controversially omitted from the team.

Sharon Lokedi has finally got the chance to represent Kenya at the Paris 2024 Olympics after her late inclusion as a replacement for the injured Brigid Kosgei.

Lokedi was widely expected to make Kenya’s final three, alongside two-time Boston Marathon winner Hellen Obiri and defending champion Peres Jepchirchir, but was controversially omitted for former world record holder Kosgei.

The decision drew the ire of fans who felt Lokedi deserved a slot in the team given her recent form that has seen her win New York Marathon in 2022 before a third-place finish last year and ran Obiri close in Boston in 2024 before finishing second.

Kosgei, meanwhile, won the Lisbon Half Marathon in March this year but could only manage fifth in London and has not won a race since the Tokyo Marathon in March 2022, with injuries and form disrupting her.

However, Kosgei will now not be on the plane to Paris due to another injury, paving the way for Lokedi, who had been named as a reserve.

“The Kenya Marathon team heading to the Olympic games in Paris has been training for slightly over two months, and the athletes continue to receive financial support and technical support,” read a statement from the National Olympics Committee of Kenya.

“It’s during the one of the regular monitoring sessions that Olympic silver medalist Brigid Kosgei expressed an injury concern to the technical team. Upon a review by the medical team led by the Chief Medical officer Dr Ondiege, Kosgei will not be heading to Paris for her second Olympics.

“Sharon Lokedi, who was named in the reserve team, will now join defending champion Peres Jepchirchir and Hellen Obiri to fly Kenya’s flag in Paris.”

Confirmed! Brigid Kosgei out of Paris 2024 Olympic Games

Changes have allegedly been made to the women's marathon team for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.

Fans had caused an uproar concerning the women’s marathon team, questioning why Sharon Lokedi was selected as a reserve and Brigid Kosgei included in the main team.

However, Pulse Sports has established that the 2022 New York City marathon champion Lokedi will now be included in the main team. Lokedi will join defending champion Peres Jepchirchir and two-time Boston Marathon champion Hellen Obiri.

In a press statement released by the National Olympic Committee of Kenya, Kosgei had expressed injury concerns and was forced to withdraw from the event. She will not be heading to the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.

NOC-K announced that upon a review by the medical team led by the Chief Medical Officer Dr Ondiege, Kosgei will not be heading to Paris for her second Olympics.

"Sharon Lokedi who was named in the reserve team will now join defending Champion Peres Jepchirchir and Hellen Obiri to fly Kenya’s flag in Paris," the statement read in part.

"The National Olympics committee would like to thank Brigid for the time to spent in training under the Team Kenya Umbrella and will continue supporting her throughout the season."

Lokedi has showcased her fighting spirit in her recent races, finishing second in the 10km road race at the Mastercard New York Mini 10K. She also stuck with Obiri until the finish line at the Boston Marathon, finishing second. Last year, Lokedi finished third at the New York City Marathon.

On her part, Kosgei has struggled with injuries, failing to live up to the billing in her recent races. In 2023, she failed to finish at the London Marathon and proceeded to finish fourth at the New York City Marathon.

The former world marathon record holder then ended her season with a win at the Abu Dhabi Marathon, crossing the finish line in 2:19:15.

This season, Kosgei opened her season with a win at the Lisbon Half Marathon before proceeding to the London Marathon where she finished fifth.

The women's Olympic race will take place on August 11, the day after the men's marathon.

Why Lokedi is the next big thing in marathon running

The 2022 New York City Marathon champion Sharon Lokedi has every reason to stroll the streets with her chin up.

Lokedi, 30, is among the celebrated Kenyan athletes selected by Athletics Kenya for this year's Olympic Games in Paris, France.

She was named as a reserve athlete in the stellar roster of four female Kenyan marathoners tasked with flying the nation's flag in the French capital.

Lokedi was named alongside Tokyo 2020 Olympics marathon champion Peres Jepchirchir, two-time Boston Marathon champion Hellen Obiri and Olympic silver medalist Brigid Kosgei.

The older daughter of Jonathan and Rose Lokedi, Sharon has three younger siblings Ceddellah Chelimo, Lince Cheptoo and Mercy Chemutai.

Born on March 10, 1994, Lokedi began to hone her skills at Kapkenda Girls’ School, where she set records in the 3000m and 5000m races yet to be broken to date.

So good was she that in 2013, she scooped the school's Athlete of the Year gong.

Upon completing high school,  she was recruited to the University of Kansas (KU), where she studied nursing and business.

She began competing first in collegiate track and cross country in 2015. Lokedi's desire to travel overseas for college began in high school.

It took her some time to think about it, deciding whether to stay in Kenya with her family or travel to the so-called land of milk and honey.

"I was encouraged to try it by a friend of mine who had applied to study in the United States," Lokedi said. 

 "When I saw images of people in America, I knew it was my dream and was determined to go there," she added.

Meanwhile, Lokedi was unsure if she wanted to continue with athletics and even at some point considered dumping the sport to concentrate on her studies. 

 However, the passion she had already developed for athletics drove her back to the sport. She began attending training with sights firmly set on a collegiate athletic career in the USA.

"Running is ingrained in you when you're accustomed to it, so you want to keep doing it," Lokedi stated.

"I was disappointed that I wasn't running and I knew I needed to return to my favourite activity.

"With her mind already set on pursuing an education abroad, Lokedi rummaged through online platforms to identify an appropriate institution online.

"I was unsure about the precise institution I should join. I would go online, go through images and try to get a sense of the various academic offerings and running programmes that each school had to offer. Ultimately, there was simply something peculiar about Kansas. She would exchange emails and make multiple phone conversations with the coaches."

She added: "The instructors were pleasant. They would inquire about my training regimen and follow up with me to see how I was doing. It was obvious that you could relate to these people on a deep level.

"In the meanwhile, her friends alerted her to Kansas' chilly weather. "People would occasionally comment on how chilly the US was, but I had already made up my mind. I had never seen snow before since Kenya doesn't have a winter. It was January and chilly when I arrived."

She needed some time to get used to the Midwest's erratic weather.

"One day, it was so sunny outside that I forgot to put on my gloves when we went to practice in the morning. But I was unable to use my hands at all once I stopped jogging. I attempted to reheat them but was unsuccessful. I broke down in tears and felt like travelling back home. I eventually got used to it," she said. 

 Her trip to Kansas was fraught with difficulties. She flew from Nairobi to Chicago hoping to catch a flight to Kansas City only to arrive when the plane had already left and was forced to spend the night in the airport.

"I had nothing at all, not even a phone. All night long, I sat there in the airport. I didn't even know what time it was, so I couldn't sleep. I merely stayed there and waited as soon as I arrived at my gate. I was unable to make a phone call to my parents or even get a snack.

"I had money, but I had no idea how to pay for it because I didn't understand how the US dollar operated. A further reason I didn't want to go anywhere was my fear of getting lost. I simply waited there until around eight in the morning, when my jet was scheduled to take off. It was horrible."

Eventually, she was received by KU assistant coach Michael Whittlesey. "Since I didn't have a phone, I was concerned that when I arrived, no one would be there to greet me," Lokedi said.

However, he was waiting for me when I arrived at the airport, and we then took a car to Lawrence.

Another issue she had to cope with was getting used to the food in her new nation.

"When I first came here, I didn't know what anything was, so I couldn't eat," she remarked.

"I used to go to the cafeteria and just gaze around. Everything appeared so different, and I was at a loss for what to do.

"With the assistance of her teammates and coaches, Lokedi took small steps toward acclimatising to her new environment. Thankfully, senior cross-country runner Daniel Koech, a fellow Kenyan, was there to provide her with the assistance she needed.

“Daniel did a lot for me. He was the one who helped me get a phone, or sometimes I would use his phone to call because he already knew how to dial home. He helped me get used to things here and he would also translate.

"It was challenging because my limited command of English made it difficult for me to communicate. While we did study English in high school, we didn't use it very often.

"Sometimes I would hear someone say something and then I would go ask him what they said. He was really pleasant and a great assistant. After class, we continued speaking in our mother tongue."

After enduring a comparable shift, Koech was determined to ensure that Lokedi wouldn't have to confront any obstacles on his own.

Lokedi acknowledges her teammates for encouraging her to realise her greatest potential as well. She has reached unprecedented heights, thanks to her unwavering energy.

Lokedi is on the market for more awards, even though she has plenty of them already to adorn her trophy cabinet. 

 "Those are the things that inspire me. When I practice every day, I consider what I want to achieve. I have a goal to accomplish. I want to perform better than I did previously."

She wants to improve other people's lives with her university education to uplift her community.

"Even though I am from a small, impoverished town, I am sure if I go back there with my community health major, I will work to make things better and assist people.

"I can educate them on topics such as their health and other unfamiliar yet important information."  

She reckons that her accomplishment will inspire budding athletes to pursue their dreams in life.

“It’s been so fun in the US and I enjoy every bit of it. I have three younger sisters in high school and it’s something I want to motivate other people to do.  "I've had a great time in the US and I love every aspect of it.

" I wish to inspire others to follow in the footsteps of my three younger sisters who are currently enrolled in high school.  

A third-place showing at the NCAA Midwest Regional and a 10th-place showing at the NCAA Championships highlighted her stellar freshman career, which also set a record for the highest individual finish by a KU female in the national championship meet. 

 She emerged as KU's lead female runner in all nine meets of her collegiate career where she placed in the top 10 in eight of the nine competitions. 

 "I won the 10,000m at the 2018 NCAA Division I Outdoor Track and Field Championships."

Lokedi has been a 10-time All-American & 12-time Big 12 champion, as of March 2019.

Kenyan runner Judy Jelagat Kemboi set a new course record for the women’s half marathon at the Riga Marathon

On Sunday, May 19th, Kenyan runner Judy Jelagat Kemboi set a new course record for the women’s half marathon at the Rimi Riga Marathon, finishing in one hour, seven minutes, and 13 seconds (1:07:13). Kemboi improved the previous record set last year by her compatriot, Olympic marathon champion Peres Jepchirchir, by 12 seconds (1:07:25).

With her victory in Riga, Kemboi confirmed her status as the pre-race favorite, having the best personal record among the participants. Kemboi’s result in Riga is the 26th best in the world for 2024.

Ethiopian Dibabe Beyene Debela finished second with a time of 1:09:53, while Kenyan Agnes Keino claimed the bronze medal, finishing in 1:10:33.

In the men’s competition, Kenyan Samwel Nyamai Mailu took first place, finishing in one hour and 21 seconds (1:00:21). Mailu, who won a bronze medal at the World Athletics Road Running Championships in Riga last year, achieved the 39th-best result in the world this year for the half marathon distance.

He was followed by fellow Kenyan Collins Kipkurui Kipkorir, who finished in 1:00:47, while another Kenyan, Titus Kimutai Kipkosgei, took third place with a time of 1:01:57.

Peres Jepchirchir reveals what worries her ahead of Olympic title defence

Olympic marathon champion Peres Jepchirchir has explained why she is concerned as she prepares to defend her title at the Paris Games.

Olympic marathon champion Peres Jepchirchir is worried that she might not have enough time to fully prepare for her title defense in Paris.

Jepchirchir won the London Marathon last month and had to take a mini break before resuming her preparations for the Olympics.

Now just getting back, the former Boston and New York Marathon champion says she has limited time to get in proper shape but she is counting on her past experiences to lead her to glory on the tough course in Paris.

“I resumed fully my training for Olympics last week on Monday but the time is limited. Three months is not much for us marathoners, now I’m rushing to go through my programme,” said Jepchirchir.

“The way I see and I have heard about the course, it is a little bit difficult, but I have run New York and Boston which are hard courses but so long as I am in good shape, free from injuries. I will make it.”

Jepchirchir admits she cannot push her body so much at the moment after putting in so much for the London Marathon that she won in a new women’s-only world record of 2:16:16.

“I started resuming slowly, now I am doing 20km running and I think by the end of this month, I will be fully in my programme,” she added.

She has, however, shrugged off suggestions that Team Kenya will have it rough especially from Ethiopians, backing herself and her team-mates Hellen Obiri and Brigid Kosgei to triumph over their bitter rivals.

“I know the team is strong and to win Olympics again is not easy. It means extra hard work but I know we are going to make it. Team Kenya is strong, Ethiopia is strong but not stronger than us,” remarked the mother of one.

Jepchirchir was speaking after being awarded the Sports Personality of the Month for April by the Sports Journalists Association of Kenya in conjunction with electronics giants LG.

Strong world class elite field competing in Riga marathon this weekend

This weekend, the Rimi Riga Marathon will host world-class running stars who have stood atop the podium at prestigious marathons in Paris, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Doha, Vienna, Hamburg, Dubai, Seville, and other prestigious events. The biggest competition for a spot on the podium this year is expected in the half marathon, where an especially strong field of runners will compete on the same course where world champions in the half marathon were crowned last October.

An intense battle is also anticipated among Latvia’s leading runners, who will compete not only for the Latvian championship medals in the road mile and the marathon, but also for high-quality results in the 5km and 10km distances. Because of the strong lineup of participants, we anticipate that in several distances we’ll see the Rimi Riga Marathon course records, and possibly even Latvian records, broken.

The Rimi Riga Marathon, the Baltic’s most magnificent mass sports event, on May 18 and 19, will not only bring together over 30,000 running enthusiasts from nearly 100 countries worldwide but also top elite runners from Latvia and around the globe.

FOREIGN FAVORITES IN THE HALF MARATHON WILL AIM TO BREAK THE RIMI RIGA MARATHON COURSE RECORDS

The most intense competition is expected in the half marathon at the Rimi Riga Marathon, where participants will attempt to surpass the time of 59:10 set by Sebastian Sawe, the winner of the World Athletics Road Running Championships in Riga last October. In the men’s elite competition, several accomplished Kenyan runners will compete this year, including last year’s World Athletics Road Running Championships bronze medalist Samwel Nyamai Mailu, Solomon Kipchoge, who ran under one hour – 59:37 in 2023, and Titus Kimutai Kipkosgei who triumphed in the Milan Marathon in April this year and holds a half marathon personal best of 59:44 set back in 2022.

Among the international elite women in the half marathon, there are also several representatives from Kenya and Ethiopia. Among them, Judy Jelagat Kemboi, a Kenyan runner who set an impressive personal best in the half marathon on May 5 this year – 65:45, clinching victory in the Geneva Half Marathon. She will face competition from her compatriots – Valary Jemeli (personal best of 66:14 set in 2019), who triumphed in the Doha Marathon this February, and Gladys Jemaiyo, who set her best time of 68:18 in 2022. On the course, we’ll also have the opportunity to see Ethiopian Gebru Azmera Hagos, whose personal record in the half marathon from 2017 stands at 70:40.

To break the records of the half marathon course, which belong to the Kenyan Sebastian Sawe (59:10) and the acclaimed Kenyan runner and the reigning Olympic marathon champion Peres Jepchirchir (67:25) since the World Athletics Road Running Championships 2023 in Riga, organizers encourage Riga residents and visitors to actively support the leaders on the streets of Riga on the morning of May 19.

ON THE MARATHON COURSE, THE LATVIAN CHAMPIONS WILL BE DETERMINED

Determined to become the Latvian marathon champion this year is Dmitrijs Serjogins, the national record holder in the half marathon and the holder of the highest marathon personal best among Latvians. Also lining up at the starting line will be the podium finishers of the Latvian Marathon championship 2023 – the reigning champion Aleksandrs Raščevskis, vice-champion Renārs Roze, and bronze medalist Kristaps Vējš-Āboliņš.

In the marathon course, several strong foreign runners have also registered, including the Kenyan Rodgers Maiyo, who boasts an impressive personal record in the half marathon – 61:56 (2015), and multiple-time Georgian champion and holder of the national record Davit Kharzishvili (2:11:46, 2023), both of whom will be aiming to be the first to cross the finish line in Riga.

In the women’s competition, for the Latvian championship medals will compete last year’s medalists – Amanda Krūmiņa, who won the gold medal, Anna Kļučņika, who secured the silver, and one of the holders of the all-time highest marathon results and the 2023 bronze medalist, Anita Siliņa (PB 2:39:57, 2014).

Worth remembering is that the Rimi Riga Marathon record holder for men is the Ethiopian Andualem Belay Shiferaw, who won in 2019 with a time of 2:08:51. However, in the women’s marathon Ethiopian Birke Debele Beyene’s time remains unbeaten from 2019 – 2:26:22. Meanwhile, the fastest Latvian runner results in the Rimi Riga Marathon are the Latvian record set by Valērijs Žolnerovičs in 2017 with a time of 2:14:24, and the 2:40:23 result set by Ariana Hilborn in 2015.

How motherhood turned Peres Jepchirchir into the marathon force to be reckoned with

The reigning Women's marathon Olympic champion has revealed how her daughter helped her take her running back to the next level.

Peres Jepchirchir is one of the most recognisable and well accomplished athletes in the world of marathon.

The 30-year-old has been conquering road races for quite a while now ever since she launched her running career in 2013, when she ran two 10k road races in South Africa and then took part in the Kisumu marathon and cross country running, alongside a certain Faith Kipyegon.

It was in 2016 that she really starting becoming consistent after a few struggles, as she started dominating in half-marathons. She continued on  her trail and even broke two half-marathon records. It was after that that she was blessed with a daughter, Natalie.

As the world recently celebrated mother’s day, Jepchirchir believes becoming a mother has made her a much better athlete, as it motivated her to go beyond her limits, knowing there was now someone in her life looking up to her and depending on her.

“It has changed my life since Natalie was born. You have to work extra hard because now you know you have someone who is depending on you,” Jepchirchir told Olympics Kenya.

Although motherhood is a beautiful thing, it did not come without its challenges, as it effectively meant her life was not her own anymore.

“There were some challenges, but it was mostly good. When Natalia was young, sometimes it would be difficult as she would get sick sometimes. You do not know if she is feeling pain and sometimes, it would be difficult to go for races. 

“I returned to action when Natalia was one year and two months old, which made it difficult for me. I was uncomfortable traveling without my daughter because you just could not tell if she was healthy.”

Getting back to action was no easy streak. Jepchirchir had to shed off her weight, but also had to balance and find a way to solve the issues her baby went through, including the occasional illness.

“It is not easy. Losing weight was a tall order. It was also difficult to sleep. When you want to wake up, she also wants to wake up, when the baby is unwell, its issues, but challenges are there. You just have to commit yourself, love it and enjoy it.”

Jepchirchir has gone on to win the Olympic Games, and recently set the women’s-only world record in the marathon, finishing in two hours, 16 minutes and 16 seconds in London.

She attributes it to the motivation her daughter has instilled in her, describing her as her biggest cheerleader.

“They are playful. Sometimes she will tell me, ‘mommy, you are going to be okay! Mommy, you are going to win!’ Kids are comforting sometimes if you are down.

“Like the other day at the London Marathon, Natalia got emotional. People were cheering me on, but she was crying. She is used to seeing me winning.

"So the one time I got third in London, she was crying ‘Mommy, why did you not win?’ and you end up asking yourself why.”

As she continues to pursue excellence on the marathon course, Peres Jepchirchir exemplifies the extraordinary balance of motherhood and athletic achievement, proving that with dedication and love, anything is possible.

Kosgei believes she can go one step further and win title in Paris

Tokyo 2020 Olympics women's marathon silver medalist Brigid Kosgei believes she can go one step further and nail the title in Paris this year. 

In an exclusive interview on Wednesday Kosgei said she is ready to annihilate the rich field of competitors in the cut-throat 42km race on her way to the winner's dais. 

The two-time world champion constitutes the starry eight-member Team Kenya marathon delegation for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games unveiled by Athletics Kenya last week. 

"I'm happy to be part of the team. The biggest dream of any athlete is to don the national colours and I'll do everything within my power to make the country proud," Kosgei remarked.

 "It's one great opportunity I cannot take for granted. Several brilliant Kenyan athletes deserved to be on board but were left out. My goal is to steer the nation to victory," she added. 

Kosgei will be gunning for the women's accolade alongside compatriots Peres Jepchirchir and Hellen Obiri. Sharon Lokedi is the reserve in the squad. 

"We have a strong team of marathoners and I'm certain we can achieve something positive results if we put our heads together," Kosgei stated. 

Her performance at the London Marathon on April 21 was, however, disappointing after she clocked two hours, 19 minutes, and two seconds to fizzle out to a disappointing fifth. 

She will, nevertheless, find comfort in her masterclass act on March 17, 2024, where she stormed to the Lisbon Half Marathon title.

Kosgei is well aware she has a lot to pan out in Paris after her inclusion in the starting lineup ahead of Lokedi ruffled some feathers, with a section of fans arguing that she ought to have been the reserve runner judging by their recent performances. 

Born on February 20, 1994, in Elgeyo-Marakwet County, Kosgei has demonstrated her gumption as a course diva since her inauguration, having bagged five World Marathon Majors. 

She gleamed to the Chicago Marathon title in 2018; and took the  2019 London Marathon gold medal, becoming the youngest woman to win the event. The feat saw her record the third-best time after Paula Radcliffe in 2005 ( 2:17:42) and Mary Keitany in 2017 ( 2:17:01).

She went on to replicate her conquering exploits at the 2019 Chicago Marathon. Her credentials were boosted further by a first-place finish at the 2020.

London Marathon and another gold medal at the  2021 Tokyo  Marathon. 

This will be her second appearance at the Olympics after wrapping up second behind Jepchirchir at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games and ahead of compatriots Cheruiyot and Ruth Chepng'etich.

World record holder Tigist Assefa named to her first Olympics

World record holder, Tigist Assefa, has been named to her first Olympic Games for Ethiopia. Assefa set the running world on fire last September with a jaw-dropping world record at the 2023 Berlin Marathon–two hours, 11 minutes and 53 seconds. 

Assefa has had a well-polished marathon career so far, winning two of her four races and finishing on the podium in three. Most recently, she finished second to Kenya’s Peres Jepchirchir (the defending Olympic champion) at the 2024 London Marathon, with a time of 2:16:23. This was Assefa’s first loss at an Abbott World Marathon Major.

All eyes will be on the 27-year-old as she tackles the daunting Paris course, which features more than 400 meters of elevation gain. This will be Assefa’s toughest challenge to date.

Joining Assefa on the Ethiopian team are two experienced marathoners: 2023 world champion Amane Beriso and 2022 world champion Gotytom Gebreslase. Beriso has finished in the top three of her last six marathons and has thrived in warmer race conditions, taking wins in Budapest, Mexico City and Valencia. Gebreslase has been on the podium in the marathon at the last two world championships.

Like the men, the Ethiopian women’s team looks to end the streak of their East African rival, Kenya. Ethiopia has not won gold in the women’s marathon since Tiki Gelena at the London 2012 Olympics.

Jepchirchir is confident with her finishing kick ahead of the Olympic Games

The reigning Olympic women’s marathon champion Peres Jepchirchir reckons she has the allure to hypnotize her way to another crown at the upcoming 2024 Paris Games in August.

Jepchirchir, 30, heads to the French capital inspired by her mind-blowing act of genius at the 2024 London Marathon, where she smashed the women’s only world record at a searing pace of two hours, 16 minutes, and 16 seconds.

In an exclusive interview on Wednesday, Jepchirchir expressed optimism in her determination to crack a back-to-back title at the Olympic Games.

She spoke moments after Athletics Kenya unveiled the official list of eight men and women marathoners who will hold forte for the nation at the Paris Games.

“I know it won’t be easy. I’m expecting a tough contest but I’m confident I’ll accomplish my pursuit at the Summer Olympics in Paris. I’ve equipped myself adequately for the enormous assignment ahead,” Jepchirchir remarked.

Jepchirchir said she would replicate the tactical blueprint that fired her to glory in previous races including her momentous triumph at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.

“I have adopted a strong finishing kick that comes in handy on the home stretch. I’ve always made it impossible for my opponents to overtake me in the final 800m. That’s exactly what I intend to do,” Jepchirchir stated.

Reflecting on her historic windfall in the frigid streets of England last month, the diminutive runner said her record-smashing exploits caught her by surprise.

“I was thrilled by the victory. I was not expecting to shatter the world record. I remotely believed someone would smash it but it hardly crossed my mind that person would be me.”

The conquest served to embellish an astral career set in motion by two World Half Marathon victories in 2016 and 2020.

She went on to storm the 2021 New York City and 2022 Boston Marathon titles before wrapping up third at the 2023 London Marathon.

Jepchirchir headlines a starry roster of Kenyan marathoners tasked with hoisting the nation’s flag at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.

According to a list unveiled by the National Olympic Committee of Kenya on Wednesday, Jepchirchir’s teammates include reigning Boston and New York Marathon champion Hellen Obiri, Tokyo Olympics silver medalist Brigid Kosgei, and 2022 New York Marathon champion Sharon Lokedi who has been incorporated as a reserve runner.

Double Olympic champion Eliud Kipchoge headlines the men’s list that also boasts the recently crowned London Marathon champion Alex Mutiso,  Benson Kipruto and Timothy Kiplagat who has earned a spot on the team as a reserve.

The women’s Olympic race slated for August 11, will cover a 42,195km loop linking Paris and Versailles.

The marathon will begin at the Hôtel de Ville in Paris and ends at Les Invalides, passing through nine districts including the Paris— Boulogne-Billancourt, Sèvres, Ville d’Avray, Versailles, Viroflay, Chaville, Meudon and Issy-les-Moulineaux.

Here are some of the Guinness World Records set at the 2024 London Marathon

Could you beat Lee Baynton’s new record of “fastest marathon in a full-body inflatable costume?”

Each year, the London Marathon sees several Guinness World Record attempts, bizarre and wonderful feats like “the fastest female dressed as stationery (2022)” and “fastest marathon in dressed as a film character (Forrest Gump, 2018),” make history books—and 2024 was no exception. But of the 44 world records set or broken during the race, not all were just for costumed runners.

Among the remarkable stories was that of Jono Astle, a Londoner who not only ran the fastest marathon for someone with MS, but also raised a commendable $25,000 for the Multiple Sclerosis Society along the way.

Anthony Bryan, who lost the use of the left side of his body after having surgery to remove a brain tumor as a child, ran the fastest marathon by someone paralyzed down one side of their body, beating the previous time of 5:50. (Bryan, a lifelong supporter of Tottenham Hotspur FC, even met up with Spurs defender Ben Davies before the marathon for some extra encouragement to help him get the record.)

For the costumed runners, the outfits were as varied as the times they ran.

Lee Baynton of Essex ran the fastest-ever marathon in an inflatable costume, clocking a 3:21:07 while raising money for a local hospice. It was Baynton’s sixth marathon, but he said this was his favorite. “All the kids, as soon as they see you, are smiling, high-fiving. Everyone’s cheering and chanting, it’s incredible—I should do this every year,” he told The Independent.

Stephen Cochrane broke the Guinness World Record for the fastest marathon dressed as a scientist, although science could not save him from overheating during the race. “The lab coat gets sweaty, heavy, and you overheat very quickly. By halfway, I was really struggling,” he told the paper.

Simon Killen of Holbeach, England, broke the record for the fastest marathon dressed as a video game character. Ironically, it was not Sonic, but Mario, that Killen chose to beat the previous record of 2:57. It was also Killen’s personal best. No word if he used a mushroom beforehand, though he did complain of cramps.

Some overheated runners could have used a visit from Marcus Mumford, who ran the fastest marathon while dressed as a water tap, with a time of 3:10. Mumford loves plumbing fixtures, previously running London in 2014 dressed as a toilet. “I’m working my way around the bathroom items,” he told The Independent. “People didn’t really know what I was. I was called a weather vane, radio station. It’s all in aid of Water Aid – a fantastic charity.”

The full list of new Guinness World Records titles:  

Peres Jepchirchir: Fastest marathon (female, women-only race) - 02:16:16

Richard Whitehead: Fastest marathon (LA3) (male) - 02:42:01

Simone Carniglia: Fastest marathon by a type 1 diabetic (male) - 02:44:33

Stephen Cochrane: Fastest marathon dressed as a scientist (male) - 02:48:51

Simon Killen: Fastest marathon dressed as a videogame character (male) - 02:52:57

Sam Hull: Fastest marathon dressed as a tennis player (male) - 02:59:38

Warren Parish: Fastest marathon dressed as a cheerleader (male) - 03:03:51

Holly Brownlee: Fastest marathon dressed in pyjamas (female) - 03:06:18

Jonathan Astle: Fastest marathon with multiple sclerosis (male) - 03:07:34

Marcus Mumford: Fastest marathon dressed as a tap/faucet (male) - 03:10:50

James Whistler: Fastest marathon dressed as a harlequin (male) - 03:12:00

Alison Stewart: Fastest marathon dressed as a videogame character (female) - 03:19:10

James Applegarth: Fastest marathon in pilot uniform (male) - 03:20:25

Ian Howard: Fastest marathon dressed as a rotating puzzle cube (male) - 03:20:31

Lee Baynton: Fastest marathon in a full-body inflatable costume (male) - 03:21:07

Matt Everett: Fastest marathon dressed as a traffic cone (male) - 03:22:16

Douglas O’Neill: Fastest marathon dressed as a sweet food (male) - 03:28:16

Gilles Dufosse: Fastest marathon dressed as a monarch (male) - 03:32:16

Kate Baldock: Fastest marathon dressed as a Star Wars character (female) - 03:33:12

Toby Norman: Fastest marathon dressed as a three dimensional aircraft (male) - 03:34:27

Ollie Shortt: Fastest marathon dressed as a body part (male) - 03:43:00

Laura Baker: Fastest marathon dressed as a sweet food (female) - 03:45:57

Tom Hall: Fastest marathon dressed as an emoji (male) - 03:50:17

Claire Casselton: Fastest marathon dressed as a skeleton (female) - 03:51:01

Ben Kellett: Fastest marathon carrying a bicycle - 03:54:52

Kimberly Siano: Fastest marathon dressed in a safari suit (female) - 03:54:58

Uilszaya Bodikhuu: Fastest marathon dressed in traditional Mongolian dress (female) - 03:59:56

Jennifer Stack: Fastest marathon dressed as a flag (female) - 04:01:02

Charlie Fitton: Fastest marathon dressed as a snowperson (female) - 04:05:52

Karen Stebel: Fastest marathon dressed as a mobile phone (female) - 04:08:42

Joanne Bridle: Fastest marathon dressed as a clown (female) - 04:16:36

Jani Barré: Fastest marathon in a non-racing wheelchair (female) - 04:19:21

Adrian Bebb: Fastest marathon dressed as a road vehicle (male) - 04:21:41

Andrew Roberts: Fastest marathon wearing chainmail (upper body) - 04:22:24

Alexandra Fresco-Sumner: Fastest marathon dressed as a mechanic (female) - 04:28:58

Caroline Duncan: Fastest marathon dressed in a flight suit (female) - 04:36:16

Emma Whatley: Fastest marathon dressed as a road vehicle (female) - 04:38:30

Andy Fountain: Fastest marathon dressed as a rocking horse (male) - 05:04:52

Phillip Beer: Fastest marathon dressed as a book (male) - 05:08:04

Georgina Box: Fastest marathon in a full-body inflatable costume (female) - 05:10:31

Anthony Bryan: Fastest marathon (CIH) (male) - 05:49:04

Brendan Matthews: Most T-shirts worn during a marathon (male) - 100 T-shirts 

Jackie Scully, Frances Walker, Petr Maslov, Aileen Rice-Jones, Daniel Smith, Alex Weight, James Read, Kate Rham, Cameron Sharpe, Michael Edwards: Fastest marathon in a ten-person costume – 06:32:05

Lloyd Martin: Youngest person to complete a marathon (II2) (male) - 06:46:10 

Kepchirchir breaks women-only world marathon record in London

Olympic champion Peres Jepchirchir smashed the women-only world record by 45 seconds at the TCS London Marathon, winning the World Athletics Platinum Label road race in 2:16:16* on Sunday (21).

In what was widely regarded as one of the deepest and highest-quality women’s fields ever assembled, the three-time world half marathon champion sprinted away from world record-holder Tigist Assefa, 2021 London winner Joyciline Jepkosgei and last year’s runner-up Megertu Alemu – all of whom finished inside 2:17 – to notch up her third victory in a World Marathon Majors race.

Jepchirchir’s compatriot Alexander Mutiso Munyao made it a Kenyan double, winning the men’s race in 2:04:01 to defeat Ethiopian distance legend Kenenisa Bekele by 14 seconds.

No secret had been made of the fact that breaking Mary Keitany’s women-only world record of 2:17:01 was the big target for the women’s race. With that at the forefront of their minds, a lead pack comprising all the big contenders soon detached themselves from the rest of the field and blazed through the first 5km in 15:44 – comfortably inside 2:13 pace.

They maintained that tempo through 10km, covered in 31:26, and at this point they were 67 seconds ahead of Ethiopia’s Tsige Haileslase, the closest challenger to the lead pack.

The front group – which included Assefa alongside past London winners Jepkosgei, Yalemzerf Yehualaw and Brigid Kosgei – got to 15km in 47:37. Soon after, Sheila Chepkirui – the runner-up in Berlin last year – started to drift off the pack.

Not long after passing the drinks station at the 20km point, 2019 world champion Ruth Chepngetich lost contact with the leaders. It meant that just seven women remained in the pack as they reached the half-way point in 1:07:04 – the second-fastest half-way split ever recorded in London, and putting them on schedule to smash the women-only world record by almost three minutes.

Kosgei was the next to drift back, and with the pacemakers having done their job, it left six women out in front: Jepchirchir, Assefa, training partner and Dubai marathon champion Tigist Ketema, 2022 London winner Yehualaw, 2021 London champion Jepkosgei, and 2023 London runner-up Megertu Alemu.

The sextet ran together through 25km (1:19:38) and 17 miles, but Ketema and Yehualaw were unable to hold on for much further and started to lose contact, leaving four women – Assefa, Jepchirchir, Jepkosgei and Alemu – to battle it out for the three podium places.

The difference between 25km and 30km, 16:18, was the slowest 5km section of the race. The lead quartet was either starting to feel the effects of their early efforts, or they were starting to bide their team for an anticipated surge in the closing stages.

With 1:44 on the clock, the four leading women managed to navigate their way around the two lead vehicles that had been forced to stop due to a wheelchair racer who was experiencing some technical difficulties.

Assefa and Jepchirchir both took turns testing the waters by making subtle surges to see how their opponents would respond, but their overall pace continued to drop and they reached 35km in 1:52:48, putting them on course for a 2:16 finish.They passed 40km in 2:09:13, still running side by side. It was clear that no one else other than these four would be claiming places on the podium, but predicting a winner – and, indeed, the athlete who’d miss out on the podium – was still impossible with less than two kilometres to go.

As the clock ticked to 2:15, with little more than a minute of running left, Alemu was finally dropped. Seconds later, Jepchirchir unleashed her trademark finish to leave behind Jepkosgei and Assefa.

The diminutive Kenyan charged through the finish line in 2:16:16, finishing seven seconds ahead of Assefa. Jepkosgei (2:16:24) and Alemu (2:16:34) followed soon after, making this the first marathon in which four women have finished inside 2:17.

Jepchirchir will now turn her attention to defending her Olympic title in Paris in less than four months’ time where she’ll aim to become the first ever back-to-back women’s marathon gold medallist in the history of the Games.

The men’s race played out in similar fashion with a surprisingly large group remaining together into the second half before the final few contenders were left to battle it out in the closing stages.The late Kelvin Kiptum’s world (2:00:35) and course (2:01:25) records were not being targeted by the elite men, but a lead pack of 12 nevertheless set off as a respectable pace, going through 5km in 14:35 and 10km in 29:03.

They remained together through 15km (58:20) with the likes of Munyao, Bekele, 2022 world champion Tamirat Tola and 2021 Chicago winner Seifu Tura all in the lead pack.

They reached half way in 1:01:29 with 10 men still running together, more than 80 seconds ahead of Britain’s Emile Cairess, who was running alone in 13th place. France’s Hassan Chahdi soon drifted off the lead pack, and eight men were in the pack at the 30km point (1:27:20).

With 1:30 on the clock, big changes started to happen. The lead pack was down to five men: Munyao, Bekele, Tola, Ethiopia’s Dawit Wolde and compatriot Milkesa Mengesha.  Less than 10 minutes later, Tola and Wolde had dropped back, leaving Bekele, Munyao and Mengesha as the lead trio. Mengesha lasted five more minutes before he, too, succumbed to the pace, unable to stick with Munyao and the 41-year-old Bekele.

Just before the clock ticked over to 1:55, Munyao finally dropped multiple world and Olympic gold medallist Bekele, who was visibly struggling to match the Kenyan’s pace.

Munyao maintained his lead to the finish, eventually winning in 2:04:01 to Bekele’s 2:04:15, the fastest time ever by an athlete over the age of 40.

With several of the leading contenders dropping out in the closing stages, Cairess came through to take third place in 2:06:46 ahead of fellow Briton Mahamed Mahamed, who clocked 2:07:05, both setting huge PBs.

Ruth Chepngetich set to conquer 2024 London Marathon amidst elite competition

Ruth Chepngetich is targeting victory and a record at the London Marathon against a strong field as she eyes Olympic selection.

Two-time Chicago Marathon champion Ruth Chepng’etich is poised for a challenging race at the 2024 London Marathon this Sunday. 

Chepng’etich, a formidable competitor who secured third place in the 2020 edition of the event, is aiming for a strong performance, although she has not discounted the possibility of setting a new record. 

The pacemakers in the marathon will play a crucial role in maintaining the pace for the women's group, aiming to beat the women-only world record—a distinct possibility in London where the elite women compete in a separate event from the elite men and the larger mass of runners.

In a press conference ahead of the race, Chepng’etich expressed both enthusiasm and realism about her prospects against a competitive field. 

"I’m happy to be back after that race in 2020. I’m ready to run well, but the field is so strong," she stated. 

Her main rivals include Ethiopia's Tigst Assefa, Kenya's Brigid Kosgei, Olympic champion Peres Jepchirchir, and Yalemzerf Yehualaw from Ethiopia, who won the London Marathon in 2022.

"Everybody here is chasing something. For me it’s about winning first, then I’ll think about setting records," she added. 

The London Marathon has been a stage for numerous world records since its inception, with seven records broken to date, including Paula Radcliffe's unmatched 2:15:25 in 2003. 

The marathon’s route, largely unaltered since 1981, takes runners through some of London’s most scenic landmarks, such as the Tower of London and the Houses of Parliament, starting from Greenwich Park and concluding on The Mall in front of Buckingham Palace.

Chepng’etich also touched upon her Olympic aspirations, noting the importance of the upcoming race for her selection to the Kenyan national team for the Paris Olympics. 

"The Federation will make its selection after Sunday so we’ll see. But winning in London will be harder than in Paris," she noted.

World record holder Tigst Assefa out to make history in first London Marathon

World record holder Tigst Assefa hopes to set a new women’s-only best time in the TCS London Marathon on Sunday and believes it will be tougher to win than this year’s Paris Olympics.

Ethiopian Assefa smashed the world record in September when she finished the Berlin Marathon in two hours, 11 minutes and 53 seconds.

Next in Assefa’s sights is success in her maiden London Marathon and the women’s-only record, which is 2:17:01 and was set by Kenyan Mary Keitany at the 2017 event.

“I am very happy to be in London for the first time,” Assefa said via a translator.

“I did train very well for Berlin and I have trained well for this one. God will show how good I am on Sunday.

“I have prepared very well for this race and I am sure I can beat the course record here. As I am sure all my competitors here will feel as well.

“Regardless of whether it is London or Berlin, it will not change my strategy at all.

“I am here to win.”

Assefa took part in pre-race press duties on Thursday and was joined at the media centre in St James’ Park by Brigid Kosgei, Ruth Chepngetich and Peres Jepchirchir.

Kosgei of Kenya held the world record until Assefa broke it in September but has won the London Marathon twice.

All four athletes were asked if victory in Sunday’s 26.2-mile race would be harder than winning the marathon at the Paris Games after London Marathon race director Hugh Brasher suggested that would be the case on Wednesday.

Only Kosgei felt the Paris Games would be harder with Assefa, Chepngetich and Jepchirchir all in agreement this weekend’s strong field made Sunday’s race the most difficult to win.

After Kosgei failed to finish last year’s race due to injury, she revealed preparation this time had gone well.

“I am happy to be here again this year,” Kosgei said. “Last year when I reached here I was not feeling well.

“I have been preparing well in Kenya and I am ready.”

Olympic champion Jepchirchir finished third in 2023 and backed a women’s-only record to be set this weekend.

Jepchirchir added: “On Sunday I know the field is strong and I know it is not easy. We are running with strong ladies.

“For myself, when I see the field is strong, I see the (course) record on Sunday. Yes, may the best win.”

Kosgei, Chepngetich, Jepchirchir headline stellar Kenyan cast in London Marathon chase

Three Kenyan women aim to break the women’s-only marathon world record at the 2024 TCS London Marathon.

Three of the top four fastest women in marathon history, all from Kenya, are set to take center stage at the 2024 TCS London Marathon, aiming to break the women's-only world record. 

This elite trio, comprised of Brigid Kosgei, Ruth Chepngetich, and Peres Jepchirchir, are gearing up for what could be a historic race on the streets of London.

Brigid Kosgei, who previously set the world record at the 2019 Chicago Marathon with a time of 2:14:04, is the veteran of the group. 

She has been in top form since breaking Paula Radcliffe's longstanding record and is no stranger to the pressures of big-city marathons. 

Joining Kosgei is Ruth Chepngetich, the fourth-fastest woman of all time with a personal best of 2:14:18. 

Chepngetich's aggressive racing style and ability to maintain a blistering pace make her a serious threat to the current record.

Rounding out the trio is Peres Jepchirchir, the reigning Olympic champion. 

Jepchirchir's tactical acumen and proven track record, especially in championship races, position her as a key challenger in this record-breaking attempt. 

Her victory at the Tokyo Olympics showcased her endurance and determination, qualities necessary for a successful run in London.

The current women's-only world record was set by Mary Keitany during the 2017 London Marathon, with a time of 2:17:01. 

However, with advancements in training and competition, this record has been under threat, particularly with the recent performances of these Kenyan athletes.

Hugh Brasher, Event Director of the TCS London Marathon, emphasized the significance of this race in the context of marathon history. 

"We are in a golden age of women’s marathon running," said Brasher. He added, "Despite the incredible achievements in recent years, Mary Keitany’s record has remarkably stood the test of time.

However, with athletes like Kosgei, Chepngetich, and Jepchirchir in the field, alongside ten other women who have all run under 2:17:30, that record is under serious threat."

The race strategy for Kosgei, Chepngetich, and Jepchirchir will likely involve a collaborative effort with pacemakers to ensure a fast, consistent pace throughout. 

The London Marathon's unique setup, with elite women running separately from the men, provides an optimal environment for record-breaking performances. 

Additionally, the event will feature other top-tier athletes, including Ethiopia’s Tigst Assefa, the current world record holder, and Yalemzerf Yehualaw, the 2022 TCS London Marathon champion.

Kenya announces Paris 2024 Olympics women's marathon squad

Athletics Kenya has finally unveiled the deep women's field that will don the Kenyan jersey in the women's marathon at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.

Athletics Kenya has finally unveiled the women’s marathon team to the Paris 2024 Olympic Games through the National Olympic Committee of Kenya.

Defending champion Peres Jepchirchir headlines the strong field as she attempts to win her second successive marathon title at the Olympic Games. Jepchirchir will hope to bounce back from injury woes stronger and she will be joined by a strong team.

She will build up for the global showpiece at the London Marathon, hoping to improve on her third-place finish last season.

Also included in the team will be reigning New York City and Boston Marathon champion Hellen Obiri who seeks to make history with Team Kenya. Obiri aired her interest to win gold and as she joins Jepchirchir, she is also eyeing the coveted title.

Obiri will be building up for the Olympics at the Boston Marathon where she is the defending champion and she seeks to have a great run in the streets where she claimed her first victory in the marathon.

In an interview with Citius Mag, Obiri exuded confidence ahead of the event, revealing that her body is now used to training for the marathon.

Another strong athlete who adds depth to the field will be former world marathon record holder Brigid Kosgei who was runner-up at the delayed 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games.

Kosgei has been down with injuries but bounced back this season with a win at the Abu Dhabi Marathon and she now heads to the Olympic Games, hungry for the title. Sharon Lokedi, the 2022 New York City Marathon champion will also be among the stars to descend on the course for the Olympic Games as she has made the cut to the team.

Two-time Chicago Marathon champion Ruth Chepng’etich has also not been left behind and she hopes to also claim her first Olympic title. Chepng’etich has been in great form and she will certainly not disappoint when it comes to representing Kenya.

The 2023 Tokyo Marathon champion Rosemary Wanjiru has also been included in the team, thanks to her great form and fighting spirit.

Why Eliud Kipchoge is assured of his slot in Kenya’s Olympics team

Two-time Olympics champion Eliud Kipchoge’s recent form has seen some doubt whether he will be able to defend his title in Paris but Athletics Kenya looks set to have him on the team.

Olympic champion Eliud Kipchoge will definitely be at the Paris 2024 Games despite his indifferent form in his recent races.

Kipchoge has won one of his three marathons [Berlin 2023], coming after a sixth-place finish in Boston the same year, before a 10th placing in Tokyo this month.

That has seen doubts emerge from some observers who feel the GOAT might not have enough to claim a third straight Olympics gold while others have even called for the 39-year-old to give way but athletics coach Julius Kirwa feels it would be ill advised to write him off.

“Kipchoge is good and we depend on him,” Kirwa, who is among those who will select Kenya’s final marathon squad to Paris, told Pulse Sports.

“We encourage him to ignore everything that is being said about him and only concentrate on representing the country. I know he is ready and capable of representing the country as he has always done,” added Kirwa.

Kirwa insists Kipchoge has to be on the plane to Paris due to his status and the fact the he is one of the most reliable athletes for Kenya even if emerging stars are threatening to dethrone him.

“Eliud is a defending champion and is always available to represent the country,” said the veteran coach. “We cannot say because there are others who have come and run better than him we are going to leave him out.”

“We give them an opportunity to represent the country based on knowledge, capabilities, strength and discipline, which is very important.”

Kipchoge was part of a strong 10-man provisional team unveiled last December that had the late Kelvin Kiptum, with 2024 Tokyo Marathon champion Benson Kipruto, Timothy Kiplagat and Vincent Ngetich, who finished second and third in Tokyo, Bernard Koech, two-time New York Marathon champion Geoffrey Kamworor, Cyprian Kotut, 2022 London Marathon champion Amos Kipruto and Titus Kipruto.

Following Kiptum’s demise, Athletics Kenya intend to add another name to the list before the final three are unveiled by May with the women’s team having defending champion Peres Jepchirchir, former world record holder Brigid Kosgei, Boston and New York Marathon champion Hellen Obiri, 2019 world champion Ruth Chepng'etich, 2024 Tokyo Marathon runners-up Rosemary Wanjiru, Joycilline Jepkosgei, Sheila Chepkirui, Judith Korir, Seley Chepyego and Sharon Lokedi.

World record in danger! Three of the top four fastest women confirmed for London Marathon

The world record will be in danger with three of the top four fastest women in the history having been confirmed for the 2024 London Marathon.

World marathon record holder Tigst Assefa will brace up for a tough battle at the 2024 London Marathon that has attracted three of the top four fastest women in history.

The strong field assembled for the assignment on Sunday, April 21 will be keen to ensure that the women’s world record goes down one more time after being lowered during the 2023 Berlin Marathon.

The record was set by Assefa, who became the new world record holder when she ran an incredible 2:11:53, obliterating the previous best mark of 2:14:04 set by Brigid Kosgei during the 2019 Chicago Marathon.

Assefa and Kosgei will now clash for the first time with Kosgei going for the world record which she noted belongs to Kenya.

Others with eyes on the record include Ruth Chepng’etich, the fourth-fastest woman of all time (2:14:18), Peres Jepchirchir (Kenya), the reigning Olympic champion, and Yalemzerf Yehualaw (Ethiopia), the 2022 TCS London Marathon champion.

Pacemakers will be tasked with keeping the leading women on track for the women’s-only world record, which is possible at the TCS London Marathon as the elite women run a separate race to the elite men and masses.

Hugh Brasher, Event Director of the TCS London Marathon, said: “We are in a golden age of women’s marathon running.

“When Paula Radcliffe ran her incredible world record of 2:15:25 at the 2003 London Marathon, we had to wait 16 years for Brigid Kosgei to beat it.

“But since then, a further four women have run faster than Paula’s time including Tigst Assefa, who lowered the world record even further with her stunning run in Berlin last year.

“Despite this, the women’s-only world record of 2:17:01, set by the great Mary Keitany here at the London Marathon in 2017, has amazingly stayed intact.”

He added that however, he suspects that with Assefa, Kosgei and the likes of Chepng’etich, Jepchirchir and Yehualaw in the field, the world record is going to be under serious threat at the 2024 TCS London Marathon.

Mateiko and Gebreselama with bright future after dominant RAK wins

There were breakout victories for hitherto little known Daniel Mateiko of Kenya and Tsigie Gebreselama of Ethiopia in the Ras Al Khaimah Half Marathon in the United Arab Emirates early Saturday morning. And the imperious manner of their wins on a breezy, humid morning with a sea mist invading the latter stages suggests they both have a very bright future.

Yet the contrast in their race-winning tactics could hardly have been greater. Mateiko led from the gun, and only conceded the lead for brief periods, before outgunning his colleagues John Korir and Isaia Lasoi in the final kilometre, to win in a world leading 58min 45sec. Korir and Lasoi finished five and ten seconds behind respectively.

In contrast, Gebreselama contented herself to stay in the pack until she was ready to strike for home in the last five kilometres. Only former world record holder (64.31) and 2020 winner, colleague Ababel Yeshaneh could go with her, but that challenge didn’t last long. And such was Gebreselama’s attritional pace that by the time she crossed the line in 65.14, Yeshaneh was exactly half a minute in arrears. Jackline Sakilu of Tanzania was the surprise of the day, setting a national record of 66.05 in third place. What was no surprise was that the podium places were taken by athletes from three East African countries who share the same topography, the high altitude plateau of the Great Rift Valley.

Konstanze Klosterhalfen of Germany threatened to gatecrash that exclusive club up to the hallway point in a race, having come directly from her own training camp in Ethiopia. But, having headed the field up to 10k, which she passed in 31.09, which would have been a PB had she finished the race, she tailed off drastically and dropped out shortly afterwards, saying she did not feel well.

Olympic marathon champion, Peres Jepchirchir had been one of the favourites to win, but in the bustle of the start, someone trod on her heel and she lost around 20sec putting her shoe back on. Surprisingly for someone with her long experience, instead of working her way gradually back to the group, she shot off and rejoined them before they had completed the first kilometre. She paid for that unnecessary effort in the closing stages, and could only finish seventh in 67.19.

Gebreselama was not entirely unknown prior to today; she finished second in the world cross country championships in Australia last year. ‘That was my best performance, but today is better than that, because I won,’ she said after the race. ‘I knew I was in good shape. I think I like cross country and road running equally, but now I must prepare for the track’. In a reversal of tradition, she is leaving here for a four-month stint in an altitude training camp in the USA, before she runs the Ethiopian trials with the intent on making the Olympic team at 10,000 metres.

Having been told that there was no pacemaker in the men’s race, we wondered why Mateiko, who led from the gun kept consulting his watch and checking over his shoulder at his pursuers. Maybe he was surprised they were still there for so long, right up to the final kilometre. But having done all work, he was rewarded with a more than worthy victory, then engagingly stated that that was his intent throughout the race. ‘After finishing second last year, I promised myself to win. But the conditions were difficult; it was windy and very humid.’

Mateiko hails from Mount Elgon on the Kenya-Uganda border, but now trains in Eldoret with twice Olympic marathon champion Eliud Kipchoge under the tutelage of former steeplechaser Patrick Sang. ‘Patrick told me I was in good shape, but to be strong-minded. And Eliud is giving me advice too. I would like to have his consistency. Now my dream is to run well in the London Marathon’. If his marathon debut is as impressive as his win here today, the London crowds in April will be in for a treat.

Results, Men:

1 Daniel Mateiko KEN 58:45

2 John Korir KEN 58:50

3 Isaia Lasoi KEN 58:55

4 Gerba Dibaba ETH 59:38

5 Benard Koech KEN 59:42

6 Birhanu Legese ETH 59:43

7 Tamirat Tola ETH 59:46

8 Amos Kibiwot KEN 59:51

9 Boki Diriba ETH 60:10

10 Alphonce Simbu TAN 60:28

Women:

1 Tsigie Gebreselama ETH 65:14

2 Ababel Yeshaneh ETH 65:44

3 Jackline Sakilu TAN 66:05

4 Margaret Chelimo KEN 66:31

5 Evaline Chirchir KEN 66:36

6 Catherine Amanang’ole KEN 66:49

7 Peres Jepchirchir KEN 67:19

8 Gete Alemayehu ETH 67:25

9 Megertu Alemu ETH 69:23

10 Ashete Bekere ETH 70:03

RAS AL KHAIMAH HALF MARATHON IS ON SATURDAY AND IT SHOUlD BE A FAST ONE

New regime, new course, but with Olympic and world champions and the usual array of speedsters, Saturday’s Ras Al Khaimah Half Marathon is virtually assured of the sort of fast times that have been a feature of the event throughout its 17 year history, including three women’s world records.

Pride of place both on the start list and at this morning’s press conference in one of the smaller emirates in the UAE were Olympic marathon and three time world half-marathon champion, Peres Jepchirchir of Kenya, and keeping the balance in the long-term East African distance running rivalry, world marathon champion Tamirat Tola of Ethiopia heads the men’s entry. The wild card, hoping to gatecrash the party is Konstanze Klosterhalfen of Germany, who surprised the East Africans when she beat a dozen of them to win her debut half-marathon in Valencia in 2022.

Jepchirchir may neither be the fastest marathoner or half-marathoner among current women long distance runners, but she knows how to win races, an asset far more valuable than fast times. In the seven months between late August 2021 and mid-April 2022, she won the Olympic, New York and Boston Marathons, a rare collective achievement. In her comeback marathon following an injury, she finished third in last year’s London Marathon. And she has won 12 of her 16 half-marathons. She is loath to admit her plans yet, but this RAK ‘half’ is perfectly scheduled as a springboard, to going back to London in April, to upgrade that third place.

Tola was similarly annoyed that an injury preventing him successfully defending his 2022 world marathon title in Budapest last summer, but a speedy recovery saw him break the long-standing New York Marathon record with 2.04.58 three months later. He is one of the few elites to be making his debut in the RAK ‘half’ and the scale of his task may be judged by the fact that on paper there are 15 men faster than his best of 59.37 set seven years ago in Prague. But he suggested that is due for drastic revision. ‘I’d like to think I can do under 59 minutes if the race turns out to be fast,’ he said at the press conference. Fastest man in the field is Daniel Mateiko of Kenya with 58.26, but his colleague Benard(sic) Kibet has the advantage of having won last year in 58.45.

Klosterhalfen, ‘Koko’ to her pals may prove to be not only the wild card, but the joker in the pack in the women’s race. A world bronze medallist on the track and European 5000 metres champion, the German called a halt to her summer season last year when a foot injury caused her to reassess her career. She had changed her shoe sponsor, left her coach and long-term training venue in the USA already. She then switched again and has teamed up with Gary Lough, latter-day coach to Mo Farah and spouse of former world record holder Paula Radcliffe (here in RAK as a TV commentator). Klosterhalfen has also switched her altitude training venue to Addis Ababa, where she has just spent six weeks, coming directly to here. ‘Road running is still a bit of an adventure for me’, she said this morning. ‘I still want to run on the track, but I want to more road races’.

The roll-call of winners since the race began in 2007 is a ‘Who’s Who’ of distance running over the last two decades; beginning with Sammy Wanjiru and Berhane Adere in the inaugural race, via luminaries such as Patrick Makau, Geoffrey Mutai, Elvan Abeylegesse, Mary Keitany, Geoffrey Kamworor, Lelisa Desisa, Samson Kandie and Hellen Obiri. Add to that Jepchirchir herself who won in 2017 in a then world record of 65min 06sec.

The promoters of the successful marathon down the road in Dubai have been invited this year to give the RAK ‘half’ a makeover, and they began by introducing a 10k race for locals and altering the half-marathon course. ‘It’s faster and better than any route before here in Ras Al Khaimah; we’ve cut out some of the sharp turns,’ said race director Peter Connerton, ‘so we’re hoping for at least similar times and hopefully better. But with a couple of good races into the bargain’.

ELITE CONTENDERS

MEN

Daniel MateikoKEN58:26

Kennedy KimutaiKEN58:28

Seifu TuraETH58:36

Amdework Walelegn ETH 58:40

Benard Kibet KoechKEN58:45

Alex Korio KEN 58:51

Birhanu Legese ETH 58:59

Haftu Teklu ETH 59:06

Tamirat TolaETH59:37

WOMEN

Ababel YeshanehETH64:31

Margaret KipkemboiKEN64:46

Peres JepchirchirKEN65:06

Catherine Amanang’ole KEN 65:39

Konstanze KlosterhalfenGER65:41

Tsigie Gebreselama ETH65:46

Evaline ChirchirKEN66:01

Vivian Kiplagat KEN 66:07

Yalemget YaregalETH66:27

Kenyan-born American runner seeking redemption at Tokyo Marathon after US Olympic trials heartbreak

Kenyan-born American runner Betsy Saina is seeking a comeback at the Tokyo Marathon after missing out on the US Olympic marathon trials.

Kenyan-born American runner Betsy Saina will seek redemption at the Tokyo Marathon after a heartbreaking run at the US Olympic Marathon trials.

Saina exuded confidence ahead of the Olympic trials in Orlando but unfortunately failed to finish the race after the hype surrounding her. She now heads to the Tokyo Marathon on Sunday, March 3 where she hopes to bounce back to winning ways.

Follow the Pulse Sports Kenya WhatsApp Channel for more news.

Two days ahead of the marathon trials, Saina had opened up on how her son motivates her to do better and she was optimistic of representing the US at the Olympic Games.

In a post on her Instagram, she said: “My little man has taught me to be resilient and brave. Everything I do he is the priority before anything else comes.

On Saturday I will be running for him, He has changed my life in many ways, I am the happiest woman in the world.”

She has now put the setback behind her and is looking forward to bouncing back at the Tokyo Marathon where she will be up against some of the greatest marathoners.

Defending champion Rosemary Wanjiru will be returning with the hope of bagging another title. During last year’s edition of the race, Wanjiru destroyed a strong field to claim the top prize, cutting the tape in 2:16:28. She enjoyed her 2023 season and will be looking to continue the hot streak to 2024.

Wanjiru also represented Kenya at the World Championships in Budapest, Hungary where she finished sixth in the marathon.

2023 London Marathon champion Sifan Hassan will also be in the mix, hoping to notch up her third marathon victory since her debut in London last year. The Dutch woman has proven what she can do both on the track and the full marathon.

Hassan made her full marathon debut at the London Marathon and won most dramatically. She clocked 2:18:33 to beat marathon experts including Peres Jepchirchir, the reigning Olympic marathon champion.

She extended her winning streak to the Chicago Marathon where she stunned defending champion Ruth Chepng’etich to second place.

Hassan will be eyeing the Olympic Games and the Toyo Marathon is a better place for her to build up for the event.

Kenyan-born Israeli Lonah Salpeter has also been invited and she will be out to challenge the double Olympic champion and Wanjiru for the top prize. The Ethiopian charge will be led by Sutume Kebede and Tigist Abayechew who will be out to reclaim the title they lost to Kenya last year.

Magdalena Shauri of Tanzania will also be hoping to continue soaring high after her dominant exploits in Berlin last year where she finished third.

Konstanze Klosterhalfen is running the RAK Half Marathon

Konstanze Klosterhalfen is one of the few Europeans who have successfully challenged East African superiority in long distance running in recent years; but the German star will have a mass challenge from Kenyans and Ethiopians in her next venture, the Ras Al Khaimah Half Marathon on Saturday February 24.

The reigning European 5000 metres champion ‘Koko,’ to her fans, won bronze in the World Championships at that same distance in 2019, but her debut victory over a posse of leading East Africans in the Valencia Half Marathon in October 2022 signalled not only a step-up in prestige but also potential for success in the full marathon. And RAK in nine days’ time will be another stepping stone.

The RAK ‘half’ has been one of the fastest 21.1k races in the world since its inception 17 years ago in one of the smaller emirates in the UAE. The list of winners and record breakers reads like a ‘who’s who’ of distance running. Leading this year’s women’s field and a formidable opponent for Klosterhalfen is reigning Olympic marathon champion and three-time world ‘half’ winner, Peres Jepchirchir of Kenya, who set a then world record of 65:06 when she ran RAK in 2017. Burgeoning competition and the advent of super-shoes has resulted in that record now standing at 62.52, to Letesenbet Gidey of Ethiopia.

Klosterhalfen’s debut win in Valencia came in 65:41; and with another former world record holder – Ababel Yeshaneh of Ethiopia (64:31) in the RAK field, the German will not have an easy task, the more so since she took a break in the second half of last summer season, and has not raced for six months. She was understandably cautious this week when she said, ‘Overall I am happy with how my training has been going and I’m ready to test myself and see exactly where I am after a good training camp. I’m certainly looking forward to returning to racing, especially at the Ras Al Khaimah Half Marathon as it is a race I’ve heard a lot about’.

Klosterhalfen spends a lot of time training at altitude in the USA, and in her quieter moments has walked the runway at Berlin Fashion Week, and also plays piano and flute; but running full tilt for just over an hour before breakfast will be the order of the morning a week on Saturday.

Patrick Makau believes current generation of athletes can run under 2 hours

Former world marathon record holder Patrick Makau believes the current generation of athletes in the country will soon run under two hours in the marathon.

The 38-year-old is also notable for his half marathon performances, having won several prominent competitions in Europe in sub-1-hour performances.

Some of the races include the Berlin Half Marathon in 2007, where he clocked 58:56 hours.

Marathons had changed a lot due to technology and were far better than the marathons they ran during his time.

“As I see it, the marathons have changed a lot because it is not like the olden times. We used to view sub-two hours as something unattainable but now with the current crop of athletes like the current world record holder Kevin Kiptum and two-time Olympic champion Eliud Kipchoge, this looks like a possibility,” he noted.

The signs of an athlete running a marathon in under two hours are already evident if Kipchoge and Kiptum's recent performances are anything to go by.

In an unofficial race in Vienna, Austria in 2019, Kipchoge became the first person ever to run a marathon in under two hours, clocking 1:59.40 during the INEOS 1:59 Challenge.

Regarded as one of the greatest marathoners of all time, Kipchoge was the world record holder in the marathon then with a time of 2:01:09 set at the 2022 Berlin. His mark was later broken by Kiptum at the Chicago Marathon on October 8, 2023, when he clocked 2:00:35.

The 24-year-old Kiptum is currently the only person in history to run the marathon in under two hours and one minute in a record-eligible race.

Kiptum has won all three of the major marathons he has entered between December 2022 and October 2023 with three of his times among the six fastest in history. Makau revealed that hard work and endurance were the key for him to break the world record in 2011.

“I used to go to train in Iten and Machakos and to the polishing in Ngong. This is because speed work and build-up are two different programs,” Makau noted.

Makau encouraged athletes to find a training routine that would enable them to run a sub-two-hour marathon shortly.

“What Kiptum, Kipchoge and the other athletes can do now is to find the pace that will be able to help them run a sub-two-hour marathon shortly,” he added.

The duo currently occupy the top two positions in the world marathon ranking. Ethiopians Kenenisa Bekele (2:01.41), Sisay Lemma (2:01.48 hrs), Birhanu Legese (2:02.48 hrs) and Mosinet Geremew  (2:02.55 hrs) follow in that order.

The former world record holder, who currently trains the Kenya Police team and other athletes, also cited technology, especially in running shoes as a reason behind the fastest times being witnessed.

“During our time, there was not as much technology as we were accustomed to normal shoes. In today’s era,  running shoe technology plays a key role in determining the pace in a  particular race,” he said.

Innovations in Running Shoe Technology mean shoes are now lighter, more dynamic, and more resilient, thanks to advancements in foams, rubbers, construction, textiles, and other essential components.

Kipchoge's performances during the INEOS 1:59 challenge opened the world's eyes to the condensed foam, carbon-plated super shoes which Nike claimed could increase running efficiency and in particular the amount of oxygen consumed per minute by by 4 percent. 

Makau is optimistic the young athletes under his wings will also go further and make not only him but also the country proud. He said he is looking forward to the national trials in April to see if they get selected.

“We have intensified training in both Machakos and Kitui camps and I am hopeful. I am waiting for the trials in April to see if they will be able to represent Kenya at the Paris 2020 Olympic Games,” he said.

He also tipped Kenya to once again dominate the marathon at the Olympic Games slated for July 26 to August 11.

“I am sure Kipchoge, Kiptum, Peres Jepchirchir and Ruth Chepng'etich will represent the country well in the marathon at the Olympics,” he asserted. 

Ethiopian Tamirat Tola heads stellar field for RAK Half Marathon

Former world marathon champion Tamirat Tola of Ethiopia has confirmed his participation in the Ras Al Khaimah Half Marathon on February 24. The area is where he emerged as a world-class road runner when winning the neighbouring Dubai Marathon in 2017.

Chicago Marathon winner Seifu Tura and former women’s half marathon world record holder, Ababel Yeshaneh, will also be joining their compatriot in RAK. The entry for the 17th edition of the event is expected to read like a who’s who of international distance running as a wealth of elite athletes seek to take advantage of the benign Gulf conditions in the countdown for the spring marathons and the Paris Olympics.

Having won Olympic bronze on the track at Rio 2016, Tola established himself as one of the leading road runners of his generation when he won Dubai 2017, and followed that up with silver at the World Championships in London later that year. Tola won world marathon gold in Eugene in 2022, but in the interim, he won the Amsterdam Marathon in 2021 and then topped that with victory in the New York City Marathon three months ago. He also finished third in the Tokyo and London Marathons in 2022. The 33-year-old’s fastest half marathon was a winning performance in 59:37 in Prague in 2017. His close family also keeps him on his toes; his wife Dera Dida won the Dubai Marathon 2023, and his younger brother Abdisa took the corresponding men’s title.

It’s a measure of the fast course in RAK that his compatriot Tura has run over a minute faster than Tola, but his 58:36 in 2022 was only good for fourth. But a victory and second place in the Chicago Marathon has bolstered his credentials.

Their colleague Ababel Yeshaneh returns to the scene of one of her greatest victories, having set a world record of 64:31 in winning on the spectacular course around Al Marjan Island in the 2020 race. That time remains her personal best at the distance, although at the marathon distance, she also has two runner-up finishes to her name in Chicago 2019 and Boston 2022, as well as a third-place finish at the New York Marathon 2021.

The three Ethiopians will join elite fields that already include men’s defending champion Benard Kibet of Kenya (58:45) and his colleague, reigning Olympic Marathon Champion and three-time World Half Marathon Champion Peres Jepchirchir, who set her best half marathon in winning RAK 2017 in a then world record of 65:06.

Defending champion Rosemary Wanjiru pitted against Sifan Hassan at Tokyo Marathon

Rosemary Wanjiru will return to the Tokyo Marathon to defend her title and she will have her work cut out since in-form Sifan Hassan has also been confirmed.

Defending champion Rosemary Wanjiru will be up against the 2023 Chicago and London Marathon champion Sifan Hassan at the Tokyo Marathon scheduled for Sunday, March 3.

During last year’s edition of the race, Wanjiru destroyed a strong field to claim the top prize, cutting the tape in 2:16:28. She enjoyed her 2023 season and will be looking to continue the hot streak to 2024.

Wanjiru also represented Kenya at the World Championships in Budapest, Hungary where she finished sixth in the marathon.

Dutch woman Hassan is, however, not to be downplayed since she has proven what she can do both on the track and the full marathon.

Hassan made her full marathon debut at the London Marathon and won in the most dramatic way. She clocked 2:18:33 to beat marathon experts including Peres Jepchirchir, the reigning Olympic marathon champion.

She extended her winning streak to the Chicago Marathon where she stunned defending champion Ruth Chepng’etich to second place.

Hassan will be eyeing the Olympic Games and the Toyo Marathon is a better place for her to build up for the event.

Kenyan-born Israeli Lonah Salpeter has also been invited and she will be out to challenge the double Olympic champion and Wanjiru for the top prize. 

Salpeter has also been making headlines recently and she finished third at the World Championships last year.

The Ethiopians will be led by Sutume Kebede and Tigist Abayechew who will be out to reclaim the title they lost to Kenya last year. 

Magdalena Shauri of Tanzania will also be hoping to continue soaring high after her dominant exploits in Berlin last year where she finished third.

World and Olympic champions to compete at Ras Al Khaimah Half Marathon

The powerful list of elites confirmed for the 2024 Ras Al Khaimah Half Marathon continues to grow with former world marathon champion Tamirat Tola, Chicago Marathon winner Seifu Tura and former half marathon world record holder Ababel Yeshaneh joining the starting line-up.

The 17th edition of the event on February 24 will read like a Who’s Who of international distance running as a wealth of elites take advantage of the beautiful weather conditions in the countdown to both the London Marathon and the Paris Olympics.

Hosted by the Ras Al Khaimah Tourism Development Authority (RAKTDA), the Ras Al Khaimah Half Marathon will see Tola make his debut in the emirate just three months after winning the 2023 New York Marathon.

The Ethiopian has a personal best of 59:13 and is no stranger to the flat, fast roads of the Middle East having won the Dubai Marathon in 2017.

Fellow Ethiopian Seifu Tura returns to the race route on the iconic Al Marjan Island with a half marathon personal best of 58:36, which he set when finishing fourth at the Ras Al Khaimah Half Marathon two years ago.

Now 26, Tura is an established distance runner with a number of impressive results on his CV most notably a superb victory in the 2021 Chicago Marathon.

He also has four other top six finishes in Major marathons including a runners-up spot in Chicago in 2022 and two fifth place finishes in London and Chicago last year.

On the women’s side, Ababel Yeshaneh will return to the scene of one of her greatest victories next month. The 32-year-old Ethiopian will kick off her 2024 season in Ras Al Khaimah and has fond memories of Al Marjan Island having set the then Half Marathon World Record of 64:31 when she claimed the women’s title there in 2020.

That time remains her personal best at the distance, although in the full marathon she also has two runner-up finishes to her name in Chicago (2019) and Boston (2022) as well as a third place finish at the New York Marathon in 2021.

The three Ethiopians will join elite fields that already include men’s defending champion Benard Kibet Koech (PB 58:45) and 2017 Ras Al Khaimah winner, reigning Olympic marathon champion and three-time World Half Marathon champion Peres Jepchirchir (PB 65:06).

As well as a wealth of elite distance runners, the Ras Al Khaimah Half Marathon will also offer races at 10km, 5km and 2km runs for athletes of all ages and abilities. Registration is open at rakhalfmarathon.com.

Peres Jepchirchir headlines women field at Ras Al Khaimah Half-Marathon

Olympic marathon champion Peres Jepchirchir will headline the 16th edition of the Ras Al Khaimah Half-Marathon scheduled for February 24, 2024 in Ras Al Khaimah, United Arab Emirates.

The three time World Half Marathon champion is also the only woman to simultaneously hold the Olympic, New York and Boston marathon titles, which she achieved in the seven months between August 2021 and April 2022.

Jepchirchir who also holds two world marathon majors, knows this course so well as she set her first world half marathon record here in 2017 when she broke Florence Kiplagat’s record of 1:05.09 that she had set in Barcelona in 2015 with a new world record of 1:05.06.

The mother of one will be looking to challenge the race course record of 1:04.14 set last year by the 2018 World U20 5000m bronze medallist, Girmawit Gebrzihair of Ethiopia.

Race Director and Pace Events CEO Peter Connerton said today, ‘We were honoured and enormously gratified to be invited by the Ras Al Khaimah tourist authorities to organise an event like the RAK half-marathon. We feel it’s a reflection of the success we’ve had with the Dubai Marathon since 2000.

We’ve added a 10k to the RAK programme since we’ve seen how successful the shorter event has been in Dubai; either as a challenge in its own right, or as a stepping stone for runners on the way to a half or full marathon. Jepchirchir is the first of many leading names we shall be announcing for the RAK ‘half’ in the coming weeks”.

Benard Kibet Koech ready to defend Ras Al Khaimah Half Marathon title

The 17th Ras Al Khaimah Half Marathon will see the welcome return of defending men’s champion Benard Kibet Koech and reigning world half marathon and Olympic marathon champion Peres Jepchirchir.

The Kenyans are the first two of what is expected to be a constellation of stars at the Ras Al Khaimah Half Marathon, hosted by the Ras Al Khaimah Tourism Development Authority (RAKTDA), on February 24.

Jepchirchir’s standing as one of the world’s all-time greats is underlined not only by her Olympic marathon win in Tokyo, but also by three individual world half marathon titles, and the considerable feat of being the only woman to simultaneously hold the Olympic, New York and Boston marathon titles, which she achieved in the seven months between August 2021 and April 2022.

When she won the 2017 Ras Al Khaimah Half Marathon it was in a then world record of 65m:06s, which remains her best time.

Compatriot Koech is one of many Kenyans recruited to run on one of Japan’s corporate teams. He is similarly unusual in being one of the diminishing number of athletes who combine track with road running and is a 13-minute 5,000 metre runner who also has several 10,000 metre finishes of just over 27 minutes to his name.

His victory last year in Ras Al Khaimah in a time of 58m:45s was one of the 10 fastest of 2023.

Since its inauguration in 2007, the Ras Al Khaimah race has proved to be one of the fastest half marathons on the international circuit with the race staged around the spectacular sea-side route on the iconic Al Marjan Island.

As well as the likes of Koech and Jepchirchir, the Ras Al Khaimah Half Marathon will see thousands of runners coming together in the associated 10km, 5km and 2km runs.

Hellen Obiri reveals her main motivation towards Paris 2024 Olympics

Boston and New York Marathon champion Hellen Obiri has revealed the main reason she is determined to represent Team Kenya at next year’s Olympics in Paris

Boston and New York Marathon champion Hellen Obiri is determined to represent Kenya at the Paris 2024 Olympics as it will give her the chance to win the only gold medal still missing in her collection.

Obiri, who has successfully transitioned from track to road, has gold medals in indoor and outdoor, having won at World Indoor Championships, two at World Championships as well as Cross-Country but she had never won at the Olympics, only managing silver twice in 2016 and 2020, both in 5,000m.

She, however, has a chance to do that in Paris next year, having been named in a formidable provisional Team Kenya and she cannot wait even if the final team of three has not been unveiled.

“I’ve won gold medals in World Championships, so I’m looking for Olympic gold,” Obiri told World Athletics. “It’s the only medal missing in my career.”

Obiri made the list alongside defending champion Peres Jepchirchir, former world record holder Brigid Kosgei, winner in London in 2020, Tokyo Marathon champion Rosemary Wanjiru, former world champion Ruth Chepng’etich, former world half marathon record holder Joycilline Jepkosgei, Sheila Chepkirui, Judith Jeptum Korir, Selly Chepyego and Sharon Lokedi.

The two-time world 5,000m champion says she has now mustered the road after winning this year’s Boston and New York marathons having received a rude awakening on her marathon debut in New York last year.

“My debut here last year was terrible,” she added. “I didn’t want to come back. But sometimes you learn from your mistakes. I made a lot of mistakes last year.”

One of those mistakes, she confessed, had been running out of fuel – accustomed, as she was at the time, to doing 20-mile training runs in Kenya without any water, gels or electrolytes. “Now I take four sips every 5km,” said Obiri.

The other thing Obiri has mustered is how to execute a tactical marathon race as witnessed in New York this year when she timed her kick to perfection, sprinting away from Letesenbet Gidey and defending champion Lokedi in the final 400m.

She crossed the finish line six seconds clear of Gidey in 2:27:23, with Lokedi a further four seconds back in third place.

“I learned from my mistake in New York,” she confessed. “I used to run from the front in track races and I thought I could do the same in the marathon.”

“That cost me a lot because in the marathon, you can’t do all the work for 42km. What I learned from New York is patience – to wait for the right time to make your move.”

Athletics coach explains the headache he faced selecting Kenya’s marathon team for Paris Olympics

The veteran coach has explained the challenges he had to overcome to settle on the provisional marathon squad that will represent Kenya at the Paris 2024 Olympics

Veteran athletics coach Julius Kirwa has revealed how he faced a difficult time narrowing down to 20 athletes who will represent Kenya at the Paris 2024 Olympics.

Athletics Kenya (AK) named a provisional squad of 20 (10 men and as many women) with marathon great Eliud Kipchoge, world record holder Kelvin Kiptum, Boston and New York Marathon champion Hellen Obiri as well as three-time world half marathon champion Peres Jepchirchir among the big names included.

While the selection was based heavily on world ranking and athletes’ performances in major marathons, Kirwa admits it was a herculean task given the many good runners in the country.

“We are selecting them based on their time and world ranking. We are allowed to field three athletes only and in Kenya, we have about 120 athletes who are capable of representing the country,” said Kirwa.

“Other countries have a few to pick from but here, it has not been easy. I have taken a lot of time monitoring and some are still coming up like Alexander Mutiso ran very well in Valencia [finished second in 2:03:11 on Sunday] but it was too late to put in someone.

“We followed the world ranking and in Kenya we have Kiptum leading then Eliud so there was no need of jumping. We follow that way unless someone withdraws and you go to the next best ranked runner.”

Besides Kipchoge and Kiptum, Vincent Ngetich, second at the Berlin Marathon this year, Rotterdam Marathon runners-up Timothy Kiplagat, former Chicago and Boston Marathon champion Benson Kipruto, Bernard Koech, two-time New York Marathon champion Geoffrey Kamworor, Cyprian Kotut, 2022 London Marathon champion Amos Kipruto and Titus Kipruto also made the list.

The women’s team has Obiri and Jepchirchir as well as former world record holder Brigid Kosgei, Tokyo Marathon champion Rosemary Wanjiru, former world champion Marathon Ruth Chepng’etich, former world half marathon record holder Joycilline Jepkosgei, Sheila Chepkirui, Judith Jeptum Korir, Selly Chepyego and Sharon Lokedi.

However, world ranking was not the only consideration given Joshua Belet and Ronald Korir, who who are ahead of Kamworor on the rankings, missed out same as Dorcas Chepchirchir and Jackline Chelal.

AK explained that they also looked at consistency, championship mentality and the attitude of the athletes before setting on the squad.

Athletics Kenya has selected its Provisional Marathon team for the Paris Olympics

Athletics Kenya has named it’s Provisional Marathon Team towards Paris 2024 Olympic Games next year through Competitions Director Mr. Mutwii.

Although AK has released a list of 10 men and 10 Women, the team will be scaled down to 5 in January, 3 to compete and 2 Reserves.

Marathon Men

Eliud Kipchoge

Kelvin Kiptum

Vincent Ngetich

Timothy Kiplagat

Benson Kipruto

Bernard Koech

Geoffrey Kamworor

Cyprian Kotut

Amos Kipruto

Titus Kipruto

Marathon Women

Ruth Chepngetich 

Rosemary Wanjiru 

Joycilline Jepkosgei 

Sheila Chepkirui 

Peres Jepchirchir 

Judith Jeptum Korir 

Selly Chepyego 

Hellen Obiri 

Sharon Lokedi

 Brigid Kosgei

Lots of exciting racing on the streets of New York City and a new course record

Hellen Obiri timed her kick to perfection to win a thrilling women’s race and Tamirat Tola broke the course record for a dominant men’s title triumph at the TCS New York City Marathon, a World Athletics Platinum Label event, on Sunday (5).

Claiming their crowns in contrasting styles, Obiri sprinted away from Letesenbet Gidey and Sharon Lokedi in Central Park and crossed the finish line in 2:27:23, winning by six seconds, while Tola left his rivals far behind with 10km remaining in a long run for home. Clocking 2:04:58, he took eight seconds off the course record set by Geoffrey Mutai in 2011 to claim his first win in the event after fourth-place finishes in 2018 and 2019.

While super fast times have dominated recent major marathon headlines, the focus in New York was always more likely to be the battles thanks to the undulating course and competitive fields, although the men's race ended up being the quickest in event history.

The women’s race was particularly loaded. Kenya’s Lokedi returned to defend her title against a strong field that featured Boston Marathon winner Obiri, 10,000m and half marathon world record-holder Gidey, and former marathon world record-holder Brigid Kosgei, while Olympic champion Peres Jepchirchir was a late withdrawal following the leg injury she sustained a week before the race.

There was no clear pre-race favourite and that remained the case right up to the closing stages, with many of the leading contenders locked in a fierce fight after a tactical 26 miles.

The pace was conservative in the first half, with a series of surges but no big moves. Eleven of the 14 members of the field remained together at half way, reached in 1:14:21. It set the scene for a final flurry, with the pace having gradually slowed after 5km was passed by the leaders in 17:23, 10km in 34:35 and 15km in 52:29.

Obiri, Lokedi and Kosgei were all firmly part of that group, along with their Kenyan compatriots Edna Kiplagat, Mary Ngugi-Cooper and Viola Cheptoo. Ethiopia’s Gidey was happy to sit at the back of the pack, with USA’s Kellyn Taylor and Molly Huddle taking it in turns to push the pace.

The tempo dropped again as the lead group hit the quiet of Queensboro Bridge, with the 25km mark reached in 1:28:39. But the group forged on, hitting 30km in 1:47:06 and 35km in 2:04:45.

Then Cheptoo made a move. The 2021 New York runner-up managed to create a gap but Obiri was the first to react and covered it gradually. Gidey followed and as Cheptoo surged again, Obiri and Gidey ran side-by-side behind her. It wasn’t decisive, though, and soon Lokedi and Kosgei were able to rejoin them.

As the group hit 24 miles in Central Park, Lokedi was running alongside Obiri and Cheptoo, with Gidey and Kosgei just behind. The pace picked up again but each time Kosgei was dropped, she managed to claw her way back – Lokedi leading from Gidey, Obiri and Kosgei with one mile to go.

Looking determined, two-time world 5000m champion Obiri saw her chance and began to stride for the finish. Being chased by Gidey and with Lokedi four seconds back, she kicked again at the 26-mile mark and couldn’t be caught, using her superb finishing speed to extend her winning margin to six seconds.

It was a brilliant return for Obiri, who finished sixth when making her marathon debut in New York last year and who went on to win the Boston Marathon in April. She becomes the first women since Ingrid Kristiansen in 1989 to complete the Boston and New York marathon title double in the same year.

Gidey followed Obiri over the finish line in 2:27:29, while Lokedi was third in 2:27:33, Kosgei fourth in 2:27:45 and Ngugi-Cooper fifth in 2:27:53.

"It's my honour to be here for the second time. My debut here was terrible for me. Sometimes you learn from your mistakes, so I did a lot of mistakes last year and I said I want to try to do my best (this year)," said Obiri.

"It was exciting for me to see Gidey was there. I said, this is like track again, like the World Championships in 2022 (when Gidey won the 10,000m ahead of Obiri)."

Tola finishes fast

The men’s race also started off at a conservative pace but by 20km a lead group of Tola, Yemal Yimer, Albert Korir, Zouhair Talbi and Abdi Nageeye had put the course record of 2:05:06 set 12 years ago back within reach.

Most of the field had been together at 5km, reached by the leaders in 15:28, and 10km was passed in 30:36. Then a serious surge in pace led to a six-strong breakaway pack, with Ethiopia’s Tola, Yimer and Shura Kitata joined by Kenya’s Korir, Dutch record-holder Nageeye and Morocco’s Talbi.

Kitata managed to hang on to the back of the pack for a spell but was dropped by 20km, reached by the leaders in 59:34.

The half way mark was passed by that five-strong lead group in 1:02:45, putting them on a projected pace just 24 seconds off of Mutai’s course record.

Tola – the 2022 world marathon champion – surged again along with Yimer, who was fourth in the half marathon at last month’s World Road Running Championships in Riga, and Korir, the 2021 champion in New York. They covered the 5km split from 20km to 25km in 14:41, a pace that Nageeye and Talbi couldn’t contend. It also turned out to be a pace that Korir couldn’t maintain and he was the next to drop, leaving Tola and Yimer to power away.

After an even quicker 5km split of 14:07, that leading pair had a 25-second advantage over Korir by 30km and Tola and Yimer were well on course record pace as they clocked 1:28:22 for that checkpoint. Tola was a couple of strides ahead as they passed the 19-mile mark, but Yimer was fixed on his heels.

The next mile made the difference. By the 20-mile marker Tola had a six-second advantage and looked comfortable, with Korir a further 45 seconds back at that point and Kitata having passed Nageeye and Talbi.

Then Yimer began to struggle. He was 33 seconds back at 35km, reached by Tola in 1:42:51, and he had slipped to fourth – passed by Korir and Kitata – by 40km.

Tola reached that point in 1:58:08, almost two minutes ahead of Korir, and more than four minutes ahead of Yimer, and he maintained that winning advantage all the way to the finish line.

With his time of 2:04:58, Tola becomes the first athlete to dip under 2:05 in the New York City Marathon. Korir was second in a PB of 2:06:57, while Kitata was third in 2:07:11. Olympic silver medallist Nageeye finished fourth in 2:10:21 and Belgium’s Koen Naert came through for fifth in 2:10:25.

"I am happy to win the New York City Marathon for the first time," said Tola. "It's the third time for me to participate, after two times finishing fourth. Now, I'm happy."

How Hellen Obiri plans to conquer Sunday's New York City Marathon

Hellen Obiri will be banking on the lessons learned from her past two marathons to make a statement in the streets of New York City.

Reigning Boston Marathon champion Hellen Obiri made her long-awaited marathon debut in the streets of New York City last year and there are a lot of lessons she learned from that race.

Obiri plans to use the lessons to her advantage as she takes on a very strong field that has been assembled for this year’s edition of the race.

She finished sixth in her debut, clocking a Personal Best time of 2:25:49 which she improved when running at the Boston Marathon. 

“Last year was my debut and, in that case, I was prepared for anything to happen. I learned to be patient and wait for the right time to kick," she said. 

"I also realized that taking a lot of drinks helps a lot during the race. Last year, I thought running a marathon was the same as running on the track but now I have a lot of experience from Boston too. This gives me a lot of motivation to do well."

The two-time World 5000m champion also expressed her happiness to be back in the streets of New York to accomplish her mission.

She explained that she missed out on what she was supposed to do last year and she has returned to show the world that anything is capable. 

“I’m so happy to be back because last year I missed out on what I was supposed to do. I am back to show that I can also do these things,” Obiri said.

She will be battling for top honors against defending champion Sharon Lokedi who is the form of her life. Former world marathon record holder Brigid Kosgei will also be in the mix with the hope of bouncing back.

Olympic champion, Peres Jepchirchir suffered a calf injury during her last session of training and she is yet to confirm whether she will be running.

Ethiopia’s Letesenbet Gidey will also be in the mix after a challenging time at the World Championships in Budapest, Hungary where she failed to defend her 10,000m world title.

Peres Jepchirchir pulls out of New York City Marathon

Peres Jepchirchir has pulled out of the 52ndd edition of the New York City Marathon, a Platinum Label marathon and the last of six World Marathon Majors slated for this Sunday (5).

Jeochirchir who is the women-only world record holder was injured on Saturday during the workouts making it impossible for her to race on Sunday in New York.

The 30 year-old won this race two years ago in a time of 2:22.39 beating her compatriot Viola Cheptoo to second place in 2:22.44 with former world half marathon record holder Yashaneh Ababel from Ethiopia wrapping up the podium three finishes in 2:22.52.

The three time world half marathon champion was to face-off with her compatriots led by defending champion Sharon Lokedi, reigning Boston Marathon champion, Hellen Obiri, former world marathon record holder Brigid Kosgei.

Jepchirchir who was the first athlete to win the Olympic gold medal and the New York City Marathon in the same year was also to face the oldest-ever winner of a World Marathon Major (male or female) Edna Kiplagat, who be making her sixth TCS New York City Marathon appearance aged 43yrs old and the 2014 World Half Marathon silver medalist, Mary Wacera Ngugi who comes to this race with a life time best of 2:20.22 that she got last year at the London Marathon where she finished in seventh place.

Jepchirchr who won the Great North Run beating Lokedi to second and defending her World half marathon title in Riga with a course record time of 1:07.25, has been battling with a hip injury since last year that even prevented her from the 2022 World Athletics Championships in Oregon.

Americans Kellyn Taylor and Molly Huddle Are Ready to Race the New York City Marathon

The women's professional lineup for the 2023 New York City Marathon on November 5 packs a wallop. Barring any late withdrawals, we can look forward to a showdown among a defending champion, an Olympic champion, a former marathon world record holder, the current half marathon world record holder, and the 2023 Boston Marathon champion.

While fast times aren't usually the main objective in New York, a race that traditionally favors tactics and competition over pace on an undulating 26.2-miles through the city's five boroughs, we just may see the course record--2:22:31, set all the way back in 2003--go down. 

Last year's surprise winner Sharon Lokedi of Kenya is returning to defend her title. The 2022 race was her debut at the distance and she aced her first test in 2:23:23, though since then, she's coped with a foot injury that kept her out of the Boston Marathon in April. Hellen Obiri, also of Kenya, is back, too--her first attempt at the marathon was also last year in New York, finishing sixth (2:25:49). Obiri went on to win the 2023 Boston Marathon in April, lowering her personal best to 2:21:38.

Kenyan Brigid Kosgei, who broke the marathon world record in 2019, finishing Chicago in 2:14:04 (since bettered in September at the Berlin Marathon by Ethiopian Tigst Assefa in 2:11:53) is also returning from injury after dropping out of the 2023 London Marathon in the first mile.

Joining these top contenders are 2021 Olympic marathon champion Peres Jepchirchir, also of Kenya, who won the 2021 New York City and 2022 Boston marathons and owns a 2:17:16 personal best, and Ethiopia's Letesenbet Gidey, the 2022 world champion in the 10,000 meters, ran the fastest marathon debut in history at the 2022 Valencia Marathon with a 2:16:49 effort.

The American women's field this year is small, because most athletes opted for earlier fall races, like the Chicago Marathon, to allow for more recovery time before training begins for the U.S. Olympic Trials, scheduled for February 3, 2024, in Orlando, Florida. But Molly Huddle and Kellyn Taylor are each making their return to the distance on Sunday after giving birth to their daughters in 2022--Huddle welcomed Josephine in April and Taylor welcomed Keagan in December (in addition to their eldest daughter, who is 13 years old, the Taylor family adopted a five-year-old son and almost-two-year-old daughter, growing the family to four children in the past 13 months).

Huddle, 39, and Taylor, 37, both said it was important to them to get in a healthy marathon training cycle and race experience prior to the U.S. Olympic Trials, to get back in the routine and fitness they'll utilize in preparation for 2024.

"Obviously you want to be able to finish 26.2 miles and have that fresh in your mind, but also the buildup, the marathon work--I've gotten pretty far away from that just with the pregnancy and postpartum," said Huddle, a two-time Olympian in the 5,000 and 10,000 meters, who placed third at the 2016 New York City Marathon (2:28:13) in her debut at the distance. "This is supposed to be a building block toward the workload that you need for the Trials--I'm going to have to try and inch my way back a little closer to what I'd ideally do for a marathon buildup."

Huddle hasn't started a marathon since the 2020 Trials in Atlanta, which she dropped out of at the 21-mile mark. She hasn't finished a marathon since April 2019, when she lowered her personal best to 2:26:33 with a 12th-place finish at the London Marathon. However, she did run two relatively fast half marathons this year, including a fifth-place, 1:10:01 effort at the Houston Half Marathon in January.

Taylor's last marathon was two years ago in New York, where she placed sixth in 2:26:10. In September, she finished seventh in the U.S. 20K Championships in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1:08:04.

Going into the 2023 New York City Marathon, here's what the two top Americans had to say as they reflected on their postpartum experiences and goals for their first 26.2-mile race back:

They would have preferred to race the Chicago Marathon because of the timing.

Huddle, who is the former American record holder in the half marathon, 5,000 meters, and 10,000 meters, was hoping to make her postpartum comeback on a flatter, faster course like the October 8 Chicago Marathon, which would have also afforded an additional three weeks of time until the U.S. Olympic Trials. Taylor, who placed eighth at the 2020 Trials in Atlanta and owns three top-10 finishes in New York, agreed that Chicago's timing would've been more ideal. Neither of them were accepted into the professional field, however.

"We birthed humans. We were still running--it's not like we've been sitting on the couch eating Cheetos for a year," Taylor said. "It didn't work out and that's fine. I'll go where I'm wanted, so it doesn't really bother me that much--we'll still have 11 weeks until the Trials, and New York's my favorite marathon, hands down. I love the course. I love the people."

Huddle is also looking forward to racing in New York.

"They've always been happy to have me and that was important. I love racing through the city," she said. "My only concern was it's a very challenging course and there probably won't be any PRs happening, so I'll have to chase that later in the next year and a half."

A spokesperson for the Chicago Marathon said in an email message, in part, that the race officials "weigh many factors including performance standards, athlete interest, event resources, and operational considerations," when choosing athletes to accept into the professional race each year. "While our goal is to host as many athletes as possible, there are years where demand to participate exceeds the resources available and operational needs to host a professional race," the spokesperson wrote.

Huddle attributes her injury in the spring (mostly) to breastfeeding.

In March, Huddle experienced her first major bone injury of her career--a femoral stress fracture--which took her out of training for three months. After talking with her medical team, she's fairly convinced that her dietary needs weren't being met while breastfeeding. Since then, she's learned to adjust her fueling to account for what she loses not only to training, but also feeding her daughter.

"I refer to it as my body's new rules, because old me always knew how to fuel and I knew what I could handle workload-wise," Huddle said. "Now there is just more taxing the system and there's less time to mindfully refuel."

Taylor is finding much more camaraderie this time around.

When Taylor had her first daughter 13 years ago, not many fellow competitors had children. This time, however, she is finding a plethora of support from elite distance running moms.

In 2010, pro athletes also couldn't find much, if any, information about how to safely train through pregnancy and postpartum. And although solid research still lags, plenty of athletes are ready and willing to share their experiences with each other, which Taylor didn't have the first time around.

"It's become really helpful to be able to text each other and just directly ask how they handled one thing or another," Taylor says. "There isn't necessarily a lot of information, but with the network of athletes that have kids, I feel like there's more coming out now."

Huddle and Taylor each took a bit more conservative approach to training for New York this time. In the past, Taylor's peak weekly mileage could go as high as 130, but this time around she topped out around 112 miles. Similarly, Huddle's mileage prior to pregnancy would hit around 115 and this time she kept it to about 80 miles per week and substituted an Elliptigo session for a second run some days.

Their goals for Sunday run the gamut.

Despite a severe lack of sleep, Taylor's recovery from pregnancy and childbirth has gone exceedingly smoothly, she said, emphasizing that everybody's return is different and she believes she just lucked out with her genetics.

Knowing that she'll face a stellar international field on Sunday, Taylor is ready to run an aggressive race, targeting a 2:23 finish. (Her personal best is 2:24:29 from 2018 at Grandma's Marathon in Duluth Minnesota, but that was before the adventure of super shoes.)

"I think I'm in a really good position. I think I have the potential to run really well," said Taylor, who will wear Hoka Rocket X 2 shoes. "I think I can run 2:23 on a good day and that could put me in the hunt to do something, depending on how the race plays out."

Huddle has more of a wait-and-see approach, though, she notes, it is the first marathon in which she'll race in super shoes. She'll race in the Saucony Endorphin Elite shoes.

"I just don't think I'm going to be hanging with the world record holders, so I'm going to let them go do their thing," Huddle said. "I'm just focusing more on myself and just seeing what I can do."

It'll be a learning experience for the U.S. Olympic Trials.

The duo will each have a bigger fanbase than ever with their families coming to New York to support them. It's also an opportunity to see how they can organize the logistics of racing, childcare, and race prep ahead of the Trials in February.

Huddle, who is also raising money for &Mother, a nonprofit organization that supports athletes who pursue their career goals while parenting, as part of her marathon experience on Sunday, is hoping she will be done breastfeeding by February, but New York will serve as a test run in case she is not.

"I think it'll be interesting just seeing what the routine is like with my family, how we're going to shuffle everyone around with childcare and sleeping arrangements," Huddle said.

For Taylor, an additional hotel room was necessary to accommodate the whole family--and she couldn't be happier to have everybody there.

"It's going to be complete chaos," she said, laughing. "My parents are coming, so they're going to be the saving graces."

Lokedi keen to defend New York title as she faces off with Jepchichir, Obiri

Lokedi keen to defend New York title as she faces off with Jepchichir, Obiri.

The 2022 New York City Marathon winner Sharon Lokedi will be seeking to defend her title against a formidable women's field during the 52nd edition of the marathon slated for Sunday.

Lokedi won the race in what was her marathon debut last year, pulling away in the final two miles to finish the race in 2:23:23.

She became the eighth athlete to win the race on debut. She has, however, been dealing with an injury for the better part of the year, which forced her to withdraw from the Boston Marathon in April.

Lokedi will be up against the 2020 Tokyo Olympic gold medalist Peres Jepchirchir who will be eyeing the top prize. The 30-year-old is the only athlete to win the Olympics, the New York City Marathon and Boston Marathon.

The two-time World Half Marathon gold medalist had been unbeaten since winning Boston last year until Dutch runner Sifan Hassan defeated her in London last April.

Joining the duo will be two-time Olympic silver medalist Hellen Obiri who is fresh from a triumphant display in the Boston Marathon.

Also in the fold will be the former world record holder Brigid Kosgei and veteran Edna Kiplagat who is a two-time world champion, Boston, London, and New York City winner.

The Kenyan squad will face stiff competition from Ethiopia’s Letesenbet Gidey who is a 10,000m and half-marathon world record holder.

She will be making her New York City Marathon debut after her 2022 victory in Valencia in 2:16:49, which is the fastest women’s marathon debut in history.

Yalemzerf Yehualaw from Ethiopia and USA’s double Olympian Molly Huddle will also be in contention for the title.

Leading the men’s elite race will be 2021 winner Albert Korir who will be seeking to duplicate his heroics during the 2021 edition.

He will be joined by Edwin Cheserek who is a 17-time NCAA (National Collegiate Athletics Association) cross country champion.

2023 World Athletics Championship silver medalist Maru Teferi of Israel will be seeking to upset the Kenyan contingent as well as Ethiopia’s Mosinet Geremew.

Netherlands’s Olympic silver winner Abdi Nageeye and 2021 New York Marathon champion and Morocco's Zouahir Talbi will also be eyeing the top spot.

Three elite athletes have, however,  pulled out of the race including the defending champion Evans Chebet, his Kenyan compatriot Geoffrey Kamworor and Ethiopian Gotytom Gebreslase.

Reigning Olympic marathon champion Peres Jepchirchir will be eyeing her second win in the streets of New York and she will be banking on her super shoes to propel her to victory

Peres Jepchirchir is banking on her Ksh 75,275 super shoes to propel her to victory at the New York City Marathon.

Reigning Olympic marathon champion Peres Jepchirchir is one of the key headliners at Sunday’s New York City Marathon.

Jepchirchir will be eyeing her second win in the streets of New York and she will be banking on her super shoes to propel her to victory.

The 2022 Boston Marathon champion clinched her first victory in the streets of New York in 2021 and intended to defend her title last year but an injury setback saw her postpone her title defense to this year.

She hopes her super shoes will work wonders for her like they did for Tigst Assefa who broke the women’s world record at the Berlin Marathon. The super shoes also worked for Kelvin Kiptum on his way to victory at the Chicago Marathon where he also broke the world record.

Because she’s sponsored by Adidas, she had preliminary access to the recently-released Adizero Adios Pro Evo 1—the ultralight but expensive, Ksh 75,275, the latest player in the super shoe game. She used the shoes while winning at the World Road Running Championships in Riga, Latvia.

“I was one of the early testers for the shoe when Adidas was first developing it. I was impressed by how much technology was in the shoe, despite it being so light.

I expect (the shoe) to continue to help me achieve my peak performance I am confident these shoes give me the best possible chance of winning in New York,” she told Runner’s World.

Jepchirchir also explained that the streets of New York are one of her favorite places to run and she will be keen to record her second win.

She opened her season with a third-place finish at the London Marathon before winning the Half Marathon in Riga.

More imminently, Jepchirchir has her sights set on earning her second New York City Marathon title. She says she’s excited to do some people-watching and take in the views of the city, but above all, she’ll look to capitalize on her fitness.

Coming out of an injury setback, she wants to test her prowess one more time against a strong field.

“I am finally feeling like my strongest self again. I am eager to show what I can achieve in one of my favorite races in the world,” she said.

24 Hours with One of the World’s Best Marathoners

As the 2023 Boston Marathon winner and Olympian Hellen Obiri puts final touches on her build for the NYC Marathon, she’s aiming to become the seventh woman ever to win two majors in one year

Four weeks out from competing in the 2023 New York City Marathon, one of the world’s most prestigious road races, an alarm clock gently buzzes, signaling the start of the day for 33-year-old Hellen Obiri.

Despite having rested for nearly nine hours, Obiri, a two-time world champion from Kenya, says the alarm is necessary, otherwise she can oversleep. This morning’s training session of 12 miles at an easy pace is the first of two workouts on her schedule for the day as she prepares for the New York City Marathon on November 5.

The race will be her third attempt in the distance since she graduated from a successful track career and transitioned into road racing in 2022. Obiri placed sixth at her marathon debut in New York last November, finishing in 2:25:49.

“I was not going there to win. I was there to participate and to learn,” she says, adding that the experience taught her to be patient with the distance. This time around in New York, she wants to claim the title.

Obiri drinks two glasses of water, but she hasn’t eaten anything by the time she steps outside of her two-bedroom apartment in the Gunbarrel neighborhood of Boulder, Colorado.

In September 2022, the three-time Olympian moved nearly 9,000 miles from her home in the Ngong Hills, on the outskirts of Nairobi, Kenya, to Colorado. She wanted to pursue her marathon ambitions under the guidance of coach and three-time Olympian Dathan Ritzenhein, who is the fourth-fastest U.S. marathoner in history. Ritzenhein retired from professional running in 2020 and now oversees the Boulder-based On Athletics Club (OAC), a group of elite professional distance runners supported by Swiss sportswear company On.

Obiri, who was previously sponsored by Nike for 12 years before she signed a deal with On in 2022, said that moving across the world wasn’t a difficult decision. “It’s a great opportunity. Since I came here, I’ve been improving so well in road races.”

In April, Obiri won the Boston Marathon. It was only her second effort in the distance, and the victory has continued to fuel her momentum for other major goals that include aiming for gold at the 2024 Paris Olympics and also running the six most competitive and prestigious marathons in the world, known as the World Marathon Majors.

Obiri says goodbye to her eight-year-old daughter Tania and gets into a car to drive six miles to Lefthand trailhead, where she runs on dirt five days a week. She will train on an empty stomach, which she prefers for runs that are less than 15 miles. Once, she ate two slices of bread 40 minutes before a 21-mile run and was bothered by side stitches throughout the workout. Now, she is exceptionally careful about her fueling habits.

Three runners stretch next to their cars as Obiri clicks a watch on her right wrist and begins to shuffle her feet. Her warmup is purposely slow. In this part of Colorado, at 5,400 feet, the 48-degree air feels frostier and deserving of gloves, but Obiri runs without her hands covered. She is dressed in a thin olive-colored jacket, long black tights, and a black pair of unreleased On shoes.

Obiri’s feet clap against a long dirt road flanked by farmland that is dotted with horses and a few donkeys. Her breath is hardly audible as she escalates her rhythm to an average pace of six minutes and 14 seconds per mile. This run adds to her weekly program of 124 miles—some days, she runs twice. The cadence this morning is hardly tough on her lungs as she runs with her mouth closed, eyes intently staring ahead at the cotton-candy pink sunrise.

“Beautiful,” Obiri says.

Her body navigates each turn as though on autopilot. Obiri runs alone on easy days like today, but for harder sessions, up to four pacers will join her.

“They help me to get the rhythm of speed,” Obiri says. For longer runs exceeding 15 miles, Ritzenhein will bike alongside Obiri to manage her hydration needs, handing her bottles of Maurten at three-mile increments.

After an hour, Obiri wipes minimal sweat glistening on her forehead. Her breathing is steady, and her face appears as fresh as when she began the run. She does not stretch before getting into the car to return home.

The remainder of the morning is routine: a shower followed by a breakfast of bread, Weetabix cereal biscuits, a banana, and Kenyan chai—a mix of milk, black tea, and sugar. She likes to drink up to four cups of chai throughout the day, making the concoction with tea leaves gifted from fellow Kenyan athletes she sees at races.

Then, she will nap, sometimes just for 30 minutes, and other times upwards of two hours. “The most important thing is sleeping,” Obiri says. “When I go to my second run [of the day], I feel my body is fresh to do the workout. If I don’t sleep, I feel a lot of fatigue from the morning run.”

Obiri prepares lunch. Normally she eats at noon, but today her schedule is busier than usual. She cooks rice, broccoli, beets, carrots, and cabbage mixed with peanuts. Sometimes she makes chapati, a type of Indian flatbread commonly eaten in Kenya, or else she eats beans with rice.

The diet is typical among elite Kenyan athletes, and she hasn’t changed her eating habits since moving to the U.S. Obiri discovered a grocery store in Denver that offers African products, so she stocks up on ingredients like ground corn flour, which she uses to make ugali, a dense porridge and staple dish in many East African countries. She is still working through 20 pounds of flour she bought in June.

Obiri receives an hour massage, part of her routine in the early afternoon, three times a week. Usually the session is at the hands of a local physiotherapist, but sometimes Austin-based physiotherapist Kiplimo Chemirmir will fly in for a few days. Chemirmir, a former elite runner from Kenya, practices what he refers to as “Kenthaichi massage,” an aggressive technique that involves stretching muscles in short intervals.

Ritzenhein modifies Obiri’s training schedule, omitting her afternoon six-mile run so she can rest for the remainder of the day and reset for a speed workout tomorrow morning. Last fall, he took over training Obiri, who was previously coached by her agent Ricky Simms, who represented Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt, an eight-time gold medalist and world record holder, and British long distance runner Mo Farah, a four-time Olympic gold medalist.

Ritzenhein has programmed Obiri’s progression into the marathon with more volume and strength training. The meticulous preparation is essential to avoid the aftermath of her marathon debut in New York City last fall, when she was escorted off the course in a wheelchair after lacking a calculated fueling and hydration strategy. Obiri had averaged running 5:33-minute miles on a hilly route that is considered to be one of the most difficult of all the world marathon major races.

“It’s a real racing race. You have to make the right moves; you have to understand the course,” Ritzenhein says of the New York City Marathon. “We’ve changed some things in training to be a little more prepared. We’ve been going to Magnolia Road, which is a very famous place from running lore—high altitude, very hilly. We’ve been doing some long runs up there. In general, she’s got many more 35 and 40K [21 and 24 miles] runs than she had before New York last year.”

In New York, Obiri is aiming to keep pace alongside a decorated elite field that will include Olympic gold medalist Peres Jepchirchir, former women’s marathon world record holder Brigid Kosgei, and defending New York Marathon champion Sharon Lokedi, all of whom are from Kenya. In fact, Kenyan women have historically dominated at the New York City Marathon, winning nine titles since 2010 and 14 total to date, the most of any country since women were permitted to race in 1972.

“They are all friendly ladies,” Obiri says. “But you know, in sports we are enemies. It’s like a war. Everybody wants to win.”

While Obiri is finishing her massage, her daughter returns from school. Though Obiri arrived in Colorado last fall, her husband Tom Nyaundi and their daughter didn’t officially move to the U.S. until this past March. The adjustment, Obiri says, was a hard moment for the family.

“We didn’t have a car. In the U.S. you can’t move [around] if you don’t have a car. We had a very good team that helped us a lot,” Obiri says of the OAC, whom she refers to as her friends. “The athletes made everything easier for us. They were dropping my daughter to school. Coach would pick me up in the morning, take me to massage, to the store. I was lucky they were very supportive.” Now, Obiri says she and her family have fully adjusted to living in the U.S.

Obiri returns home and makes a tomato and egg sandwich before taking another nap. Usually she naps for up to two hours after lunch. Today, her nap is later and will last for two and a half hours.

Obiri doesn’t eat out or order takeaway. “We are not used to American food,” she says, smiling. “I enjoy making food at home.” Dinner is a rotation of Kenyan dishes like sukuma wiki—sautéed collard greens that accompany ugali—or pilau, a rice-based dish made with chicken, goat, or beef. This evening, she prepares ugali with sukuma wiki and fried eggs.

Before bed, Obiri says she can’t resist a nightcap of Kenyan chai. She will pray before falling asleep. And when she wakes up at 6:00 A.M. the next day, she will prepare for a track session, the intervals of which add up to nearly 13 miles: a 5K warmup, followed by 1 set of 4×200 meters at 32 seconds (200 meter jog between each rep); 3 sets of 4×200 meters at 33 seconds  (200 meter jog between each rep); 5×1600 meters at 5:12 (200 meter jog between each rep) and finishing with a 5K cool down.

The workout is another one in the books that will bring her a step closer to the starting line of the race she envisions winning. “I feel like I’m so strong,” Obiri says. She knows New York will be tough. But “when I go to a race I say, ‘you have to fight.’ And if you try and give your best, you will do something good.”

How Peres Jepchirchir accidentally made her debut over the marathon

Olympic champion Peres Jepchirchir has narrated how she 'accidentally' made her marathon debut at the Kisumu Safaricom Marathon.

Reigning Olympic marathon champion Peres Jepchirchir never intended to make her debut in the marathon back in 2013 since she had just begun her professional career.

She had started off her professional career with 10km road races in South Africa and had performed pretty well for a newbie.

Jepchirchir, 20 at the time, jetted back to the country for her last race, a 10km road race in Kisumu, the Kisumu Safaricom Marathon but she was shocked on arrival.

Speaking to World Athletics, Jepchirchir explained that when she got there, she was told the 10km road race was only for the residents of Kisumu and she had to run the marathon.

The former New York City Marathon champion did not disappoint despite being a newbie since she dominated and won the race in fashion. She clocked 2:47:33 to win the race.

“I was going there for the 10k and then I arrived and the 10k was only for people from that area. I remember it a lot because I ran that first marathon without any long runs,” she recalled.

After her triumph at the marathon back in 2013, Jepchirchir did not immediately start running the 42km distance since there was a lot she had to learn.

She became serious about the marathon in 2019 when she ran her second marathon, the Saitama International Marathon, where she won the race dominantly too.

Jepchirchir then went ahead and dominated the Valencia Marathon in 2020 before bagging the Olympic marathon and New York City marathon titles in 2021.

In 2022, she won the Boston Marathon in style and became the first woman to have won the Olympic, New York City, and Boston Marathon titles. After her Boston Marathon triumph, the now 30-year-old suffered an injury setback that saw her pull out of the New York City Marathon.

She opened her season this year with a third-place finish but has since insisted that she is injury-free and will be looking to dominate at the New York City Marathon.

“I was happy because I was able to train for only two months when I was preparing for London, so for me, I was happy because I was coming back," she said. 

Kenyan Margaret Chelimo to battle Melat Kejeta at Valencia Half Marathon

World Road Running Half Marathon silver medalist, Margaret Chelimo will lead a strong deep field at the 17th edition of the Valencia Half Marathon slated for Sunday in Valencia, Spain.

The 30 year-old who is also the 2019 World 5000m silver medalist will partner with her compatriot Janeth Chepngetich as they try to dethrone the seven Ethiopia’s who will be led by the former world marathon champion, Gotytom Gebreslase, who comes to this race with the third fastest time on paper of 1:05.36 that she got two years ago at Bahrain Night Half Marathon where she took the honors.

Chelimo who is also the 2022 World 10,000m bronze medalist, will have to get past the current European record holder over the half marathon distance, Melat Kejeta from Germany who holds the fastest in this field of 1:05.26 that she got at the 2020 World Half Marathon Championships, where she finished in second behind Peres Jepchirchir.

The World Cross Country silver medalist, Tsigie Gebreselama and World Indoor 3000m champion Lemlem Hailu both from Ethiopia will also be fighting for the top podium finish.

The race director Marc Roig expresses his anticipation for the event, saying, “Valencia proves once again to be the race of choice for the world’s elite athletes looking to break records. “The return of last year’s winner in the women category is a testament to the race’s popularity. We expect to witness remarkable records, national records, and potentially the fastest world records of the year”.

Peres Jepchirchir shares why it will take time to break the women's world record again

Peres Jepchirchir has shared her insights on why it will take longer for the women's marathon world record to be broken.

The streets of Berlin witnessed a historic moment on September 27 when Ethiopia’s Tigst Assefa shattered the women-only world record.

Assefa clocked 2:11:53 to completely obliterate Brigid Kosgei’s world record time of 2:14:04. Having clocked that time, the Ethiopian became the first woman in history to have run under 2:12:00.

Kosgei had set the world record in 2019 and in less than five years, it has already been shattered. However, Olympic champion Peres Jepchirchir has admitted that lowering Assefa’s world record time will definitely take more time.

“For now, it’s difficult, 2:11:00 is a very difficult barrier to break. Maybe it will take some years to break that barrier.

It took time to break Kosgei’s record and it was 2:14…but for this world record, it will take more time. I know we are strong ladies and we will break it one day.

If it will not be me, then my colleagues will definitely break it and make history,” Jepchirchir explained.

The 2022 Boston Marathon champion will be heading to the streets of New York for the New York City Marathon on November 2.

She noted that she does not intend to go for a world record on the course since it is not suitable for a world record. However, she is bullish about reclaiming her title that she won during the 2021 New York City Marathon.

She missed out on last year’s edition of the event due to an injury setback but she has since announced her comeback. She opened her season at the London Marathon where she finished third.

She then bagged a win at the Great North Run before defending her World Half Marathon title at the World Road Running Championships.

Molly Seidel Stunned the World (and Herself) with Olympic Bronze in Tokyo. Then Life Went Sideways.

She stunned the world (and herself) with Olympic bronze in Tokyo. Then life went sideways. How America’s unexpected marathon phenom is getting her body—and brain—back on track. 

On a clear December night in 2019, Molly Seidel was at a rooftop holiday party in Boston, wearing a black velvet dress, doing what a lot of 25-year-olds do: passing a joint between friends, wondering what she was doing with her life.

“You should run the Olympic Trials,” her sister, Izzy, said, as smoke swirled in the chilly air atop The Trackhouse, a retail shop and community hub on Newbury Street operated by the running brand Tracksmith. “That would be hilarious if you did that as your first marathon.” 

Molly, an elite 10K racer who’d spent much of 2019 injured, looked out at the city lights, and laughed. Why the hell not? She’d just qualified for the trials, winning the San Antonio Half with a time of 1:10:27. (“The shock of the century,” as she’d put it.) True, 13.1 miles wasn’t 26.2—but running a marathon was something to do. If only because she never had before. 

A four-time NCAA track and cross-country champion at The University of Notre Dame in Indiana, Molly had moved to Boston in 2017, where she’d worked three jobs to supplement her fourth: running for Saucony’s Freedom Track Club. The $34,000 a year that Saucony paid her (pre-tax, sans medical) didn’t go far in one of America’s most expensive cities. Chasing kids around as a babysitter, driving around as an Instacart shopper, and standing around eight hours a day as a barista—when you’re running 20 miles a day—wasn’t ideal. But whatever, she had compression socks. And she was downing free coffee and paying rent, flying to Flagstaff, Arizona, every so often for altitude camps, and having a good time. Doing what she loved. The only thing she’s ever wanted to do since she was a freckly fifth-grader in small-town Wisconsin clocking a six-minute mile in gym class. 

“I was hustling, and I loved it. It was such a fun, cool time of my life,” she says, summarizing her 20s. Staring into Molly’s steely brown eyes, listening to her speak with such clarity and conviction about her struggles since, it’s easy to forget: She is still only 29. 

After Molly had hip surgery on her birthday in July 2018, her doctors gave her a 50/50 chance of running professionally again. By summer 2019, she’d parted ways with FTC, which left her sobbing on the banks of the Charles River, getting eaten alive by mosquitoes and uncertainty. Her biggest achievement lately had been being named #2 Top Instacart Shopper (in Flagstaff; Boston was big-time).

The day after that rooftop party, Molly asked her friend and former FTC teammate Jon Green, who she’d newly anointed as her coach: “Think I should run the marathon trials?” Sure, he shrugged. Nothing to lose. Maybe it’d help her train for the 10K, her best shot—they both thought—at making a U.S. Olympic team. 

“I’m going to get my ass kicked six ways to Sunday!” she told the host of the podcast Running On Om six weeks before the trials in Atlanta.

Instead, on February 29, 2020, she kicked some herself. Pushing past 448 of the fastest, most-experienced women marathoners in the country, coming in second with a 2:27:31, earning more in prize money ($60,000) than she had in two years of racing—and a spot on the U.S. trio for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, along with Kenyan-born superstars Aliphine Tuliamuk and Sally Kipyego. “I don’t know what’s happening right now!” Molly kept saying into TV cameras, wrapped in an American flag, as stunned as a lottery winner. 

Saucony who? Puma came calling. Along with something Molly hadn’t anticipated: the spotlight. An onslaught of social media followers. And two weeks later, a global pandemic and lockdown—and all the anxiety and isolation that came with it. She was drowning, and she hadn’t even landed in Tokyo yet.

The 2020 Olympics, as we all know, were postponed to 2021. An emotional burden but a physical boon for Molly, in that it allowed her to get in a second marathon. In London, she finished two minutes faster than her debut. When the Olympics finally rolled around, she was ready. 

Before the race, Molly says, “I was thinking: ‘Once I cross the starting line, I get to call myself an Olympian and that’s a win for the day.’” 

But then she crossed the finish line—with a finger-kiss to the sky and a guttural Yesss!—in third place with a 2:27:46, just 26 seconds behind first (Kenya’s Peres Jepchirchir). And realized: She gets to call herself an Olympic medalist forever. Only the third American woman to ever earn one in the marathon.

Lots of kids have fleeting hopes of making it to the Olympics. I remember thinking I could be Mary Lou Retton. Maybe FloJo, with shorter fingernails. Then I decided I’d rather be Madonna or president of the United States and promptly forgot about it. But Molly held tight to her Olympic aspirations. She still has a poster she made in 2004, with stickers and a snapshot of her smiley 10-year-old self, to prove it. “I wish I will make it into the Olympics and win a gold medal,” she wrote, and signed it: Molly Seidel, the “y” looping back to underline her name. In case there was any doubt as to who, specifically, would be winning the medal.

Molly grew up in Nashotah, Wisconsin, and is the eldest of three. Her sister and brother, younger by not quite two years, are twins. Izzy is a running influencer and corporate content creator for companies like Peloton; and Fritz favors Formula 1 racing and weightlifting and works for the family’s leather-tanning business. The family was active, sporty. Dad, Fritz Sr., was a ski racer in college; Mom, Anne, a cheerleader. You can tell. Watching clips of Molly’s mom and dad watching the Olympic race from their backyard patio, jumping up and down, tears streaming, is the kind of life-affirming moment you wish you could bottle. “I’m in shock. I’m in disbelief,” Molly says into the mic, beaming. “I just wanted to come out today and I don’t know…stick my nose where it didn’t belong and see what I could come away with. And I guess that’s a medal.” When the interviewer holds up her family on FaceTime, Molly breaks down. “We did it,” she says into the screen between sobs and smiles. “Please drink a beer for me.

Molly hasn’t always been unabashedly herself, even when everyone thought she was. A compartmentalizer to the core, she spent most of her life hiding a huge part of it: anorexia, bulimia, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder, debilitating depression. 

It started around age 11, when she learned to disguise OCD tendencies, like compulsively knocking on wood, silently reciting prayers “to avoid God getting mad at me,” she says. “It was a whole thing.” She says her parents were aware of the behaviors, but saw them more as odd little habits. “They had no reason to suspect anything. I was very high-functioning,” she says. “They didn’t realize that it was literally taking over my life.” 

She wasn’t officially diagnosed with OCD until her freshman year of college, when she saw a therapist for the first time. At Notre Dame, disordered eating took hold, quietly yet visibly, as it does for up to 62 percent of female college athletes, according to the National Eating Disorders Association. As recently as the Tokyo Olympics, she was making herself throw up in the airport bathroom, mere days before taking the podium. Molly hesitates to share that detail; she fears a girl might read this and interpret it as behavior to model. “Having been in that place as a younger athlete, I know I would have,” she says. But she also understands: Most people just don’t get how unrelenting eating disorders can be. 

In February 2022, she finally received a diagnosis of the root cause for all of it: ADHD. About being diagnosed, she says, “It made me feel really good, like [I don’t have] a million different disorders. I have a disorder that manifests itself in a lot of different symptoms.”

She waited to try Adderall until after the Boston Marathon in April, only to drop out at mile 16 due to a hip impingement. Initially, the meds made her feel fantastic. Focused. Free. Until she realized Adderall hurt more than it helped. She couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat, lost too much weight. Within weeks, she devolved. “The eating disorder came roaring back,” she says, referring to it, as she often does, as its own entity, something that exists outside of herself. That ruthlessly takes control over her very need for control. “I almost think of it as an alter ego,” she explains. “Adderall was just bubblegum in the dam,” as she puts it. She ditched the drug, and her life—professionally, physically—unraveled.

In July 2022, heading into the World Championships, she bombed the mental health screening, answering the questions with brutal honesty. She’d been texting Keira D’Amato weeks prior. “Yo girl, things are pretty bad right now. Get ready…” Sobbing on the sidewalk in Eugene, Oregon, she texted D’Amato again. And the USATF made it official: D’Amato would take her spot on the team. Then Molly did what she’d been “putting off and putting off”— checked herself into eating disorder treatment for the second time since 2016, an outpatient program in Salt Lake City, where her new boyfriend was living at the time. 

Somehow (see: expert compartmentalizer) mid-meltdown, in February 2022, she had met an amateur ultrarunner named Matt, on Hinge. A quiet, lanky photographer, he didn’t totally get what she did. “I didn’t understand the gravity of it,” he tells me. “I was like, Oh she’s a pro runner, that’s cool. I didn’t realize she was, like, the pro runner!” 

Going back to treatment “was pretty terrible,” she says. At least she could stay with Matt. Hardly a honeymoon phase, but the new relationship held promise. “I laid it all out there,” says Molly. “And he was still here for it, for all the messiness. It was really meaningful.” And a mental shift. “He doesn’t see me as just Molly the Runner.”

Almost a year later, on a freezing April evening in Flagstaff, Molly is racing around Whole Foods, palming a head of cabbage, grabbing a thing of hummus, hunting for deals even though she doesn’t need to anymore. 

“It’s all about speed, efficiency, and quality,” she says, explaining the secret to her earlier Instacart success. She checks the expiration date on a container of goat cheese and beelines for the butcher counter, scans it faster than an Epson DS3000, though not without calculation, and requests two tomato-and-mozzarella-stuffed chicken breasts. Then she darts over to the beverage aisle in her marshmallow-y Puma slip-ons that Matt custom-painted with orange poppies. She grabs a case of La Croix (tangerine), then zips to the checkout. We’re in and out in under 15 minutes and 50 bucks, nothing bruised or broken.

Other than her body. Let’s just say: If Molly were an avocado or a carton of eggs, she probably wouldn’t pass her own sniff test. The week we meet, she is just coming off a month of no running. Not a single mile. She’s used to running twice a day, 130 miles a week. No wonder she’s spraying her kitchen counter with Mrs. Meyer’s and scrubbing the stovetop within minutes of welcoming me into her new home. 

The place, which she shares with Matt and his Australian border collie, Rye, has a post-college flophouse feel: a deep L-shaped couch draped in Pendleton blankets, a bar cluttered with bottles of discount wine, a floor lamp leaning like the Tower of Pisa next to a chew toy in the shape of a ranch dressing bottle. Scattered about, though, are reminders that an elite runner sleeps here. Or at least tries to. (“Pro runner by day, mild insomniac by night” reads the bio on her rarely used account on what used to be Twitter.) There’s a stick of Chafe Safe on the coffee table. Shalane Flanagan’s cookbooks on the counter. And framed in glass, propped on the office floor: Molly’s Olympic kit—blue racing briefs with the Nike Swoosh, a USA singlet, her once-sweat-drenched American flag, folded in a triangle. “I’m not sure where to hang it,” she says. “It seems a little ostentatious to have it in the living room.” 

With long brown curls and a round, freckly face, Molly has an aw-shucks look so innocent that it’s hard, at first, to perceive her struggles. Flat-out ask her, though—How are you even functioning?—and she’ll tell you: “I’m an absolute wreck. There’s no worse feeling than being a pro runner who can’t run. You just feel fucking useless.” Tidying a stack of newspapers, she adds, “Don’t worry, I’ve had therapy today.” 

She’s watched every show. (Save Ted Lasso, “too sickly sweet.”) Listened to every podcast. (Armchair Expert is a favorite.) She’s got nothing else to do but PT and go easy on the ElliptiGo in the garage, onto which she’s rigged a wooden bookstand, currently clipped with A History of God: The 4,000 Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. “I don’t read running books,” she says. “I need something different.”

Like most runners—even the most amateur among us—running, moving, is what keeps her sane. “What about swimming? Can you at least swim?” I ask, projecting my own desperation if I were in her size 8.5 shoes. “I fucking hate swimming,” says Molly. Walking? “Oh, yeah, I can go on walks. Another. Long. Walk.”

The only thing she has on her schedule this week is pumping up a local middle school track team before their big meet. The invitation boosted her spirits. “Should I just memorize Miracle on Ice?” she says, laughing. “No, I know, I’ll do Independence Day.”

Injuries are nothing new for Molly. Par for the course for any professional athlete. But especially for women, like her, who lack bone density—and have since high school, when, according to a study in the Orthopedic Journal of Sports Medicine, nearly half of female runners experience period loss. Osteoporosis and its precursor, osteopenia, are rampant in female runners, leading to ongoing issues that threaten not just their college and professional running careers, but their lives.

Still, Molly admits, laughing: She’s especially accident-prone. I ask her to list every scratch she’s ever had, which takes her 10 minutes, and goes all the way back to babyhood, when she banged her head against the bathtub spout. There was a cracked spine from a sledding incident in 8th grade, a broken collarbone from a ski race in high school, shredded knee cartilage in college when a driver hit her while she was riding a bike. “Ribs are constantly breaking,” she says. In 2021, two snapped, and refused to heal in time for the New York City Marathon. No biggie. She ran through the pain with a 2:24:42, besting Deena Kastor’s 2008 time by more than a minute and setting the American course record.

Molly’s latest injury? Glute tear. “Literally a gigantic pain in the ass,” she posted on Instagram in March. Inside, Molly was devastated. Pulling out of the Nagoya Marathon—the night before her 6:45 a.m. flight to Japan, no less—was not in the plan. The plan, according to Coach Green, had been simple. It always is. If the two of them even have one. “Just to have fun and be consistent.” And get a marathon or two in before the Olympic Trials in February 2024. 

She’d been finally—finally—fit on all fronts; ready to race, ready to return. She needed Nagoya. And then, nothing. “It feels like I’m back at the bottom of the well,” says Molly, driving home from Whole Foods in her Toyota 4Runner. “This last year-and-a-half has been so difficult. It’s just been a lot of doubt. How do I approach this, as someone who has now won a medal? Like, man, am I even relevant in this sport anymore?” She pops a piece of gum in her mouth. I wait for her to offer me some, because that’s what you do with gum, but she doesn’t. She’s so in her head. “It’s hard when you’re in the thick of it, you know, to figure out: Why the fuck do I keep doing this? When it just breaks my heart over and over and over again?” 

We pull into her driveway. “I was prepared for the low period after Tokyo,” she says. “But this has been much longer and lower than I expected.” 

The curse of making it to the Olympics, let alone coming back with a medal: expectations. Molly’s own were high. “I think I thought, after the Olympics, if I win a medal, then I will be fixed, it will fix everything.” Instead, in a way, it made everything worse. 

That’s the problem that has plagued Molly for most of her running career: Her triumphs and troubles intermingle, like thunder and lightning. Which, by the way, she has been struck by. (A minor backyard-grill, summer-thunderstorm incident. She was fine.)

The next morning in Flagstaff, Molly’s feeling like she can run a mile, maybe two. It’s snowing, though, and she doesn’t want to risk the slippery track, so we meet at Campbell Mesa Trails. She loops a band around the back of her truck to stretch and sends me off into the trees to run alone while she does a couple of laps on the street.

Molly leaves for an acupuncture appointment, and we reunite later at Single Speed Coffee (“the best coffee in Flagstaff,” promises the ex-barista who drinks up to three cups a day). We curl up on a couch like it’s her living room, and she talks as freely—and as loudly—as if it was. Does she realize everyone can hear her? She doesn’t care. I guess that’s what happens when you’ve grown so comfortable sharing—in therapy, on podcasts, in a three-part video series on ADHD for WebMD—you just…share. Loud and proud. 

Mental illness is so insidious, says Molly. “It’s not always this Sylvia Plath stick-my-head-in-a-fucking-oven thing, where you’re sad all the time,” she says. “High-functioning depressed people live normal successful lives. I can be having the happiest moment, and three days later I’m in a total downward spiral.” It’s something you never recover from, she says, but you learn to manage. 

“I’m this incredibly flawed person who struggles so much. I think: How could I have won this thing when I’m so flawed? I look at all the people around me, all these accomplished people who have their shit together, and I’m like, ‘one of these things is not like the other,’” she says, taking a sip of her flat white. “I was literally in the Olympic Village thinking: Everybody is probably looking at me wondering: Why the hell is she here?” 

They weren’t. They don’t. She knows that. 

And yet her mind races as fast as she does. It takes up So. Much. Space. When she’s running, though, the noise disappears. She’s not Olympic Molly or Eating Disorder Molly, she’s not even, really, Runner Molly. “When I’m running,” she says, “I’m the most authentic version of myself.” 

Talking helps, too. Molly first shared her mental health history a few years ago, “before she was famous,” as she puts it. After the Olympics, though, she kept talking and hasn’t stopped. The Tokyo Games were a turning point, she says. Suddenly the most revered athletes in the world were opening up about their mental health. Molly credits Simone Biles’s bravery for her own. If Biles, and Michael Phelps and Naomi Osaka, could come clean... then maybe a nerdy, niche-y, unlikely medaling marathoner could, too.

“Those guys got a lot more shit for it than I did,” says Molly. “I got off easy. I’m not a household name,” she laughs. She knows she can be candid and off the cuff—and chat freely in a not-empty café—in a way Biles never could. “I’m a nobody!” she laughs.

Still, a nobody with 232,000 Instagram followers whom she has touched in very IRL ways—becoming an unintentional poster woman for normalizing mental health challenges among athletes. “You are such an incredible inspiration,” @1percentpeterson posts, one comment of a zillion similar. “It’s ok to not be ok!” says another. Along with all the online love is, of course, online hate. Molly rattles off a few lowlights: “She’s an attention-seeking whore,” “Her bones are so brittle she’ll never race again,” “She’s running so badly and posting a lot she should really focus on her running more.” Molly finds it curious. “I’m like, ‘If you hate me, you don’t need to follow me, sir.’” 

It’s Molly’s nobody-ness—what Outside writer Martin Fritz Huber called her “runner-next-door” persona, and I’ll just call “genuine personality”—that has made her somebody in running’s otherwise reserved circles. 

Somebody who (gasp!) high-fives her sister in the middle of a major race, as she did at mile 18 of the 2021 New York City Marathon. “They shat on me in the broadcast for it,” she says. “They were like, ‘She’s not taking this seriously.’” (Except, uh, then she set the American course record, so…) 

Somebody who, obviously, swears like a sailor and dances awkwardly on Instagram, who dresses up like a turkey, and viral-tweets about getting mansplained on an airplane. (“He starts telling me how I need to train high mileage & pulls up an analysis he’d made of a pro runner’s training on his phone. The pro runner was me. It was my training. Didn’t have the heart to tell him.”)

Somebody who makes every middle-aged mom-runner I know swoon like a Swiftie and say: “OMG! YOU HUNG OUT WITH MOLLY SEIDEL!!?” Middle-aged dad-runners, too. “I saw her once in Golden Gate Park!” my friend Dan fanboyed when he heard. “I waved!” Did she wave back? “She smiled,” he says, “while casually laying down 5:25s.”

And somebody who was as outraged as I was that I bought a $16 tube of French toothpaste from my hip Flagstaff motel. (It was 10 p.m.! It was all they had!) “For that price it better contain top-shelf cocaine,” she texted. Lest LetsRun commenters take that tidbit out of context: It’s a joke. It’s, in part, what makes Molly America’s most relatable pro runner: She’s not afraid to make jokes. (While we’re at it… Don’t knock her for smoking a little legal weed, either. That’s so 2009. Per the World Anti-Doping Agency: Cannabis is prohibited during competition, not at a Christmas party two months before it. Per Molly: “People would be shocked to know how many pro runners smoke weed.”)

I can’t believe I never asked to see it. Molly’s medal. A real, live Olympic medal. Maybe because it was tucked into a credenza along with Matt’s menorah and her maneki-neko cat figurines from Japan. But I think it was because hanging out with Molly felt so…normal, I almost forgot she’d won one. 

People think elite distance runners have to be one-dimensional, she says. That they have to be sculpted, single-minded, running-only robots. “Because that’s what the sport has been,” she says. 

Molly falls for it, too, she says. She scrolls the feeds, sees her fellow pros living seemingly perfect lives. She wants everyone to know: She’s not. So much so that she requested we not print the photos originally commissioned for this story, which were taken when she was at the lowest of lows. (“It’s been...refreshing...to be pretty open and real with Rachel [about] the challenges of the last year,” she wrote in an email to Runner’s World editors. “But the photos [were taken at] a time when I was really struggling and actively trying to hide how bad my eating disorder had become.”)

Molly finds the NYC Marathon high-five thing comical but indicative of a more serious issue in elite running: It takes itself too seriously. It’s too…elitist. Too stilted. “Running a marathon is a pretty freaking cool experience!” If you’re not having fun, she asks rhetorically, what’s the point? Still, she admits, she isn’t always having fun. Though you wouldn’t know it from her Instagram. “Oh, I’m very good at making it seem like I am,” she says.

She used to enjoy social media when it was just her friends. Before she gained 50,000 followers in a single day after the trials, and some 70,000 on Strava. Before the pandemic, before the Olympics. Keeping up with content became a toxic chore. “You feel like you’re just feeding this beast and it’s never going to stop,” she says. She’s taken to deleting the app off her phone, reloading it only to fulfill contractual agreements and post for her sponsors, then deleting it again. 

As much as she hates having to post, she enjoys plugging products the only way that feels natural: through parody. As does Izzy, her influencer sister, who, like Molly, prefers to skewer rather than shill (à la their idea behind their joint Insta account: @sadgirltrackclub). “The classic influencer tropes make me want to throw up,” she says (perverse pun as a recovering bulimic not intended). “New Gear Drop!’ or ‘This is my Outfit of the Day!’ Cringe. “Hot Girl Instagram is not how I identify,” she says. 

Nor is TikTok. “Sponsors tell me all the time: You should TikTok! I’m like, ‘I am not doing TikTok.’ I know how my brain works. They’ll say, ‘We’ll pay you less if you don’t’—and I’m, like, I don’t care.”

And to those sponsors who ghosted her after she returned to eating disorder treatment, good riddance. “Michelob dropped me like a bad habit,” she says. “Whatever. You have watery-ass beer anyway.”

To those who have stood by her, though, she’s utterly devoted. Pissed she couldn’t wear the Puma panther head to toe in Tokyo, Molly took off her Puma Deviate Elites and tied them over her shoulder, obscuring the Nike logo on her Olympic singlet for all the world to see. Or not see. “Nike isn’t paying my fucking bills.”

The love is mutual, says Erin Longin, a general manager at Puma. After decades backing legends like Usain Bolt, Puma was relaunching road running and wanted Molly as their guinea pig. “She’s a serious athlete and competitor, but she also has fun with it,” says Longin. “Running should be fun. Molly embodies that.” At their first meeting, in January 2020, Molly made them laugh and nerded out over their new shoes. “We all left there, fingers crossed she’d sign with us,” says Longin.

Come February, they all flipped out. Longin was watching the trials, not expecting much. And then: “We were all messaging, “OMG!!” Then Molly killed in London. Medaled in Tokyo. “What she did for us in that first year…” says Longin. “We couldn’t have planned it!” 

Then came the second year, and the third, and throughout it all—injuries, eating disorder treatment, missed races, missed opportunities—Puma hasn’t flinched. “It’s easy for a company to do the right thing when everything is going great,” Molly posted in April, heartbroken from her couch instead of Heartbreak Hill. “But it’s when the sh*t hits the fan and they’re still right there with you….” She received 35,000 hearts—and a call from Longin: “You make me feel so proud.” 

Does it matter to Puma if Molly never places—never races—again? “Nope,” Longin says. 

My last afternoon in Flagstaff, it’s cloudy skies, still freezing. I find Molly on the high school track wearing neoprene gloves, black puffy coat, another pair of Pumas. Her breath is white, her cheeks red. Her legs churning in even, elegant strides. Upright, alone, at peace, backed by snow-dusted peaks. Running itself is what matters, not racing, she tells me. “I honestly don’t give a shit about winning,” she says. All she wants—really wants, she says—is to be healthy enough to run until she’s old and gray.

Molly’s favorite runner is one who didn’t get to grow old. Who made his mark decades before she was born: Steve Prefontaine. “Pre raced in such a genuine way. He made people feel something,” she says. “The sports performances you truly remember,” she adds, “are the ones where you see the struggle, the work, the realness.” 

Sounds familiar. “I hate conversations like, ‘Who’s the GOAT?’” Molly continues. “Who fucking cares? Who’s got the story that’s going to get people excited? That’s going to make some kid want to go out and do it?” 

I know one of those kids: My best friend’s daughter, Quinn, a rising track phenom in Oregon, who has dealt with anxiety and OCD tendencies. She has a picture of Molly Seidel, and her times, taped to her bedroom wall. This past May, Quinn joined Nike’s Bowerman Club. She was named Oregon Female Athlete of the Year Under 12 by USATF. She wants to run for Notre Dame. 

“Quinn loves running more than anything,” her mom tells me, texting photos of her elated 11-year-old atop the podium. “But I don’t know…” She’s unsure about setting her daughter on this path. How could she not, though? It’s all Quinn wants to do. Maybe what Quinn, too, feels born to do. 

It’ll be okay, I tell her, I hope. Quinn has something Molly never had: She has a Molly. 

Molly and I catch up via phone in June. A team of doctors in Germany has overhauled her biomechanics. She’s been running 110 miles a week, feeling healthy, hopeful. Happy. A month later, severe anemia (and accompanying iron infusions) interrupts her summer racing schedule. She cancels the couple of 10Ks she had planned and entertains herself by popping into the UTMB Speedgoat Mountain Race: a 28K trail run through Utah’s Little Cottonwood Canyon—coming in second with a 3:49:58. Molly’s focus is on the Chicago Marathon, October 8th; her first major race in almost two years. 

Does it matter how she does? Does it matter if she slays the Olympic Trials in February? If she makes it to Paris 2024? If she fulfills her childhood dream and brings home gold? 

Nah. Not if—like Matt, like Puma, like, finally, even Molly herself—you see Molly the Runner for who she really is: Molly the Mere Mortal. She’s the imperfect one who puts it perfectly: What matters isn’t her time or place, how she performs on the pavement. Or social media posts. What matters—as a professional athlete, as a person—is how she makes people feel: human. 

She’d been finally—finally—fit on all fronts; ready to race, ready to return. She needed Nagoya. And then, nothing. “It feels like I’m back at the bottom of the well,” says Molly, driving home from Whole Foods in her Toyota 4Runner. “This last year-and-a-half has been so difficult. It’s just been a lot of doubt. How do I approach this, as someone who has now won a medal? Like, man, am I even relevant in this sport anymore?” She pops a piece of gum in her mouth. I wait for her to offer me some, because that’s what you do with gum, but she doesn’t. She’s so in her head. “It’s hard when you’re in the thick of it, you know, to figure out: Why the fuck do I keep doing this? When it just breaks my heart over and over and over again?”