It was the fastest marathon time on Japanese soil and the fourth fastest in history
By Idris ‘Shoes’ Lule
Roving Editor
Kenya’s Eliud Kipchoge won his debut Tokyo Marathon in 2:02:40 a course record for Kipchoge who is truly now the GOAT. Just consider that running 42 kilometres in that time is equivalent to sprinting from Sarit Centre in Westlands to Sabina Joy along Moi Avenue Nairobi in under five minutes!
Put it another way: A 42 kilometre marathon is the distance between Nairobi County and Thika town. Running a marathon in Kipchoge’s kind of speed means running each kilometre in an average of three minutes which is utterly astonishing.
“I am so proud to win in the streets of Tokyo, where the people have running in their heart and minds,” he said, dedicating his victory to world peace on the backdrop of the raging bile between Russia and Ukraine for which an estimated 3,000 Americans have answered Ukraine’s call for foreign volunteers to fight Russia’s invasion.
When he ran the INEOS 1:59 Challenge he became the first person to run 42 kilometres in under two hours since God said ‘Let there be light.’ It was running each kilometre in 2:83s and of the six billion people on earth, only Kipchoge could muster the challenge he faced at Prater Parkin Vienna, Austria that Saturday morning three years ago.
And do you know Queen Alexandra is the reason why a marathon is 42.195 kilometres?
Like male marathon athletes, female are also discouraged from sleeping with their husbands. Said Brigid: “My husband told me not to worry – he would take care of the children – and that I should just focus on my career and soon the children also got used to seeing me only on the weekends when I’d return home.”
The marathon has really come a long way since Thomas Hicks won the 1904 St Louis Olympic Games in the USA in 3:28:53 seconds — the worst marathon time in Olympic history. Never mind he was found guilty of using performance-enhancing drugs!
To understand the magnitude of what Kipchoge accomplished, just consider that it’s only a man, healthy, breathing, African and from the highlands, was capable of pulling it off. In God’s whole wide wild world, it had to be the highlands of Kenya’s Rift Valley. A place where people are born with blood high in hemoglobin, can contain more oxygen.
The lithe limbs of the Kalenjins are blessed with tampered narrow ankles, ideal for running
Their lithe limbs are blessed with tampered narrow ankles, ideal for running. Over 42 kilometres of a marathon, Eliud Kipchoge is one of those rare athletes chiseled by nature and training for it, more than anyone else on mother earth.
Just consider: The fastest woman marathoner in the world is England’s Paula Radcliff who ran in 2:15:25 in 2003…a whole 16 years ago. It has since been broken by Kenya’s Brigid Kosgei during the 2019 Chicago Marathon with a new time of 2:14:04.
It has taken more than 30 years for male marathoners to dip records to Kipchoge’s of 2:01:39 seconds since Ethiopia’s Belayneh Densamo managed 2:06:50 in Rotterdam, Netherlands in 1988.
While the INEOS 1:59 Challenge made sporting history, it was not included in course records as it was ran under controlled conditions which dispense with marathon pacing and fluid rules.
Marathons were popularized by the Olympic Games some with hilarious sideshows. Like the 1904 Games which had a clown, Cuban postman Felix Carvajal, who entered the marathon to honour his homeland, even though he wasn’t included in the national team, as Allen Guttmann notes in The Olympic: A History of the Modern Games published in 2002.
Your grandchildren will be lucky to see a human being run the marathon in under two hours
Well, during the 1908 Games, the marathon standard was exactly 42 kilometres, but the Queen and other royalty needed a better view, so organizers added an extra 352 metres so that the finish line would be in front of the royal box.
While Kipchoge has sponsors like Nike, Carvajal had none and raised travel money through demonstration runs around Havana, Cuba’s capital, and begging onlookers for money, that he promptly gambled away on arrival in St. Louis!
