The first three quarters or so of this weekend’s IAAF World Half Marathon Championships in Valencia, Spain, were cagey and uneventful, as the runners hung out and watched each other while being buffeted by powerful gusts of wind. Then, with about six kilometers left to go, two-time defending world champ Geoffrey…
Fans who attended the Košice Peace Marathon in Slovakia last weekend got to see Kenyan Reuben Kiprop Kerio take home the win. More importantly, they got to see tenth-place finisher Jozef Urban’s dick and balls greet the morning sun and jounce vigorously through the last few meters of the race fully exposed to God and…
Nike’s Breaking2 campaign was unsuccessful.
Nike’s Breaking2 project—an attempt to lower the marathon world record by almost three minutes, to under two hours—makes its debut this weekend. Lelisa Desisa, Eliud Kipchoge, Zersenay Tadese, and an army of pacers will take a little over 17.5 laps around the Autodromo Nazionale Formula One race track in Monza, Italy,…
In the hours after today’s London Marathon, people have been declaring this beautiful moment in which a runner picked up a collapsed fellow competitor and carried him over the finish line as the highlight of the race. That was lovely! That is not my highlight of the race. No, my highlight of the race comes from this…
Runner—and food and lifestyle blogger—Jane Seo had her second-place finish in the Fort Lauderdale A1A Half Marathon disqualified on Sunday night. Two days after the race, a part-time marathon watchdog blogger revealed that Seo had cheated and cut 1.5 miles off her course while securing her 1:21:46 finish. Not only did…
Ghirmay Ghebreslassie won the NYC Marathon in 2:07:51, but what received almost as much attention as his dominance of the competition was his extreme youth. The Eritrean turns 21 today, which makes him the youngest man to ever win the NYC Marathon. Considering most top marathoners peak between 29 and 33, he is…
Dominic Ondoro is pretty tall for a Kenyan runner. Maybe 5'11", with shanks like a deer. He broke away from his countryman and training partner Elisha Barno at about the 21st mile to win Sunday’s Twin Cities Marathon, receiving a $10,000 check. He demolished the course record of 2:10.05 that has stood for 31 years…
Abdi Abdirahman said he is “way more relaxed” at 39 than he was when he was younger, causing me to experience a mutifying, brow-furrowing dissonance.
As he crossed the finish line to win the silver medal in the Olympic marathon, Feyisa Lilesa crossed his forearms above his head in an “X,” a gesture of protest that resonated back home in Ethiopia. Lilesa said it was a risk. “If I go back to Ethiopia maybe they will kill me,” he said after the race.
Before today’s running of the men’s marathon, U.S. runner Galen Rupp had only tackled 26.2 miles once—at the U.S. Olympic trials, which he won with a time of 2:11:12. He finished third today in Rio, at 2:10:05.
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The men’s marathon traditionally closes each Olympiad, and here’s a spectator riding alongside the leaders who snatches an impressive memento: Eliud Kipchoge’s hat.
Notice anything strange about Letsrun’s listing of the world-leading performances from last weekend?
Sometimes I like technology, in this case because YouTube is going to be invaluable in explaining how Kenya’s Eliud Kipchoge calmly sliced through Sunday’s London Marathon, covering Her Majesty’s 26.2 miles in 2:03:05, the second fastest (by eight tiny seconds) marathon ever run on a record-eligible course. He’s won…
I couldn’t get worked up about Monday’s Boston Marathon. After all, any American who might have been on TV ran the U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials in February, and is skipping Boston. So I followed this three-step program:
A day before Sunday’s Los Angeles Marathon, USATF held the Trials for the U.S. Olympic marathon team, with 105 male qualifiers looking to book their trips to Rio. At the end of the day—closer to the end than the beginning, but that’s cool—was Chris Barnicle, solidly in 105th place.
I had just dragged ass into the JW Marriott in downtown Los Angeles—race headquarters for the Olympic Marathon Trials—and got in the elevator with Des Linden. She is one of, if not the, favorites in today’s race to determine the Rio team. Linden came up to my shoulder, the size of many 10-year-olds, but thinner, and…
Of the 259 women and 217 men who qualified for the U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials, only about 10 in each field have an honest chance at finishing in the top three and going to Rio. But hundreds or even thousands more arranged the past four years of their lives around running a marathon or half-marathon fast enough to…
Stephan Shay has de rigueur facial hair. He can be found in Southern California coffee shops, sometimes wearing a beanie. He’s tan. He’s fit. He wakes up to the sound of waves playing on southern California sand, and takes road trips up and down the coast.