Tuesday, April 19, 2011

New World Record in the Marathon?

Yesterday April 18th the world record for the Marathon was (unofficially) broken in Boston. Geoffrey Mutai of Kenya ran a time of 2:03:02 (2 hours 3 minutes and 2 seconds) for the 26.2 mile race. The time can however not go down as a record due to the course it was run on and the conditions of the race. The course for the Boston Marathon has a lot of downhill parts to it and it is not a point to point race. The wind was at the backs of the runners at around 20 m.p.h. for the duration of the race, so the wind and downhill combined clearly gave an unfair advantage to the competitors. The time shows it too, the time was 57 seconds faster than the former World Record time of 2:03:59 set by Haile Gebrselassie. Geoffrey Mutai was not alone for the race either, he came in first by only 4 seconds to Moses Musop also from Kenya. Mutai and Musop are not very famous and have not had many impressive times. Therefore I think we can say that there was clearly something messed up about this race. Mutai will not be recognized as the World Record holder for the Marathon, but he can be called the fastest man to ever run 26.2 miles (in unfair conditions).

10 comments:

  1. That still blows my mind that there is even such a thing a competitive marathon running. I'd be happy just finishing one.

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  2. That is insane, i can hardly run for an hour or so.

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  3. Damn i wish i could run that well ;D

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  4. This makes me believe anything is possible, you have to strive for it :D

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  5. Not to sound racist but of course hes Kenyan those boys can run.

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  6. Fair conditions or not that's crazy fast.

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  7. id still take the title. all the best runners are from africa:( actually athletes in general

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