Eliud Kipchoge is the First Man to Run a Marathon in Under Two Hours

Eliud Kipchoge. Photo by Vickie Flores/LNP/REX/Shutterstock (9639300g)

Last week, Kenyan athlete Eliud Kipchoge became the first man to run a marathon in less than two hours! He set the record on Saturday, October 12th in Vienna when he crossed the finish line as the clock showed 1:59:40. This, however, will not be recognized as a new world record.

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The greatest feeling.

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The reason for this Kipchoge’s success not becoming the official world record is that the race was actually engineered with him breaking the two-hour barrier in mind. The race wasn’t an open marathon, but instead an event in which he had all the help he needed to clock in the required time. He had a number of professional pacesetters behind him at all times, who are all world-class runners, among other things that helped him achieve this. All this, of course, doesn’t make his success any less significant.

Kipchoge does hold the world record for the time needed to run a marathon and it’s 2:01:39, the time he needed to run the 2018 Berlin Marathon. As he showed that the limits of what’s possible for humans are changing all the time, we won’t be surprised if the official record actually gets under two hours in the next few years.