Below is an excerpt from the Lap Count newsletter, posted with permission. Kyle Merber’s Lap Count newsletter both entertains and enlightens fans about athletes and happenings in our sport.
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From the Lap Count Newsletter
Just as we were shaking off our post-Berlin Marathon cobwebs, the World Marathon Major back-to-back-to-back tour continued with the fall rendition of the London Marathon. Though out-of-season, the event clearly had no issues filling the fields as six women broke the 2:20 barrier and seven men dipped below 2:08.
Women’s Race
During the build up to London, the dominant storyline was billed as a battle between defending champion, Kenya’s Joyciline Jepkosgei and Ethiopia’s rising star Yalemzerf Yehualaw. And come race day, as the pack came through halfway in 68:46, the plot was unfolding just about as well as the race organizers’ PR team could have hoped — Jepkosgei and Yehualaw both looked poised to run away with it.
There was a pack of women still together at mile 20 when apparent disaster struck. Yehualaw took what appeared to be an unimpeded spill and fell to the ground. Fortunately, she took to the pavement well and bounced back with vengeance and patience.
Waiting until mile 24, Yehualaw then made a steady surge to blow open the race. When the broadcast booth was informed of her 4:43 mile split, the announcers rightfully exploded in disbelief and amazement. For perspective, her final time of 2:17:25 averages out to be about 5:14 pace — dropping more than thirty seconds below that after two hours of running is absurd, bordering on unbelievable.
According to a LetsRun report, that’s because it ended up not being true. Running a 4:59 and following it up with a 5:02 like Yehualaw actually did, is still incredible. But it’s also more plausible, given that her purported 4:43 mile would have been faster than her 5000m PB pace — 14:53, which she ran in 2021. It should be noted that 2:17 is significantly better than that mark, and indicates that she’s not only improved drastically, but has found her event. To all the redshirt college freshman boys reading this who may have snuck under the 15-minute barrier last outdoor season, don’t worry, you wouldn’t have beaten Yehualaw over 26.2.
How an event like the London Marathon doesn’t have a more accurate system of reporting mile splits is a bit shocking. If one mile is fast, that means the next or previous one is slow, and think about how rattling it would be to be under the impression that your pace has oscillated by 30+ seconds per mile that deep into the race. As I think about my own approaching marathon it makes me wonder, should I trust clocks on the course or my own watch?
(You know how some GPS watches today can recognize if you’re on the track and will clock your path more accurately around its curves? Or how you can download preset routes to run? It’d be cool if your watch was able to recognize that you’re currently running a famous marathon so it could sync up with the mile markings on the course.)
Anyway, after running the fastest debut ever (2:17:23) in Hamburg earlier this year, and now having dethroned Jepkosgei, it’s clear that Yehualaw is pretty good at this marathon thing. But the way the event works, it takes a few years to have a long enough resume to provide some perspective as to HOW good she is at her job. At only 23-years-old, Yalemzerf has plenty of time to fluff up her LinkedIn.
Men’s Race
If you were picking the winner of the men’s race out of a hat, in all likelihood he wouldn’t have been Kenyan — Amos Kipruto was without a countryman in the elite field. But this isn’t the WWE and that’s not how things are done.
Kipruto is far from new to the scene. He won the 2016 Rome Marathon, 2017 Seoul Marathon, has multiple podium finishes and sub-2:06 performances to his name — including a bronze medal at the 2019 World Championships. However, running 2:04:39 to win the London Marathon this past weekend is certainly the standout performance of his career and how he will be introduced in the near future.
But what if it weren’t for that other guy named Eliud Kipchoge? In March, Kipruto ran 2:03:13 to finish second at the Tokyo Marathon behind the greatest to ever do it. Meanwhile, Kipchoge went on to demolish the course record by over a minute, going 2:02:40. Like any friend group that has one disproportionally hot person in it, Kipchoge steals all the glances of every room he walks into. Typically the salutatorian, Kipruto is probably used to going unnoticed despite being really good at his craft. But not this weekend.
Theoretically, would you rather have run Berlin and been 33 seconds behind Kipchoge’s world record or run a few minutes slower, but win London? A pointless thought experiment.
Despite the timing issues in the women’s race, Kipruto’s insane 25th-mile split of 4:21 is apparently legitimate (As a refresher, Kipchoge’s pace for the whole thing is 4:34). That’s how he broke away from the likes of Leul Gebresilase and Bashir Abdi.
A few places back in fifth place, the legend Kenenisa Bekele ran 2:05:53 to set a masters world record — which hardly means a thing to the man who at one point held multiple outright records. Given how competitive marathoners continue to be late into their careers, it seems like 40-year-olds don’t necessarily need separate denominations. On the track, it makes sense. But consider this my proposal to recategorize masters running on the roads as 45+, or 40+ if you’ve mistakenly posted something embarrassing and with weird capitalization to your nephew’s Facebook wall, thinking it was a direct message.
