At the Chica­go Marathon, 23-year-old Kelvin broke the record of his com­pa­tri­ot Eli­ud Kip­choge — the Kenyan set a world record in Sep­tem­ber 2022 at the Berlin Marathon — 2 hours, 1 minute and 9 sec­onds. Eli­u­da prob­a­bly did not expect that his result would be sur­passed just a year lat­er. Kelvin Kip­tum fin­ish­es with a new world record — 2 hours and 35 sec­onds.

After the first 5 km, Kip­tum broke away from the lead­ers and led the race along with his com­pa­tri­ot Daniel Mate­jko. After the 30-kilo­me­ter mark, the record hold­er took the lead and cov­ered the remain­ing dis­tance alone. Aver­age pace: 2:52 per kilo­me­ter. Just look at how he fin­ished. It is pos­si­ble that Kip­tum could become the first per­son in the world to “run” a two-hour marathon.

Kenyan Ben­son Kipru­to fin­ished sec­ond at the Chica­go Marathon, com­plet­ing the dis­tance in 2 hours, 4 min­utes and 2 sec­onds. Third place went to Bashir Abdi from Bel­gium.

How to set a world record in 4 years?

Kip­tum def­i­nite­ly knows the answer: the Kenyan ran his first half marathon in 2019. The guy cov­ered 21.1 km in less than an hour — 59 min­utes and 54 sec­onds. The fol­low­ing year, Calvin returned to the half marathon, improv­ing his time by 12 sec­onds. With each dis­tance, the man came to the fin­ish line with a per­son­al best, but not always in first place.

The Kenyan ran his first marathon only in 2022: first he start­ed in Valen­cia, then — the best time at the Lon­don Marathon on April 23, 2023. Appar­ent­ly, the real race begins for the Kenyan only after the 30th kilo­me­ter. He leaves his com­peti­tors behind and breaks out with renewed vig­or into first place.

While Kenyans are set­ting speed records, oth­er marathon run­ners are achiev­ing the strangest achieve­ments. For exam­ple, one Cana­di­an attempt­ed to set a Guin­ness World Record by run­ning the Van­cou­ver Marathon wear­ing an 81 T‑shirt. In total, the clothes weighed 19 kg, and the man admit­ted that he had nev­er sweat­ed so much.