Everything had been planned down to the last detail but despite this it still looked doubtful. 2 hours had seemed like some insurmountable barrier for so long.
Nike had developed super whizzy running shoes. They had spent millions laying a special track in Vienna and some of the finest athletes in the world would be pacing Eluid Kipchoge. We had possibly the finest marathon runner ever with the best technology currently available. Maybe this barrier was surmountable after all.
I started watching it but like so many runners on Saturday morning I realised that the finish would be during parkrun.
Damn, Damn, Damn!
Maybe I shouldn’t go to parkrun.
Hmmm, nah. I am doing my parkrun. Even Kipchoge making history isn’t going to stop that.
However, I am all in favour of having cake and eating it, so tried to find a feed that I could listen to while I was running. I found a livestream and shoved the phone into my pocket. Linking up the bluetooth headphones I could still be updated with the latest Kipchoge goings on.
We set off at around 09:05 (Cambridge is nearly always late starting) and the tension was starting to build. He was close now and looking strong. He had had a bit of a wobble at around 35k but was now clocking up the kilometres at a metronomic sub 2 hour pace. He was cruising along at a steady 21 kilometres an hour. Just an incredible speed.
I was caught up in the shenanigans of first lap mayhem and had just started to stretch my legs a bit as I emerged from the crowds when Kipchoge put on a last burst of speed and ducked under 2 hour by a whole 20 seconds.
My first reaction was to yell for joy (I didn’t do that).
My second reaction was to tell everyone around me that Kipchoge had done it (I didn’t do that either).
All around the course I wanted to tell everyone that it had happened but I didn’t. Part of me thought that maybe they had recorded it to watch at home and maybe they were saving it as a surprise. The rest of me thought that it would be of no interest to folk and that they might find it a bit weird and scary if I turned into strange shouty person ranting on about 2 hour marathons.
It was a great time and an amazing achievement. I kind of wished I had someone to share it with at the time but I reckon that I probably have no one to blame but myself. It is quite likely that if I had spoken to people that some of them would also have been excited about Kipchoge’s achievement. I just needed to be more bold.
Congrats to Eluid Kipchoge
You are an astounding athlete.