A man just ran a marathon in under 2 hours for the first time ever. But it won't go in the official record books.

(Image credit: BEN STANSALL/AFP/Getty Images)

published 12 October 2019

It might not technically be a world record, but it's beyond impressive anyway.

Kenyan marathoner Eliud Kipchoge on Saturday became the first human ever to run a marathon — 26.2 miles — in less than two hours, a feat that was long thought in impossible. The 34-year-old Kipchoge, who has won eight major marathons and three Olympic medals, did it in 1 hour, 59 minutes and 40.2 seconds.

It unfortunately won't count as the fastest marathon in history, though, since it wasn't technically a race and Kipchoge relied on a rotating cast of pacemakers instead of competitors. Indeed, everything about the event was carefully engineered for him to achieve the mark, including a perfectly flat course in Vienna, Austria, and Kipchoge's Nike sneakers, whose legality have been called into question for official events.

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Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.

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