Wilson Kipsang breaks marathon world record.

I missed the race. Then again, Canadian television wouldn't waste a couple of hours showing a person running. It's OK that they would waste four, five, six or an entire day showing the Blue Jays spitting tobacco while trying to convince the world that they're athletes, but not running.

What Wilson Kipsang did on that sunny Sunday morning in Berlin is quite amazing. 2 hours, 3 minutes and 23 seconds to run 42.2 km. I'm very impressed. Then again, I was also impressed when Patrick Makau ran the same distance in 2 hours 3 minutes and 38 seconds. 15 seconds slower than Wilson Kipsang.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/30/sports/kenyan-wilson-kipsang-sets-world-record-at-berlin-marathon.html

Paul Tergat was the first ever recorded to run under 2:05. And that's on a World Official Marathon course. I say recorded since you can be almost certain that others have run that distance, under that time, just not recognised or recorded. But a World Marathon official course is a good thing otherwise Boston would be the home of record breaking, not Berlin.

And a 2:05 is damned impressive. That's 125 minutes to run 42,200 metres. Or 7,500 seconds to run 42,200 metres, which boils down to just under 5.63 metres per second.

More statistics.

Tergat was running each kilometer in just under 3 minutes. And for those of you who haven't scaled to the heights of metric thinking, that's under 5 minutes per mile. Roger Bannister first broke the 4-minute mile in 1954. And that's running at top steam for a single mile. Tergat ran 26 of them in under 5 minutes each!

And Wilson Kipsang was even more impressive. As far as I know nobody has yet run a marathon under 2:03. But it's going to happen. I can feel it in my bones. As I sit here and breathe, a 2:03 will happen soon. After the race, Wilson Kipsang said that he felt fine and that he could have gone quicker. Looking at how he pulled away at 35k, I believe him.

But let's not forget the women in Berlin as we drool over how well the men did. Berlin isn't the home of the Women's world record, that would be London. That one safely in the hands of Britain's Paula Radcliffe. I think it will be quite some time till someone comes around to snatch that record out of her hands. The closest anyone's come to her world record time of 2:15:25 is Kenya's Catherine Ndereba who held the record for a year when she won the Chicago Marathon in 2:18:47. More than three minutes slower. In Berlin the women's winner was Florence Kiplagat who finished in 2:21:13. Not quite a world record, but impressive all the same. More impressive despite the fact that she had a blister in her right foot that forced her to slow down. This is the second time that Florence Kiplagat has won Berlin and in her interview said that she'd be back again. Unlike Kipsang, Kiplagat said that the race was tough. Not only did her blister bother her but the conditions were very windy from about 25 K onwards. In any case, that's all history. She has the cash, all $54,000 of it.