Wow

Yeah, the Sox are winning, which makes me happy, but the real news on Marathon Monday is from... well, what else, the Marathon. The men's winner, Geoffrey Mutai, ran the fastest marathon ever run, anywhere in the world.

Kenya's Geoffrey Mutai won the Boston Marathon in an official record time of 2 hours 3 minutes and 2 seconds, breaking the previous Boston record set last year by countryman Robert Kiprono Cheruiyot (2:05::52) by more than two minutes.

However, while Mutai has a world record time, it will not be recognized as such internationally in part because of the hilliness of the Boston course.

Yeah, Boston isn't recognized for world record purposes because it's technically a downhill course, with the start at Hopkinton a few hundred feet above the finish, which is at sea level. But for anyone who has run through the rolling hills of Newton, we all know that the Boston course is no picnic. It's one of the toughest marathon courses in the world, so to set a world record there is incredibly impressive.

I don't know what's in the water lately up in Boston, but this is the second straight year that the course record has been destroyed by the men's champion. The result is that the course record has come down from 2:07:14 (set in 2006) by more than four minutes in two years. That's incredible.

Pity poor Ryan Hall, who, after setting an American course record in 2010 but finishing a distant 3rd, bettered his time by nearly 4 minutes this year. His time was faster than the course record set just last year, but Hall still finished a distant 4th behind Mutai's ridiculous time (yes, 4 runners broke the previous course record today). In any other time period, we'd be hailing Hall as one of the best runners in Boston Marathon history. But in this slice of time, he's just an also-ran. Tough luck.

[Boston Globe]