Ruth Chepngetich Breaks the 2:10 Barrier

The Kenyan runner set a new women’s world record at the Chicago Marathon.

I did not set a world record at the Chicago Marathon, but I did run it in 2021.

On Sunday morning at the Chicago Marathon, Kenya’s Ruth Chepngetich did what every running coach tells you not to do: She went out hot, hitting the 5K mark in 15:00 flat before clocking the fastest half marathon on American soil (nearly matching her own personal best of 1:04:02  in the distance, which was the world record in 2021). While she did slow down in the second half, she never blew up—and she ended up crossing the finish line in a mind-blowing 2:09:56, the first time a woman has ever run 26.2 miles faster than two hours and 10 minutes.

It’s an incredible accomplishment, one that’s been a long time coming. Women’s marathon times have dropped significantly since American distance runner Joan Benoit Samuelson ran 2:24:52 to become the first woman to win an Olympic gold medal in the distance. But it felt like women hit a barrier when British runner Paula Radcliffe set a world record of 2:15:25 at the 2003 London Marathon. That record stood for a long 16 years. 

Then, at the 2019 Chicago Marathon, Brigid Kosgei clocked a new world record of 2:14:04. In 2022, Amane Beriso Shankule ran 2:14:58 in 2022—not a world record, but proof that sub-2:15 wasn’t extraordinary anymore. At the 2024 Berlin Marathon, Tigst Assefa smashed Kosgei’s record with a 2:11:53; two weeks later, Sifan Hassan ran a 2:13:44 at the Chicago Marathon. This weekend, Chepngetich took another almost two minutes off the world record. Much has been made online about how she ran five minutes faster than the fifth fastest women in history (Radcliffe’s 2003 record is now ranked sixth).

This time didn’t come out of nowhere for Chepngetich. She ran 2:22:36 in her debut, the Istanbul Marathon, in 2017, then 2:22:59 in 2018 at the Paris Marathon. In 2018, she went back to Istanbul and drop a 4:00 personal best of 2:18:35 to win that race. In 2022 she ran the second-fastest women-only marathon (meaning no men were competing) with a time of 2:17:18. That same year, she clocked a three-minute personal best of 2:14:18 to win the Chicago Marathon. And in her return to Chicago this year, she ran a 4:00 personal best. (Her all gas, no brakes strategy isn’t new, either.)

Chicago is flat and fast, and known for being a world record course. Remember, this is where Kelvin Kiptum became the first man to run an official time of 2:00:35, the current men’s marathon world record. Yes, a 4:00 personal best is a big jump. But big jumps are not unheard of: Brigid Kosgei dropped her personal best from 2:18:35 to 2:14:04 when she set the world record in 2019, and Tigst Assefa went from 2:15:37 to 2:11:53 when she broke the world record in Berlin. 

Breakthroughs aren’t always incremental, and women are improving at a rate faster than men. There are a number of factors at play, including sports science finally expanding to address female bodies, more women participating in the sport, and greater rewards for female athletes. (This is a really interesting article from Inverse about whether women will actually catch up to men in marathons; Chepngetich actually came in 10th overall in Chicago.)

Gender aside, we are in a new era of running. To quote performance coach Steve Magness, from his book Peak Performance, “...the emergence of a global talent pool has increased the number of people ‘in the game’ with ideal genetics for a specific sport as well as the number of people willing to dedicate themselves to achieving greatness. Layer on enhanced and more scientific training, nutrition, and recovery methods, and it becomes easier to comprehend [this increase in performance].”

As Magness also notes, “we’d be remiss not to mention doping… Still, the general uptick in performance across all of athletics is far too great to be attributed solely to doping.” 

And yet…I opened up social media immediately after the race to a deluge of doping insinuations around Chepngetich’s world record. Yes, there is a doping crisis in the sport. There’s no denying that. I’ll quote Chris Chavez from Citius Mag here: 

Kenya is in the midst of a massive doping crisis with waves of positive tests and suspensions announced by the Athletics Integrity Unit almost weekly. Chepngetich is represented by Federico Rosa, who also worked with 2016 Olympic champion Jemima Sumgong and Boston/Chicago Marathon champion Rita Jeptoo before they were both stripped of their titles for positive tests for EPO.

But we also know that Chepngetich has never tested positive for any performance-enhancing drugs or been found guilty of any doping violation. I found the immediate jump to doping to be pretty disheartening. (And, frankly, I find it pretty interesting that there wasn’t this immediate jump to cynicism when Kiptum set the world record, or when Eliud Kipchoge broke two hours in the marathon for the first time.)

The internet has been rife with speculation, suspicions, and doubts—many of which elevate unqualified sources like MarathonMan123 on Twitter—but that doesn’t make them facts. Just because you, a person on the internet, believe or assume or suspect something does not mean you are right. Many people are sharing charts citing equivalencies—i.e. a woman running a 2:09 marathon is equivalent to woman running a 10.39 100-meter dash—but those are algorithmic. Even if they come from World Athletics, they’re still hypotheticals, predications. Chepngetich is a human, she isn’t constrained by an algorithm. And the people who set records are naturally going to be outliers. 

It’s totally valid to ask questions. Some skepticism can be healthy. And if Chepngetich does test positive for performance-enhancing drugs, I won’t shy away from the conversation about why that’s detrimental to the sport. For now, though, I choose to believe that a woman is capable of running a sub-2:10 marathon—especially a woman whose career shows a trajectory where these numbers make sense. I choose to believe in human potential. It could be drugs, or it could be shoe technology, or it could be women having more opportunity within the sport, or it could be sports science finally addressing female athletes. It could be all of the above. Doesn’t it feel better to believe the best of athletes, rather than doubting every standout performance? 

I’ll end with a quote from Alison Wade of Fast Women, because I couldn’t have said it better myself: 

“To be a fan of the sport, I need to trust that the anti-doping agencies are doing their job, or at least trying their best. It’s clear from recent doping news that a good number of athletes are cheating, but speculating about who is or isn’t clean is unproductive.”

the rundown

Puma Deviate Nitro Elite 3 Marathon Series
I know I shouldn’t judge a shoe solely by its look, but damn the $230 Deviate Nitro Elite 3 is a good-looking shoe (especially compared to the Fast-R Nitro Elite). As a Six Star finisher, I love all the nods to the World Marathon Majors: the overall passport vibe, the Marathon Series stamp on the side, the ticker tape listing out all the Majors, the six stars over the cat… The good news is it’s also a great racing shoe. With 40 millimeters of a bouncier, more resilient midsole foam plus a full-length carbon plate, I felt very fast in this during a recent speed workout. The airy monomesh upper and the rocks-olid PumaGrip rubber on the outsole make this a top-to-bottom win for me.

Allyson Felix Launches Sports Management Company for Female Athletes 
Five-time Olympian Allyson Felix recently announced the launch of  Always Alpha, a management company that will focus exclusively on repping female athletes, both professionals and college athletes looking to capitalize on name, image, and likeness deals. Sports agents are overwhelmingly male, which feels outdated and limiting in a moment when women’s sports are breaking barriers (a fun fact I learned from this Inc. article: by the end of this year, global revenue from women’s elite sports is expected to exceed $1 billion for the first time ever). Felix has long been an advocate for women in sport, and I’m excited to see what her leadership can continue to do for female athletes. 

The Athletic, Yahoo Sports Partner on New Women's Sports Content Hub
At first glance, yay, right? We love to hear that coverage of women’s sports—courtesy of The Athletic, a subscription sports news site owned by The New York Times, and Yahoo Sports—will be exposed to new audiences via a new hub on Yahoo Sports' website and app. Except…it really just repackages written, audio, and video content from both outlets. It doesn’t sound like there will be further investment in new staff (The Athletic has more than 15 full-time writers, editors, and producers, while Yahoo has a stable of full and part-time women's sports writers and contributors), and new “co-produced content from both newsrooms” is only a potential idea. At least it won’t require a subscription, which gets readers around The Athletic's paywalled website and app.