There's something about the London course today that made for very good running.

Three athletes broke the men's world record. One athlete broke the women's world record, and three were in the all time top 5. An Irish record was also broken, likely other countries too that I'm not familiar with.

Not to take anything away from the achievements. Incredible running.

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PaulDavisThe1st 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> One athlete broke the women's world record

Not so. She broke a record for a female-only-pacer marathon time. The women's world record was much, much faster.

	▲	ekr____ 8 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		To add some color here: It is very helpful to have someone pace you so that you can run an ideal pace without worrying about whether you are running the right speed. However, the rules require that pacers start with you [0], which means that by definition if you are running faster than anyone has ever gone before you have to run some of the race alone. However, because marathon are often mixed gender and the best male runners are significantly faster than the best female runners, it is possible for a woman to be paced from the gun to the tape by a male runner. For this reason, there are separate records for the women's marathon for women's only events. [0] This is one of the things that made Kipchoge's original sub 2 result not record-eligible.
	▲	dmurray 8 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I stand corrected, but I don't think this changes my point at all. She broke the thing that the IAAF have gone back and forth on calling "the world record". It's the relevant record for this event - there was no more chance of her beating the man-paced record than of beating the men's record or the Le Mans lap record.

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tim333 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It was good weather for London. Clear skies and cool.