Eliud Kipcghoge created history on Sunday, the 16th Of September 2018, creating a new marathon world record by breaking the tape in 2:01:39. In doing so, he bettered the earlier WR by more than a minute, 78 seconds to be exact. At that pace, which lies at the edge of human performance, bettering the world record so convincingly is a huge, almost superhuman effort.

Here is Kipchoge’s superhuman feat in numbers, from different perspectives, gathered from data around the Interwebs:

• Kipchoge ran the 1st 10K in 29:01 and this got people excited because he was 30 seconds inside the WR. It turns out that was actually the slowest 10km segment of his race. His 10km splits were as follows:
  29:01
  28:55
  28:49
  28:47
  His last 10km (from 32.195 to 42.195km) was ~28:33!

• Want to equal the WR? Go to the local track and do the 400m loop in 69.2 seconds (a pace of 2:52.8 per K). Now do 104.5 such repeats! Without any recovery intervals!

• 400m too long for you? Run 100m on the track in 17.2 seconds. Then repeat 420 times without any rest!

• His 5K splits:
  5K – 14:24
  10K – 29:01 (14:37)
  15K – 43:38 (14:37)
  20K – 57:56 (14:18)
  HALF MARATHON – 1:01:06
  25K – 1:12:24 (14:28)
  30K – 1:26:45 (14:21)
  35K – 1:41:01 (14:16)
  40K – 1:55:32 (14:31)
  FINISH – 2:01:39

• Average times (considering the average pace) for this record-breaking run were as follows:
  1K: 2:53
  5K: 14:24
  10K: 28:49
  Half Marathon: 60:48

• His half marathon splits were:
  1st half: 1:01:06 – very close to his pre-race plan of doing it in 1:01:00
  2nd half: 1:00:33 – a superb negative split. Its worth noting that he ran almost the entire 2nd half alone without any pacemakers by his side.

• In terms of speed, he ran at 20.8 kmph for 42.2km. Many cyclists can’t even cycle at this speed.

• Kipchoge does his recovery runs at around 6:00 pace. Shows that to run really hard, you must do easy runs really easy, something many many runners fail to do.

• Here is how the marathon WR has progressed over the years:
• Kipchoge’s WR time was 1 minute 39 seconds away from the coveted 2 hour barrier. In terms distances, he was about 600m away. In the coming years, he or some other athlete will have to somehow find a way to cover those 600m faster.

• Kipchoge’s average cadence was 185 steps per minute with a stride/step length of 1.90 meters. This means he took a total of 22505 steps during the marathon.

Kipchoge might be the GOAT, but there were other quaint records made too:

• British runner Nikki Johnston broke the world record for fastest marathon in an Elvis costume!
• India’s Kranti Salvi created a Guinness Record for the fastest marathon dressed in a sari (female). She ran in a nine-yard Sari and completed the marathon in 3:57:07.

All images copyright of their respective sources.