Knowing that 4 North Down AC runners were chasing him may or may not have contributed to Kelvin Kiptum’s record breaking run at the Chicago Marathon on Sunday 8th October. The 23 year old Kenyan took 34 seconds off Eliud Kipchoge’s previous world record time to set the new standard of 2:00:35. For the parkrunners in the club, Kiptum’s slowest 5k split, between 15 – 20km , was 14:30, a parkrun time only bettered anywhere in the world by one runner in Tasmania yesterday!
Ricky Jordan was the first of the North Down AC quartet to finish, recording an impressive PB of 2:42:33 with Sarah Gibson next across the line in a new PB of 3:07:37. Paula Simpson’s recent hard training paid off as she was also rewarded with a new PB of 3:44:30 and Michael Stevenson showed that he’s returning to his pre-injury form, bettering last month’s Berlin Marathon time by more than a minute to finish in 3:57:11.
