LetsRun.com's Best of 2018

2018 was quite a year. We do our best to recap it all for you by handing out awards - everything from most improved to race of the year to travesty of the year. Does your favorite runner make the cut?

The unparalleled Eliud Kipchoge tops the marathon rankings yet again.

2018 was the best year in the history of the women's marathoning. Coming into the year, only five women in history had ever broken 2:19 but six different women did it 2019.  Plus 11 times a woman broke 2:20 in 2018, the most in history.

Beatrice Chepkoech put up the greatest season in the history of the women's steeplechase while Emma Coburn held on to her #1 US ranking despite losing her American record to Courtney Frerichs.

While handing out our steeple rankings, we take a detour and give out some free advice to Evan Jager.

We know Selemon Barega ran 12:43 but in the end decided you can't really be World #1 if you failed to medal at World U20s and the African champs.

Sifan Hassan had a fantastic year but Hellen Obiri's year was just a little bit better as she won both the DL final and the fastest race of the year (Rabat) over Hassan. Meanwhile, American Shelby Houlihan was the 8th fastest woman in the world this year.

Timothy Cheruiyot had the greatest DL season in history and we hope some people start to appreciate how good he is.

In 2018, Shelby Houlihan enjoyed one of the greatest seasons ever by an American female on the track, but it wasn't quite enough to get her a world #1 ranking.

For the third year in a row, Caster Semenya was undefeated but was this the last of her dominance?  Domestically, Ajee Wilson was the best of a strong group of US runners. Should US#3 Ce'Aira Brown be ranked in the world's top 10?

Emmanuel Korir had the best 800 season since David Rudisha's magical 2012 campaign. Meanwhile, Clayton Murphy started off both indoors and outdoors slowly but nearly returned to his Olympic bronze medal winning form.