Let me start by writing this. After more than a year away from the marathon, it was great to see Jordan out there competing well. She's clearly made for the marathon.
The third place showing likely will motivate her to continue to dream big, but we need to also acknowledge what we acknowledged going in - the women's field wasn't super strong this year. In the end, only two women broke 2:25.
Yes the 73 first half made a sub-2:25 somewhat hard to accomplish given the 2nd half is hilly but it was doable. In 2017 Hasay ran 72:33 - 70:37 to run 2:23:00. Today, after a 73:08 first half, she ran a 72:12 2nd half.
Coming in there was 3 that I thought were better than Hasay and 2 of them beat her. Hasay taking third over Meskerem Assefa of Ethiopia (2:20:36 pb) was nice as Assefa has won 4 marathons in the last 2 years including Nagoya and Frankfurt last year, but I don't think she's quite back to where she was.
So a big step in the right direction but let's see if she can keep this momentum going.
LRC Note: Brakes was initially mispelled as breaks.