Hellen Obiri, Sharon Lokedi, & Tigst Assefa’s Coach Weigh in on Ruth Chepngetich’s 2:09 Marathon WR

NEW YORK — When Hellen Obiri woke up on the morning of October 13 and saw Ruth Chepngetich had run 2:09:56 to break the women’s world record by nearly two minutes at the Chicago Marathon, her first reaction was simple.

Wow.

“It was amazing,” said the Olympic bronze medalist Obiri ahead of Sunday’s New York City Marathon. “I never thought ladies can run sub-2:10, honest. So for me, I feel much motivated. I feel like everything is now possible for running.”

In her marathon career, Obiri has exclusively run tough courses without pacers – Boston, New York, and the Olympics — winning New York once and Boston twice. How fast does she think she can run on a flat course with pacers?

“If I go there, maybe I can just run 2:10, 2:11,” Obiri said. “I can’t say I want to run 2:08, it’s impossible for me. But 2:10, I can do it.”

Chepngetich broke the previous record by such an enormous margin that the running world has struggled to make sense of the performance. Is Chepngetich just that good? Is it the shoes? Or could Chepngetich — who has never been sanctioned for any doping violations — have been fueled by performance-enhancing drugs? LetsRun.com asked Obiri if she thought Chepngetich’s time was legitimate.

“That’s brutal for me,” said the 34-year-old Obiri. “But for the young ones (Chepngetich is 30), [they] can do it.”

At Thursday’s NYC Marathon press conference, LetsRun.com polled the room for their reactions to Chepngetich’s mind-blowing time. The four athletes we surveyed — Obiri, three-time Olympic gold medalist Tirunesh Dibaba of Ethiopia, 2022 NYC Marathon champ Sharon Lokedi, and American Jess McClain — displayed a mix of awe and admiration for the performance.

Lokedi said the time surprised her – she was still getting used to Tigst Assefa’s 2:11:53 world record from last year — but like Obiri, said it was good motivation moving forward.

“I’m impressed,” Lokedi said. “If that’s where everything else is going, I mean not all of us would get there, but I’m just hopeful. It gives me motivation and I know it can be done.”

We asked Lokedi what she thought about those who believe Chepngetich’s time was too fast to be achieved legitimately.

“I feel like for anybody, you never know something is possible until you do it,” Lokedi said. “…She did it and it happened and then just leave it like that. Just be happy for her and wish her the best.”

Through an interpreter, we asked Dibaba, arguably the greatest women’s distance runner in history, what she thought of the time. The interpreter said Dibaba said she “admired” Chepngetich, that she was a “big fan” of hers, and that Chepngetich “did an amazing job.”

“In the past, we didn’t run to have a better time,” Dibaba said. “We ran to win. That’s all we did. But now we have better shoes. We have better equipment. And we focus on both time and winning.”

McClain, who was 4th at the US Olympic Trials in February, called the 2:09 mark “insane.”

“I haven’t been in the marathon world for very long but I was like, ‘Holy shit that’s insane,’” said McClain. “I think the sport’s just going to get faster and faster. There’s a lot that people can say about it. It’s the shoes, it’s this, that, or the other. I mean obviously 2:09, I don’t think I can run that right now. But you also can’t assume that things are going on because then you take yourself out of the conversation and mentally you just don’t put yourself in the conversation or in the mix. It was amazing to watch. History was made.”

Finally, we asked Ethiopian coach Gemedu Dedefo, who coaches the previous record holder Assefa, for his thoughts. Dedefo firmly believes it is possible for a woman to run 2:09:56 clean – in fact, he reminded us that when he spoke with us last year after Assefa’s 2:11:53, he predicted that a woman would run under 2:10 very soon.

Dedefo’s logic was very simple: he noted that the men’s and women’s world records in the half marathon are roughly five minutes apart (57:30 for the men, 62:52 for the women). If you double that, you get 10 minutes, which is roughly the difference between the men’s and women’s world records in the marathon.

The gaps are actually a little wider than that – it’s 5:22 between half marathon records, and when you double that and add it to Kelvin Kiptum’s 2:00:35 marathon world record, you get 2:11:19. But if you add 10:44 to Eliud Kipchoge’s unofficial 1:59:40 from Vienna – not a totally crazy comparison considering he had pacers the entire way like Chepngetich – you get 2:10:24 and suddenly we’re much closer.

Dedefo actually believes women could run even faster in the years to come. He noted that some of the fastest 10,000m/half marathoners in history have not run many marathons. 10,000m track world record holder Beatrice Chebet (28:54) and 10k road world record holder Agnes Ngetich (28:46) have never run marathons. Half marathon world record holder Letesenbet Gidey has run two – but one came on a slow course in New York.

“The women can go, in my mind, they can go near to 2:08,” Dedefo said. “It is possible.”

But Dedefo said two things struck him as “strange” about Chepngetich’s record. The first was how Chepngetich could improve four minutes in her 15th career marathon at age 30 – though he said if Chepngetich changed up her training before Chicago this year, that could make a difference.

The second thing that stood out to Dedefo was how Chepngetich ran her WR. He had thought if a woman were to break 2:10, she would do it with a negative split rather than going out incredibly hard and holding on like Chepngetich (she ran half marathon splits of 64:16/65:40). That one, he could not explain.

“That is very difficult,” Dedefo said. “Even for the future, I did not think someone could run like that.”