The tale of Kipchoge & Kiptum: Comparison of the two fastest marathon race times of the world – Part 1 (before Chicago 2023)

London Marathon 2023, a certain Kelvin Kiptum ran the race of his life and recorded the second fastest marathon time of 2:01:25! He came agonizingly close to the world record time set by Eluid Kipchoge in Berlin 2022 – the astonishing 2:01:09 finish. The difference was just 16 seconds!

People who saw that incredible effort from Kiptum in the rain affected race would vouch that Kiptum would have easily broken the world record – he simply ran out of the strip! He seemed to have so much left in the tank at the finish line that if (and this is big if) he had kicked-off his crazy late charge only about a km earlier he would have had his name besides the world record time.

I am a bona-fide Kipchoge fanboy (who in the world wouldn’t idolize the great man). But, I am absolutely in love with the masterclass of a run by Kiptun. So, I decided to compare the two fastest marathon times in the world at a more granular level.

Side by Side 5K Split

This is the most interesting chart to look at. Kiptum was no where near the world record time till 30K mark and then he decided to go rogue!

Kipchoge ran a classic minor positive split race. While it was exactly the opposite for Kiptum.

Kiptum’s 5K splits were ‘far’ slower than the avg WR split of 14:24 for most of the race. This was until he cranked up a blistering 13:49 (30-35K) followed by an amazing 14:01 (35-40K). In the same distance segment, Kipchoge actually ‘slows’ down to 14:30 and 14:43.

I conveniently ignored the last segment of 2.19Km to not screw up the graph but it was even steven with Kiptum being ‘just’ 4 seconds faster than Kipchoge.

The GAP

Lets look at the gap between the two races as the distance progresses. This one chart tells us how incredibly well Kiptum ran that day.

Kiptum & co had a genuinely slow start with no one from the lead pack trying to push the pace early enough. At 10K mark, Kiptum was almost a minute behind the WR record and by the half way mark he was 105 seconds behind the world record time. In the world of marathons where the time currency runs in seconds, the difference of almost 2 minutes is just insanely high. At this stage of the race, the projected finish time for Kiptum was into 2:02:XX zone and no one even thought that he would be a threat to the world record.

Interestingly, the gap continues to remain above 100 seconds till 30km mark. And then comes the charge which shocked the marathon world! Over next 10km Kiptum brings down the gap to a mere 20 seconds. And suddenly, everyone felt that he would beat the world record time. The Kipchoge fanboys like me were shuddering at the prospect of this chase and to say that we had our hearts in our hands would be an understatement!

Kiptum kept on his crazy charge post 40km mark too. But, it was too much to do too late in the race even for the man of his raw skills and desire. He managed to reduce the gap by another 4 seconds and finished with just 16 seconds short of the world record.

We can all argue that Kiptum was running on a relatively challenging London course vs Kipchoge’s Berlin course which is flat and fast. We can also argue that Kiptum’s race was impacted by drizzle. So, its not right on our part to compare two races ran across vastly different conditions! But, we are talking about world records here and more importantly we are talking about the boundaries of human endurance so such liberties are worth taking.

The Best of both

So, I took the liberty of combining the best of the both runs to see what is the best time a human can record in the marathon.

Imagine a runner named Eluid Kiptum. This runner runs the best of the 5K splits across these two races. What would be his finish time? This time to me would represent the pinnacle of human endurance.

So, the magic number here is 1:59:39! Yes, it is that elusive sub 2 hour marathon that we all have been craving about since eternity.

Will we see a sub 2 hour marathon soon?

The answer here is a definite YES. The only question remaining is how soon!

Kelvin Kiptum is just 23 so he has a lot of offer yet. He appears to have the desire and temperament to run this for the sake of humanity!

On the other side, how can one ever discount the G.O.A.T. He isn’t slowing down for sure (save that dip at Boston) and his hunger is as high as it has ever been.

And, is there another runner X looking at this in the background and gearing up to run that one race of his lifetime and humanity’s lifetime?

Berlin 2023 – lets have Kipchoge, Kiptum and several of these runner X in the fray. The course and the field is set for the first official sub 2 hour marathon run!

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UPDATE: On 8 Oct 2023, Kelvin Kiptun ran a staggering 2:00:35 to set a new marathon world record besting Kipchoge’s time by 34 seconds! With this run, the races I mentioned above relegated from being top 2 marathon finishes to 2nd and 3rd finishes. However, I did not want to tinker with the original article so I renamed is with a suffix of ‘Part 1’ and penned another part to compare Kipchoge’s Berlin ’21 and Kiptum’s Chicago’23.

My article did age well!