After two years of marathon racing, trail running, triathlon and track and field being under the grip of COVID-19, running came back with enormous force in 2022. Here are some of the brightest highlights of the year.
Once and forever the G.O.A.T.
Stop if you’ve heard this one before, but Eliud Kipchoge is still the king of the marathon. The 38-year-old Kenyan continued his near-flawless record at 26.2 miles, by winning both the Tokyo Marathon (2:02:40) in March and the Berlin Marathon (2:01:09) in September. Those wins boosted his career total to 15 victories (in 17 races) and his Berlin time shaved 30 seconds off his own world record that he’d set four years earlier on the same course. In an event where so much has to go right on race day to achieve success, Kipchoge has been nearly untouchable since he transitioned to running marathons in 2013. In the two races he didn’t win, he placed second in Berlin in 2013 (2:04:05) and eighth in London in 2020 (2:06:49).
If you count the two time-trial exhibitions he ran in 2017 in Monza, Italy, (2:00:25) and and 2019 in Vienna, Austria (1:59:40), it gives him eight 26.2-mile efforts at 2:03:05 or faster. With two Olympic gold medals under his belt and wins in London and Chicago,…
