Sonoma County running fans excited by record-breaking performance Sunday in London Marathon

When Eliud Kipchoge ran a 1:59:40 marathon in 2019, the entire mission - replete with sponsors, scientists and light beams - was to show what the human body could do.

Kipchoge ran on a course in Vienna, surrounded by a phalanx of pacers who followed a path perfectly - and mathematically - marked to indicate the most efficient route possible. In front of the team of runners was a pace car setting the exact tempo needed to deliver Kipchoge to the line in under two hours.

Kipchoge crossed the tape as the first human ever to run 26.2 miles in under two hours, and the running world - and perhaps all of the normies out there - cheered the achievement of the human body and spirit.

But it didn't count. Not officially, that is. The pacers, the lead car, the lit course - it all made Kipchoge's effort amazing for the eyes and the spirit, but ineligible for the record books.

On Sunday, seven years after that project in Vienna, Sabastian Sawe, a Kenyan teetotaler, looked at Kipchoge's time and said "Hold my beer."

Sawe, 31, raced into the record books and into sporting lore, by racing Sunday's TCS London Marathon in a time of 1:59:30. No army of pacers, no lit-up line on the pavement to follow, just an old fashioned footrace that was so fast that the second place runner, too, broke not only the world record but the two-hour mark.

What a race.

"I think it shows people what is possible. I think it's motivating," said Carrie Joseph, the longtime coach of Santa Rosa High's cross country and track and field programs.

And that doesn't mean you have to be an otherworldly runner, or even a runner at all, to feel the pull of what Sawe was able to do Sunday.

"I think people like knowing what is possible even if it's not possible for them," Joseph said. "We all have Plan A, Plan B goals, Plan C goals. I think it's just motivation."

Speaking of not possible, have a gander at the breakdown of Sawe's performance: He averaged a pace of 4:33 minutes per mile; he ran 13.16 miles per hour; his average 5K pace? Fourteen minutes, 10 seconds.

The standing world record coming into Sunday's race was Kelvin Kiptum's 2023 Chicago Marathon time of 2:00:35. Sawe crushed it.

On the women's side, Tigst Assefa, 29, of Ethiopia, defended her title and broke the women-only world record with a time of 2:15:41. It was the third consecutive year that the women-only record has fallen at the TCS London Marathon.

Krista Drechsler of Santa Rosa pointed not just to the record by Sawe, but that the second-place finisher, Yomif Kejelcha of Ethiopia, ran sub-2 hours, too.

"I think it's wild that two people got it done on the same day and third place still also broke the previous world record," she wrote. "Good competition can get it done! Obviously inspirational to the running community as people were waiting to see it happen."

Drechsler is no stranger to elite level running or the marathon distance. A former UC Davis standout, she won the 2023 Santa Rosa Marathon in a time of 2:57:33.

In post-race interviews, Sawe credited Kejelcha, 28, who did what he did in his first ever marathon, with pulling out his competitive juices. It was the side by side nature of how the race unfolded that paved the way for the magic to happen, Sawe said.

"For sure, racing with Yomif made a difference. What I did (Sunday), it's because of him. He tried his best and I tried my best. We pushed to our limits and we ran sub-two," he told The Guardian.

A long time coming, this could prove to be a real moment in running, fans and followers of the sport said.

And if fans need one more reason to take note of the running world right now, look no further than Vinny Mauri.

Who?

On the same day that Sawe did his work and Kejelcha followed right behind, American Mauri, a guy who ran for Arizona State University but today trains with no coach and no sponsor, ripped off a 2:05:54 at the Glass City Marathon in Toledo. Mauri, 25, didn't have the competition that Sawe and Kejelcha enjoyed, but instead ran solo for the entire race … to the fourth best finish for an American runner ever. In his marathon debut.

So inspiration is out there for the taking if anyone is looking for it.

Mike Wortman, a former distance coach at Santa Rosa Junior College and a member of the course team at the California International Marathon in Sacramento, said the 4-minute mile barrier seemed impenetrable for years … until it wasn't. After Roger Bannister ran a 3:59 in 1954, faster and faster times seemed to quickly follow.

So ingrained is that notion, it actually has a name: "The Roger Bannister Effect."

"Guys were at 4:01 for years and stuck there," Wortman said. "And after that, there was a cascade of runners doing it. A lot of this is the psychological aspect … that barrier that we think is impossible to break, the brain starts looking at that, saying, ‘Maybe I can push that little bit deeper, maybe I can red-line it a little bit more.' It allows us to make those shifts."

It's real, said Julia Stamps Mallon, a Santa Rosa High grad and an All-American at Stanford University and one of the most decorated high school runners ever to come from Sonoma County.

"From a competitive perspective, I think it ends up raising the bar," Stamps Mallon, the distance coach at Cardinal Newman High School, said.

"When a barrier is broken, it's pretty crazy just to see that people aren't as concerned about it any more," she said. "The barrier becomes approachable to people. They are not scared of the ‘What if.'"

Yes, the human spirit and the magic of the body and mind was the star of Sunday's show, but so too were more pedestrian elements like footwear and food.

"Super shoes are getting more and more crazy over the last 10 years since the carbon-plated shoes came into affect. There have been huge advances there," Wortman said. "And nutrition has been a big piece."

Gone are the days of bottles filled with water and a gel packet or two, he said.

Today it is electrolytes and 100-120 grams of carbohydrates per hour on the course.

And those habits are borne out in training, Joseph said. So athletes can train harder, recover faster and keep going at a pace and in a training program that in years past might have seemed unsustainable.

And those improvements, too, can translate into the lives of mere mortals. Better pre-race nutrition, smarter during-workout habits - those things can help all of we Average Joes, too. Back to that idea of Plan A and Plan B goals that Joseph mentioned. We all have them, so why not look to the stars of the sport as a way to chase a little magic, too.

Watching fellow humans do the previously unthinkable can't help but light a fire, Stamps Mallon said.

"You think, ‘Instead of doing my six miles, maybe I should be challenging myself a little more," she said. "I think it excites people."

You can reach Staff Columnist Kerry Benefield at 707-526-8671 or kerry.benefield@pressdemocrat.com. On Instagram @kerry.benefield.

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