Breaking 1:39

In the fifth and final part of the INEOS 1:59 documentary series, Eliud Kipchoge admits that, on the morning of his race in Vienna back in October, he doubted whether or not he would actually be able to break the two-hour barrier for the marathon. I guess I felt something similar as I took my bike downtown to meet Elin and race two loops along the banks of the Ume River.

After completing the first 10k in 44 minutes, we discovered that someone had cleaned away our drinks so, with only two Maurten gels as fuel, the second half of the race was a rather dry affair until the crossing of the finishing line. However, not only did we meet our agreed goal of setting a new PR by running in under 1 hour and 39 minutes, we managed to significantly move the goal posts for the future. With Elin spurting ahead during the last kilometres of the race, she was able to finish in 1:34:50 while I was about a minute slower at 1:35:48 (which is still almost 10 minutes faster than my previous PR from Stockholm last year).