18 Fascinating Marathon Facts

1: The current course record for the men is 2:03:05 achieved by Eliud Kipchoge, whilst the women’s is the WR set by Paula Radcliffe of 2:15:25.

2: A Japanese gentleman holds the record for the world slowest marathon: 54 years, 8 months, 6 days, 5 hrs 32 minutes. Why so long? He dropped out of the 1912 Stockholm Olympics but told no one, and was then invited back some 50 odd years later to cross the finish line!

3: Dick Beardsley and Inge Simonsen shared victory in the first ever London marathon (2:11:48) in 1981.

4: In 2016, NYC held the largest marathon ever which had over 50,000 finishers!

5: The oldest marathon is Boston which celebrated its 110-year anniversary in 2017.

6: The London marathon is the largest annual fundraising event in the world. Runners have raised over £770 million for charity since it began back in 1981. The highest amount raised by a single runner was £2.33 million in 2011 by a man named Steve Chalke – incredible!

7: Tim Peake ran a marathon in space last year on the same day as the London Marathon and achieved a time of 3:35:21. Amazingly during the time it took him to run the marathon, his space shuttle had orbited the earth twice.

8: There are 84 pubs lining the London marathon route.

9: Lloyd Scott, now MBE, has the record for the longest London marathon at 27 days. Lloyd was dressed as Brian the Snail from magic roundabout and crawled the entire 26.2mile distance. He managed to raise over £20,000 for charity in the process.

10: New Balance is the title sponsor for the 2018 race, taking over from long term sponsor Adidas.

11: The first Boston marathon was only measured at 24.5 miles. This was before the marathon distance was officially made 26.2 miles.

12: It is the world record day for the number of Guinness World Records attempted in a day.

13: Shannon Fousy from Hemel Hempstead was the millionth finisher to cross the finish line of the London Marathon. She finished in 5:45:18.

14: Abebe Bikilia was a two-time Olympic Champion all whilst running barefoot!

15: There are Japanese monks which live on Mount Hiei which practice the challenge of running a marathon a day for 100 days for 7 years.

16: The youngest person to ever run a marathon was Wesley Paul at the age of 8 years old. He ran NYC marathon in an unbelievably epic 3hrs and 31secs.

17: There is a Man vs. Horse marathon where by runners literally race against horses to complete the distance. A human won last in 2007 his name was Florian Holzinger and he beat the horse by over 10 minutes.

18: The Barkley marathon is one of the most infamous marathons in the world. It is said the course is hugely undulating and filled with briars which are said to ‘turn a man’s legs to raw meat’; oh and you can expect to cover a cumulative elevation gain that’s almost twice the height of Everest! Pretty extreme right? Want to give it a try? Well good luck, it’s so infamous that you can’t even sign up to the race – you are selected in a secret fashion for one of only 35 places.