Track and field doesn't get the news coverage of other sports, so sometimes I don't learn of world records until well after the fact. The other day, by accident, I learned that the marathon world record was broken more than a year ago. On 28 September 2008, in Berlin, Ethiopian distance runner Haile Gebrselassie broke his own record of 2:04:26 with a time of 2:03:59. That chops more than a second per mile off the record. Gebrselassie's average speed was 12.68 miles per hour (some people can't ride their bike that fast!) and his mile pace was a ridiculous 4:43.72. How many people in the world can run a single mile in 4:43.72? Gebrselassie ran 26 of them, consecutively! (A marathon is 26.21875 miles.)
When I was born, on 7 April 1957, the world record in the marathon was 2:17:39. When I began training for my first marathon, in September 1996, the world record was 2:06:50. It has come down almost three minutes in 13 years. Here is a news story about the current record. Here is a video recap of the race.
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 