Eliud Kipchoge wins Melbourne Marathon<\/a><\/p>\nMarathon legend Eliud Kipchoge has time to slow down and wave at the crowds at the MCG and still break the race record at the Melbourne Marathon.<\/p>\n
She went through halfway in 1:10:29 and then ran the second half in about 1:10:09, giving her a 20-second negative split.<\/p>\n
“We went through halfway in under the time needed to run 2:21, but I wasn’t sure because I felt like I was slowing in the second half as it was warmer, and just the general fatigue of the marathon,” Batt-Doyle said.<\/p>\n
“It was quite warm and we knew going into this week that it was going to be a bit warmer than ideal marathon conditions, but we did what we could do to prepare for that.<\/p>\n
“That’s hydrating a lot beforehand, and every opportunity that there were water cups I was splashing three or four water cups to keep cool.”<\/p>\n
But Batt-Doyle didn’t fade in the conditions, with her quickest 5km split of 16:36 coming between 35km and 40km. She covered the last 2.2km at about 3:14 per kilometre, when she started to sense the record was hers.<\/p>\n
“There is a small hill about 400 to go, and then you turn into the last 150 metres, and I saw the clock and that’s when I really started celebrating,” she said.<\/p>\n
“It was quite emotional. You can think you can do it and hope you can do it, and be on pace to do it, but there is so much that can happen in the last 5 kilometres, or last 1 kilometre or even the last 400 metres.<\/p>\n
“People can cramp and have all sorts of things happen. I feel you can’t really celebrate or have that sense of finish line relief until you actually get there.”<\/p>\n
Batt-Doyle said she was proud to join the list of previous Australian record-holders that included Stenson, Sinead Diver and Benita Willis.<\/p>\n
“I think it’s really validating for the hard work I’ve put in and it feels really special to be part of history, because there have been some fantastic runners before me, and fantastic runners to come,” she said.<\/p>\n
“I really feel honoured, that sums it up. To be in that class of athletes. I’m really proud of that.”<\/p>\n
Kenya’s Amos Kipruto won the men’s race in 2:01:09.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Adelaide’s Izzi Batt-Doyle is Australia’s new marathon queen after breaking the national record with a stunning run at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":924934,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[5654,64,63,143441,5127,492505,2432,588,85],"class_list":["post-924933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-athletics","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australian-record","tag-chicago","tag-izzi-batt-doyle","tag-marathon","tag-sport","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/924933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=924933"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/924933\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/924934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=924933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=924933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=924933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}