Race report: ING New York City Marathon – 6th November 2011

Geoffrey Mutai breaks the course record in 2:05:05, while Firehiwot Dado made an impressive comeback in the women’s race to take the win 2:23:15

The 41st New York marathon once again delivered on athletic performances, running entertainment and overall big event spectacle. This year's race had the biggest starting line up in the race history with 47,107 entrants looking to take on the five boroughs of NYC. Add into the mix the top flight of marathon running looking to position themselves as the best marathon runners in the world as we get close to 2012 and it was always going to be a big race.

2011 has been the year marathon fans have been spoilt with running performances, particularly in the men’s races with not only a new world record but course records being broken all over the world. The Kenyans athletes have very much been at the forefront of this and Geoffrey Mutai in particular is having an amazing year and must now be favourite for the men’s Olympic marathon next year (12th August 2012). Having convincingly broken the course record for Boston in April (HERE ) and weather conditions in New York on race day morning described as perfect, this really was going to a be his race. And it was, the top three male runners all broke the course record, Mutai broke it by 2mins 37 seconds. No one was expecting that. To give you an idea of how quick that was, the Chicago marathon is known as a fast course and the course record was broken there this year (HERE ) in 02:05:37, if Mutai can run 02:05:05 in New York then he may well tear up the streets of Chicago.

At just after mile 20 Mutai left the group of seven men to push on his own, the first 20 miles had been run at a hard fast pace so Mutai must have been feeling good and strong to drop the other runners. How do you drop runners at this stage in the marathon? By running hard it seems, Mutai was knocking out 4.30min miles one after the other and let me tell you the race gets hard near the end as Central Park is not flat. Mutai ran a negative split – a 61:48 2nd half marathon. WOW.

Kenyan Emmanuel Mutai who finished second was able to secure the 2010-2011 World Marathon Majors title and take home $500,000. He finished in 02:06:28 and Ethiopian Tsegaye Kebede took the third spot in 02:07:13. All three men went comfortably under the course record. (RESULTS)

The racing was just as fast and furious in the women’s race, all eyes where on Mary Keitany who started out at a blistering pace and went through the first half of the race on track for a sub 2:17 marathon. Around the 24 mile mark Keitany was passed by Firehiwot Dado and Buzunesh Debra but ran hard to hang onto third place. Dado took the win in 02:23:15 with Debra just behind by four seconds. Keitany looked spent and finished 19 seconds behind Debra.

Jo Pavey finished in 02:28:42 which was slightly slower than her debut race at the London Marathon, but on a much more challenging course. The run will help Jo in her pursuit of one of the three spots in the London 2012 Olympic marathon.

And if you think the race couldn’t get any bigger, well wait and see if the rumours of adding another day of running to the calendar next year are true we could be seeing over 100,000 runners taking to the streets (HERE)

Men's results

Women's results

Click here for full results