A Marathon World Record ! ! !

There was a world record set this weekend for the marathon. No, I am not talking about Haile Gebrselassie in Berlin. He ran a few minutes slower than his world record. And, no, there was not a woman who broke Paula Radcliffe's world record either. It took place at the Fox Cities Marathon in Appleton, WI. Most siblings to complete a marathon in under 8 hours. And the record is now 16 siblings. An Oshkosh, WI family broke the record this weekend beating out a family from Ireland who held the record at 15 siblings. Interestingly enough, the Irish family beat the record held by a different family from Oshkosh, WI as well. They had 13 siblings. One of the family members from the first family in Oshkosh actually gave the idea to the second family since some of them went to High School together. If you want to read more, see here. To make it more impressive, each sibling ran the marathon in under 5:30 with 2 running near 3:10.

There are many odd marathon world records out there. When I ran the Grand Rapids Marathon 2 years ago, someone was trying to break the world record for fastest marathon ran on stilts. Every month of so, you can see a new one listed or linked on Runner's World.

I will not be breaking any world records in the marathon anytime soon. I only have 3 siblings and I am not sure I could even walk on stilts plus I don't do any other crazy tings that could even be thought of for a marathon world record. But I did have a good tempo run today.

Since it is taper time, i decided to only go 4 miles by myself. Mile 1 was fast to start out with at 7:36, then I was able to push out a 7:08, 7:06, and a final mile of 7:02. Mike was not there to push me the final mile to go under 7:00 but it was still good. Temps were a bit higher today as well. 77 F out and slightly overcast. This may be the last hard run I do before the marathon. I will still do some speed work to keep the legs fresh but nothing too much to tire them out. The plan is for a 13 miler this weekend.

It doesn't seem to be cooling off as quickly as I would like it to be here in the upper Midwest. I know some of you are planning on running up here in a marathon soon. Chicago comes to mind for about 45,000 of you. Well, it is over 2 weeks out and the weather can change on a dime here so no need to worry . . .yet. Hopefully my race will be cool, at least that is what I am hoping for.