The Warm-Up

Going Bananas

The coverage of the 2019 Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront Marathon featured incredible performances by newly-crowned Canadian champions Dayna Pidhoresky and Trevor Hof bauer, but those championship-winning races weren’t the only crazy results. For about the first 15k of the race, a man in a banana costume could be seen running with the elite Canadian women. That was Melvin Nyairo of the U. S., who eventually parted ways with the women marathoners and continued on to record a 1:15:35 in the half-marathon. The time earned Nyairo the world record for the fastest half-marathon while dressed as a fruit . His finishing time was only a little over two minutes slower than his PB at the half, and it was good enough for 35th overall out of almost 10,000 runners. Nyairo was even sponsored, with Chiquita Brand International (his costume had a blue Chiquita sticker on the front) awarding him with a year’s supply of free bananas. In addition to Nyairo’s accomplishment, the stwm saw 13 other successful Guinness World Records fall for a total of 14, one more than the 2018 edition of the race.

Medals and Records in Doha

The 2019 iaaf Track and Field World Championships saw several fantastic results from Canadian athletes. Team Canada took home five medals, and several athletes set Canadian records along the way. Sprinter Andre De Grasse got back to his winning ways, grabbing a bronze in the 100m and silver in the 200m. Evan Dunfee braved the brutal Qatari heat in the men’s 50k race walk and won a bronze medal. Mohammed Ahmed had another stellar performance, winning bronze in a gritt y battle for the men’s 5,000m crown. Six days later, Ahmed improved on his own Canadian 10,000m record when he broke 27 minutes for the first time, placing sixth with a time of 26:59.35. Seasoned decathlete Damian Warner added another medal to his resume, bringing home a bronze and bumping his world championships tally to three medals for his career.

Lastly, Canada’s record-breaking star of 2019, Gabriela DeBues-Stafford, was at it again in Doha. In 2019, DeBues-Stafford set eight national records, and she didn’t let the bright lights of the world championships slow her down. In the women’s blisteringly f ast 1,500m f inal, DeBues-St a f ford r a n 3:56.12 – another Canadian record and good enough for sixth place.

Eliud Kipchoge Breaks Two Hours

The biggest running news of 2019 came in October at the ineos 1:59 Challenge in Vienna. Eliud Kipchoge ran 42. 4k behind a rotating team of 41 pacers in his second attempt at breaking the two-hour barrier in the marathon. In 2017, at Nike’s Breaking2 project in Italy, Kipchoge came ever so close, f inishing in an unofficial record of 2:00:25, just one second per mile off of a subtwo-hour run. This time around, Kipchoge did much more than just shave off the 26 seconds he needed to sneak under the barrier, smashing his previous time and clocking an incredible 1:59:40. Kipchoge’s feat gar nered attention from around the globe, and it is the crowning achievement of his already golden career.— CR