Wanjiru wins London

The London Marathon was yesterday morning, and it turned out to be quite a race. It started around 4am my time, so I did not get to follow it live. I read about it and saw the results a few hours after the finish. The men's winner was Sammy Wanjiru, who is the defending Olympic gold medalist. It was no surprise that he was able to run such a great time - 2:05:10. He broke the course record and beat the runner-up by 10 seconds. Early in the race, the pace was very fast. The lead pack was on pace to break the WR, and I think they came through the half in the 61-62 range. But that took its toll. The top Americans in the race, Meb and Ritz, did not go out quite as fast, and they both ended up with good performances. Meb cracked the top ten with a 2:09:21, good for 9th place, and Ritz was just a hair under 2:10 at 2:09:59. Although now that I look at the official results, I see he is only credited with a 2:10:00. Still a good run for him. I understand that the media coverage of the race was very bad, with announcers mispronouncing names, not knowing mile splits, and being ignorant of the sport of running. What a shame. I also heard that the critical portions of the men's race were not shown in favor of the women who had already finished (they started before the men). So it was just shoddy coverage overall.