Jan 15th, 2006 … 58 min 55 sec
Haile Gebrselassie (Ethiopia), king of middle distance running for so many years, shattered the world record in the half marathon with a time of 58 minutes, 55 seconds at P.F. Chang’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Arizona. He lowered the mark by 21 seconds (previous world record 59:16). Gebrselassie also broke the 20K mark, running it in 55:48, He now has a total of 20 world records set in his name.
This happened the same day we were running the Mumbai Marathon.
Gebrselassie’s most recent attempt at a World record came up short, when he won the Amsterdam Marathon on 16 October 16, 2005, in 2:06:20 for his first marathon victory. His time was the fastest in the world last year, and he is currently the IAAF World Ranked number three for road running.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
He is going for the world record in full marathon at the London marathon held on april 23rd.
He was ranked 3 previously, now because of the half marathon record, he is ranked 1 along with jaouad gharib.
http://www.iaaf.org/worldrankings/index.html
Thanks for the update Karthik, and for providing the link to the IAAF rankings website. Haile has moved to #1 now!