Half Marathon victory for Martin Fagan in Austin, Texas

Martin Fagan was the best of a very competitive elite field to take first place in a top class half marathon in Austin, Texas on Sunday 25th January and set a new event record with a time of 61:05, shaving 11 seconds off the previous record set in 1999.

For the record, Belgium’s Monder Rizka was second in 61:47, with last year’s winner and Martin’s training partner, Andrew Lemoncello of Scotland third in 61:52. Eric Chirchir of Kenya kept the elite field competitive and placed fourth just one second behind Lemoncello.

Heading into the race, Martin and training partner Lemoncello made no secret of the fact they wanted to break the 10-year-old event record of 1:01:16. After the start in perfect racing conditions, a pack of five runners, including Rizki, Lemoncello and Fagan, blasted through the first four miles in 18:39. Martin then threw in an amazing 4:18 split to cruise through five miles in 22:59 and separated himself from the pack. By the time he hit the 10km mark in 28:49, he had opened a 10-second lead on the chase pack.

"At around 10K, it's kind of tough, because you realize that you have another seven miles to go," Martin said. "I kind of looked around to see if I could get help, but they didn't make an effort to catch up to me, so I decided to run this one on my own to the end."

"It's hard on your own, hard to keep the focus," he said, "but I headed out front and felt good, and I figured I might as well keep this pace going."

Working the downhill sections between miles seven and eight, he averaged 4:41 per mile, exactly the pace he needed to go under the record while stretching his lead on the pack to 20 seconds. He was five seconds off record pace at the 10-mile mark, but a 4:34 surge to mile 11 put him ahead again. Sensing the record was his to break, he scorched through the last two miles to set a personal best time for the half marathon and break the 1999 event record.

Martin’s winning time is incredible for a half marathon and only 5 seconds off the long-standing record held by John Treacy, demonstrating what a truly World-class athlete he is.