Josh Kerr Nearly Broke the World Record in a 1,000m Time Trial Before His Budapest Win

Josh Kerr’s season finished in Budapest on Sept. 13, where he took the 1,500m title at World Athletics’ new Ultimate Championship. He clocked 3:29.35, came past Yared Nuguse with 300m to go and held off Cameron Myers by 0.33 seconds, and we covered the race the morning after. On Friday he posted his last hard session before that race to YouTube, a solo 1,000m in thin air that he covered in 2:12.66.

He ran it in Albuquerque, on the University of New Mexico track, the base for the altitude work behind his summer, and it was the final session of his track season. Before the start he set out a fairly modest plan by his standards. He wanted to reach 800m in about 1:49 without straining, then lift the pace clearly over the last 200m, and said a finish somewhere in the 2:15s would satisfy him. The splits overlaid from his watch show him through 400m in 54.42 and 800m in 1:48.25, a little ahead of the plan, before he covered the final 200m in 24.41. Kerr admitted afterward that the 2:15 target “was probably sandbagging a little bit.”

The time leaves him 0.83 seconds outside the world record. Wanyonyi set 2:11.83 at the Monaco Diamond League on July 10, the first time the Kenyan had raced the distance, and World Athletics’ report notes that it ended Noah Ngeny’s 27-year hold on the mark.

A solo trial timed on a watch cannot be set beside a record run in a race. Altitude, on the other hand, made Kerr’s job harder. Someone in Kerr’s group put the altitude penalty at “second and a half at least” moments after he finished, and the video’s description invites viewers to estimate in the comments what the run is worth without the altitude.

LetsRun.com’s conversion specialist, John Kellogg, gave a firmer figure before the mile record in July. He told LetsRun.com that running at Albuquerque’s 5,335 feet adds three to four seconds to a mile. Spread across 1,000m, that comes to roughly two seconds, enough on paper to take this session under Wanyonyi’s time. Kellogg had pointed Kerr toward the distance in the same LetsRun piece. “Josh Kerr can run 3:42 at a very minimum,” he said. “And if he can’t do that, then put him in a 1000 as he’ll break the world record there.”

It also compares well with the workout Kerr posted before London. In the 1,200m trial he ran in July, finishing in 2:42.45 behind Brannon Kidder’s pacing, his split at 1,000m was 2:16.70. This one was four seconds quicker over the same distance, although it was paced for a shorter effort. He went on to break the mile world record in London with 3:42.66.

What pleased Kerr most was how much he had left for the finish. He said it “puts like a front run close back into the arsenal a little bit,” and added straight away that it was “still not plan A.” Budapest bore that out. He sat in the pack through a slow 1:55.29 at 800m, moved on the last lap and needed only 26.02 for the final 200m.

The same day as the trial, Myers won the Diamond League final in Brussels, beating Cole Hocker and Jakob Ingebrigtsen. Kerr was not in that race, and someone in his group joked on camera that they should have been. Budapest was the second time since August that Myers had chased Kerr home, after the Commonwealth Games mile in Glasgow.

His season was built around a handful of races: a world indoor title over 3,000m in Toruń, the mile record, Commonwealth gold and the Budapest win. He closed the video by thanking viewers and promising to “keep it going for 2027.”