Mark Kiptoo Sets an Over-50 Half-Marathon World Best in San Sebastián

Mark Kiptoo celebrated his 50th birthday on June 21, and on Sunday, Oct. 4, he won the San Sebastián half-marathon in 1:03:57. No man over 50 has ever covered the distance faster. Iraitz Arrospide of Spain was second, 54 seconds back in 1:04:51, and the previous over-50 best, which Donostitik put at 1:06:17, came down by more than two minutes.

His lifetime best, 1:00:29, is from March 2011, so 15 and a half years later he is only 3:28 slower, a drop of 5.7 percent. Distance runners typically lose 0.5 to 1 percent a year between 35 and 60, the slide that age-grade tables are built to account for, and at that rate Kiptoo would have given up somewhere between eight and 15 percent over the same stretch. He has run quicker this year, too: in March, three months before turning 50, he won the Azkoitia-Azpeitia half in 1:03:17.

Kiptoo wore bib No. 1, and the local runner Joseba Díaz set the pace for the opening part of a rainy race, with Kiptoo third at 5K in 15:22. Just past 7K only Arrospide was still with him, and not for much longer. He reached 10K in 30:21 and took 30:19 for the next 10K, then closed the last 1.1K at just under 3:00 per kilometer, as quick as anything he ran all morning. Over the full distance he averaged 3:02 per kilometer, or 4:53 per mile. World Masters Athletics keeps official masters road records only for the marathon and race walks, so the time stands as a world best rather than a ratified record.

At 41, in March 2018, Kiptoo won Azkoitia-Azpeitia in 1:01:04, a few seconds inside the over-40 best Haile Gebrselassie had set. That October he ran 2:07:50 in Frankfurt, faster than any man over 40 had run a marathon, a time Kenenisa Bekele has since lowered, running 2:04:15 at the 2024 London Marathon. Over 45 he holds the fastest marathon time on record, 2:09:10 at the Seoul Marathon in March 2024, at 47. He won Zurich three years running from 2023, the last time at 48 in 2:09:16.

He was 27 and serving in the Kenyan air force when an inter-wing race, a competition between units, got him into athletics, and within a few years he was racing for Kenya on the track. He ran his 5,000m best of 12:53.46 in August 2010, took bronze over the distance at the Commonwealth Games that October and won the African 5,000m title in 2012.

Maitane Melero won the women’s race in 1:15:44, ahead of Switzerland’s Janice Studler (1:18:19) and María Lázaro (1:18:27). Registrations reached 5,200, the most the race has had.

The official over-50 marathon record belongs to South Africa’s Titus Mamabolo, who ran 2:19:29 in Durban in July 1991, just after his own 50th birthday. It has stood for 35 years.