On Saturday afternoon, at an inaugural event in New York, two American runners smashed world records in the marathon. Haven’t heard the names Allie Kieffer and Malcolm Richards before? That’s because this was a different kind of marathon—the rarely contested indoor marathon, run on a 200-meter track at the Armory Track & Field Center.
Richards, 33, of San Francisco, ran 2:21:56, bettering Michael Wardian’s 2:27:21, run in 2010. The second-place finisher, Anthony Migliozzi, also broke the previous record by running 2:24:02.
Kieffer, 28, of New York ran 2:44:44 to break Monika Kalicinska’s record of 2:53:53 set in 2014.
Both records are significantly weaker than their outdoor counterparts (2:02:57 for men and 2:15:25 for women), in part because there have been few financial incentives for elite runners to attempt something so crazy.
But Saturday’s prize structure, which awarded $1,000 to the male and female winners and an additional $5,000 to the first man and woman to break the world record, attracted some strong runners.
Advertisement - Continue Reading Belowth at the U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials in February, was able to work with some of his five male competitors for much of the race. Kieffer, who ran in college for Wake Forest and Arizona State, was the lone female entrant in the event and she ran mostly solo. One upside to the repetitive course, however, was that Kieffer could play mental games with her male competitors, setting mid-race goals.
“I’d be like, ‘Let’s go 20 laps before they lap me again,’” Kieffer, who finished fourth overall, said in a post-race interview for armorytrack.com.
Richards said running 211 consecutive laps on an indoor track wasn’t quite as hard as he thought it would be. All of the event's competitors changed directions one hour into the race and ran clockwise to avoid injuries.
“I have to say overall, it was more enjoyable or at least less painful than I thought it might be heading in,” Richards said in his post-race interview.
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“I never listen to music while I run,” Richards said. “I was surprised at how much I enjoyed that, just kind of to get your mind onto something else for a while.”
Kieffer and Richards noted some of the other advantages of running an indoor marathon—more aid stations than one could ever need, spectator support the whole way, no adverse weather conditions, and no hills, other than the bank of the Armory’s track.
The three-day event also featured a relay division, which was far more popular. Runners could choose to be part of a team with two, four, six, or eight members, and they were allowed to divide the running load however they liked.
Urban Athletics fielded the fastest relay team of the event, with eight runners combining to run 2:23:17. On the eight-person Hastings Striders team, 1970 and 1974 New York City Marathon champions Gary Muhrcke and Norbert Sander joined forces to run 3:28:03. Thirty-seven relay teams took part in the event.
