Issue 288, sponsored by Bombas
This is a special Boston Marathon newsletter, so I can avoid covering the race a week after the fact. Fast Women will return to its regular once-a-week schedule on Monday.
Hellen Obiri repeats in Boston, likely secures Olympic spot
Kenya’s Hellen Obiri and Sharon Lokedi both made their marathon debuts at the 2022 New York City Marathon. For Lokedi, the race went better than expected, and she pulled off a surprise win. Obiri didn’t run as well as she had hoped and finished sixth, but she learned some valuable lessons in the process.
Lokedi planned to run the 2023 Boston Marathon, but she had to pull out due to injury, which freed up some appearance money. That opened the door for Obiri to make a late decision to run Boston, and it ended up being her breakout marathon. She won, and she hasn’t stopped winning since.
Obiri and Lokedi met again, at the 2023 New York City Marathon. Obiri won that, too. Lokedi stayed with her until about 600m to go and finished third.
Earlier this month, Athletics Kenya narrowed its list of potential Olympic marathoners down to six. They can send only three athletes, so Boston and this weekend’s London Marathon will play a key role in selecting the team. Obiri and Lokedi were the only two athletes on Athletics Kenya’s list that ran Boston this year.
So it was fitting that the race came down to a battle between the two. An enormous pack of 19 hit halfway in 1:12:33. At 35K, there were still 12 runners in it. But between 35K and 40K, Obiri and Lokedi split an incredible 15:06. Another Kenyan, Edna Kiplagat, was able to hang with them the longest, but they covered the 24th mile in a mind-blowing 4:41, which was a bit too much for Kiplagat.
With just over a mile to go, a little farther out than last year, Obiri made her move. She began to pull away from Lokedi, and in the same spot as last year, about 1K from the finish, she took a look back to check how effective her move was. Obiri held her lead until the finish and won in 2:22:37. Lokedi kept fighting and finished second, eight seconds back. Obiri ran the 4.47 miles from 35K to the finish averaging 4:53/mile. Her last mile was a 4:51.
If her three World Marathon Major victories over the past year aren’t enough for Obiri to be selected to Kenya’s Olympic marathon team, I don’t know what is. And at the post-race press conference, Obiri made the case for Lokedi to be selected as well, saying, “The Paris course is a tough course. It’s even tougher than Boston. If we have Sharon as my teammate in Paris, we will have a fantastic women’s race.”
On Sunday, Ruth Chepngetich, Brigid Kosgei, and Peres Jepchirchir will run the London Marathon, and after that, everything is up to the selectors. (The other contender, Rosemary Wanjiru, finished second in Tokyo in 2:16:14.)
After Kiplagat, 44, got dropped in the 24th mile, she slowed down, but she held on well enough to finish third in 2:23:21, 43 seconds ahead of Buze Diriba of Ethiopia, who was fourth.
Since she first ran and won Boston in 2017, Kiplagat has had more good performances than bad ones here. She struggled in the extreme conditions in 2018, finishing ninth, but she bounced back with a runner-up finish in 2019. In 2021, the next year the race was held, she crossed the finish line second, but was retroactively awarded the win, after Diana Kipyokei tested positive for a banned substance. In 2022, she took fourth. Last year, she was sick and finished an uncharacteristic 30th place. And this year, she showed that she can still hang with the best of them.
The best masters athletes are still competitive in open fields, so they don’t necessarily focus on how they stack up in their age group. But it was not easy to break into the top three in the 40–44 age-group. Kiplagat took the win, Sara Hall was second (2:27:58), and Des Linden (2:28:27) was third. (Interview with Obiri, with comments from her daughter, Tonya | Results)
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Emma Bates is the top American in Boston, again
For the second consecutive year, Emma Bates was the top American woman in Boston. Last year she took fifth; this year she finished 12th in 2:27:14. This was the first year since 2010 that no American women finished in the top 10. There are a couple of contributing factors. First, this year’s race had a really strong field. Second, the Olympic Marathon Trials were only 10 weeks earlier. That meant that Boston was not anyone’s top priority this year, and it limited the depth of the American field, because a lot of Trials runners opted not to double back.
Once Bates realized she wasn’t going to be able to run the Trials due to injury, she turned her focus to racing well in Boston. She felt good enough to high-five some Wellesley College students as the pack passed through the scream tunnel, and she stayed with the lead group, for the most part, until the 21st mile. After going through halfway in 1:12:33, Bates ran the second half in 1:14:41.
She said at the post-race press conference that she had hoped for a higher finish, but she was proud of her effort, coming back from injury.
Sara Hall, who turned 41 on the day of the race, was the next American woman across the line, taking 15th (2:27:58). She stuck with the lead pack until the 17th mile, and then was mostly on her own the rest of the way. She said she really felt the heat on the course and told FloTrack that she wants to race a cold marathon in the fall. “I might go to Antarctica next,” she joked.
In an Instagram post, Hall said that three weeks out from Boston, she was dealing with some sharp IT band pain, and she thought she was going to have to skip the race. But she took six days completely off, and the problem resolved itself. Hall is still accepting donations for the birthday fundraiser she did in conjunction with her race.
Des Linden was the third American woman across the line, finishing 16th (2:28:27). Linden let the lead group go early on, and at 10K, she was 53 seconds back. But by running a relatively steady pace, she reeled them back in mid-race. Jenny Simpson was the next American, completing her first marathon in 2:31:39, for 18th. And Katie Kellner (22nd, 2:38:19) rounded out the top five.
Caroline Rotich, who won this race in 2015, must have realized early on it wasn’t her day. At the Trials, she finished sixth and was in the mix to make the team until late in the race. But yesterday, her last recorded split was the half marathon, which she hit in 1:18:53.

Additional winners
Eden Rainbow-Cooper, 22, of Great Britain had a breakthrough day, winning the wheelchair race in 1:35:11. She started wheelchair racing only two years ago, and before yesterday, her highest finish in a major marathon was fourth at last year’s New York City Marathon. She took seventh in Boston last year.
Rainbow-Cooper is unsponsored, and she said that her family and friends help her raise the money to purchase her racing chair. She earned $40,000 for the win, and she’ll compete in London on Sunday as well. Switzerland’s Manuela Schär, who has won this race four times, finished second in 1:36:41.
The following athletes won their respective categories in the Para Athletics division:
T11/T12 (vision impairment): Joyce Cron, 4:27:46
T13 (vision impairment): Lisa Thompson, 4:00.58
T45/T46 (upper limb impairment): Adrienne Keane, 4:44:26
T61/T63/T43 (lower limb impairment): Tatsiana Khvitsko-Trimborn, 4:00.04
T62/T64 and T42/T44 (lower limb impairment): Kelly Bruno, 3:31:30, course record
T35–T38 (coordination impairment): Cristina Burbach, 3:41:17
Liz Willis, who won the T61–T64 division from 2021–23, left the race via an ambulance after being hit by a faster runner from wave one at the mile seven water station. She said in an Instagram post that it was her first DNF in 27 years of running. The fact that this happened at all makes me wonder if the start times need to be further adjusted to make the race safe for everyone.
In addition to Edna Kiplagat, whom I mentioned above, the following athletes won their age groups: Amy Crain (45–49, 2:57:18), Jenifer Martin (50–54, 3:04:59), Lisa Veneziano (55–59, 2:56:36), Dolores Valencia (60–64, 3:11:06), Becky Backstrom (65–69, 3:26:13), Dawn Ebbetts (70–74, 3:46:02), Gayle Robinson (75–79, 5:02:55), and Carol Wright (80+, 5:54:31). I love that there were 60 finishers in the 70–74 age group and Ebbetts edged out Yuko Gordon by only 38 seconds.

Other Boston Marathon Notes
Hellen Obiri became the first woman to repeat as Boston Marathon champion since Kenya’s Catherine Ndereba did so with wins in 2004 and 2005.
This isn’t the kind of thing I would notice on my own, but RunnerSpace pointed out that the shoes Obiri raced in didn’t have laces.
Ryan Montgomery won the nonbinary division in 2:27:45.
If I had realized the fast guy in a banana costume was going for the banana world record, I would have been more invested. Apparently he pulled it off. His name is Matt Seidel, he’s not related to fellow costume runner Molly Seidel, as far as I know, and he ran 2:35:38.
Comedian Phoebe Robinson finished the race in 5:53:19, and I like how the race app tells me that she raised $15,589, too.
After helping advocate for pregnancy and postpartum deferrals in Boston, Fiona English ran this year’s race in 3:43:15.
I’ve heard talk of a tailwind at this year’s race, but standing on the course for almost five hours, I noticed no wind until about 1:40 p.m., when most of the field had already passed halfway. Unless it was windy somewhere else, I’m not convinced the runners saw any benefit. I mostly just noticed how warm it was, with the temperature getting up to 70 degrees. It’s comical how it’ll be 50 degrees for weeks leading up to this race, and on race day, we get one of the first nice (for not running) days of the year. I was just before halfway, and a lot of people looked pretty miserable already.
In this video, Dakotah Lindwurm said that being in Boston after making the Olympic marathon team is a completely different experience. She was in town for the 5K and said that trying to run along the Charles River during marathon weekend was nearly impossible, which hasn’t been the case in the past.
I enjoyed the Boston Globe item (scroll down) on six-year-old Ali Penaranda, who set up a lemonade stand in front of her apartment on Commonwealth Avenue during the race. She had help from her friend, Sunny Kim, 6, and her cousin, Daniel Valerio, 12. This is the third year they’ve done this, and each year, they choose a charity to support with the money they earn. Last year, they bought diapers for Boston families in need. And this year, it sounds like they’ll be supporting foster children in Costa Rica.
I’m glad to hear that the golden retriever meetup, in honor of the late Spencer, the official dog of the 2022 Boston Marathon, has become an annual event. This year they raised money for canine cancer research.
Des Linden and Kara Goucher discussed their respective Boston Marathon weekend races on the latest episode of Nobody Asked Us, which was released earlier today.
I took roughly 12,000 photos during yesterday’s race, and I’ll be posting the decent ones on Instagram as soon as I can get through them. I’m thankful Amy Roberts took photos at the finish line, because there were still 19 runners in the lead pack when they went by me. I’m also thankful to Sarah Lorge Butler for editing two newsletters in three days.
Alison
Alison, thank you so much for featuring the information about the age group winners. I'm so inspired by these incredible women athletes of all ages! Love that you make this a focus of your newsletter.
Thank you Alison for always giving the best updates. I have moved to the other side of the world (New Zealand) and have had a hard time getting my latest American running coverage. Grateful to be getting these weekly newsletters! Also please keep putting Para Athletics division results, loved reading about our winners in all groups <3