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13 Reasons Why: Kenenisa Bekele Failed to Break the Marathon World Record

By Stephen Kersh

April 25, 2017

Kenenisa Bekele did not break the world record in the marathon last weekend. Nor did he even win the London Marathon. Those are both not good things he managed to do. Why would someone ever want to do two bad things? After I do one bad thing, I always make sure to do one good thing to counteract the bad thing. Say I were to run a red light, well I would definitely stop at the next encountered red light because that is a good thing to do. If I ever accidentally listened to an entire Twenty One Pilots song, I would immediately find Nas and make him rap the entire Illmatic to me.

So, when Bekele did two bad things during his race last weekend, I doubt it was ever his intention.

Here is a list of very plausible explanations for his double-bad behavior.

  • He read Oliver Twist. On Saturday night and quickly became disenchanted with negative effects of industrialism on 19th-century England, thus creating an existential crisis hinging on the prospect of winning a race and setting a world record somewhere which he now saw in an unpleasant light.
  • He got confused. He thought getting second and not running a world record was what everyone wanted.
  • He drank tainted drank. All of his fluids along the course were tampered with by a competitor who added a teeny-tiny amount of concrete in each of his bottles. These trace amounts of concrete added up over the duration of the race and he ended up racing the last 15K of the race with a stomach full of concrete.
  • He ran the last 22K with a torn ACL. Watch the contact with Ghirmay Ghebreslassie at this 20K aid station. That’s the type of contact that could tear a man’s ACL. He muscled through it to prove a point. “I am the toughest man.”

  • He forgot to carbo-load. Plain and simple, Kenny B spaced out the proverbial Pasta Feed before his big race. He missed out on storing up crucial glycogen in the run-up to foot race and, obviously, bonked.
  • His stomach was upset. We’ve all eaten a bad Tesco mayo sandwich the day before a major race. Right?
  • He got tired. Running fast is hard, and running fast for more than three seconds is nearly impossible. If we fault him for not being able to run fast for two hours, we all need to get a grip on reality.
  • He got heckled real good. “You’re not that fast!” was yelled somewhere by Tower Bridge and that sent him into a spiral.
  • He made a bet. In the days leading up to the marathon, Bekele made a bet with an old friend from grade school. The bet was whether or not Bekele could run 2:05:57. He ran 2:05:57 and won the bet. The prize was pride – which he will have forever, unlike a world record.
  • He forgot to wear his lucky singlet. Hence his unlucky, and very real, nipple chaffing.
  • He doesn’t have a netflix subscription. The nipple chafing protection and the importance of carbo-loading are two things that he would’ve known about, if he watched The Office. So we’re starting to think that he doesn’t have a Netflix subscription and if we get that confirmed, we can help start a GoFundMe to change that. It’s for the sake of the world record.

Stephen Kersh

Former collegiate runner for University of Portland and Georgetown, currently a professional runner weighing sponsorship offers from no one. Enjoys using the internet to message Scott Olberding and Paul Snyder about bad story ideas. Does not assume he will work at Citius much longer due to the bad story ideas. He once gave a TED Talk titled "Twitter: How We Are All Just Shouting into a Vacuum" to his best friend and his girlfriend on the beaches of Connecticut.