By David Melly
March 5, 2025
Technically, the U.S. Half Marathon Championships didn’t boast the earliest road race on Sunday morning. The 18th edition of the Tokyo Marathon, also the first World Marathon Major of 2025, got underway the morning of March 2nd in Japan, which actually was Saturday night for American viewers.
Despite what the broader news media wants you to think, Harry Styles wasn’t the only runner in the field. 30-year-old Sutume Kebede defended her title in 2:16:31, making her Tokyo’s first ever back-to-back champion. Relative newcomer (to the marathon, at least) Tadese Takele took down a field that included defending champ Benson Kipruto and track world record holder Joshua Cheptegei to claim his first major victory in 2:03:23, a one-second improvement on his PB from his debut in 2023.
2024 was a turbulent year in the marathon, where the event was shaken up by seismic changes ranging from the untimely death of Kelvin Kiptum to the apparent decline of Eliud Kipchoge to the barrier-breaking Chicago run by Ruth Chepngetich. So where do we stand at the outset of the 2025 season? It’s largely too soon to tell, but the Tokyo results did generate some interesting takeaways.
Ruth Chepngetich has moved the goalposts—for better or worse. Just three years ago, Sutume Kebede’s 2:16:31 winning time would’ve been the third fastest marathon performance of all time. Today, it barely cracks the top 20. And while Kebede went out hard, hitting halfway in 66:20, she actually went out over two minutes slower than Chepngetich did in her record-setting performance. One could argue that Kebede went out stupid-fast and paid the price, running 17:20 (2:26 pace) from 35k to 40k, but it seems a lot less foolhardy when the mark of comparison is now sub-2:10. Until this decade, a race where five women break 2:20 would’ve been remarkable; now, it barely makes a blip. That’s not to take away from Kebede’s strong run or the depth of this field, as much as it is a reminder of just how much the event has changed in a comparatively short time.
Benson Kipruto is human. The last time Kipruto, thrice a WMM champ and an Olympic bronze medalist, finished seventh in a marathon was five years and eight races ago, at the 2020 COVID-adjusted London Marathon. That was also the last time he finished off the podium. But while Kipruto didn’t even run that slowly (2:05:46) in Tokyo, this is the first time in a while he’s been so far from the taste of victory in a marathon major. The post-Kipchoge battle for the event’s top dog isn’t going to end any time soon.
The transition from track to roads works really well… for Tadese Takele. If the headline you read coming out of Tokyo was “2021 track Olympian continues his successful transition to the marathon with a major victory,” it would be understandable if you assumed it was talking about Joshua Cheptegei. But after a smattering of success in the steeplechase, including a World U20 silver medal and Olympic berth in 2021, Takele has taken to the roads like a fish to water, running 2:03, 2:05, and 2:03 in his first three efforts and clocking his first WMM win with a one-second PB.
The Joshua Cheptegei Marathon Project is still a work in progress. With two world records, two Olympic titles, three World 10,000m golds, and a World XC title to boot, the Ugandan affectionately nicknamed “the Silverback Gorilla” would seem a natural fit to run rampant over any longer distance if, and when, he chooses. But his first two cracks at the marathon haven’t gone perfectly. His debut in Valencia was arguably a disaster, with Cheptegei clocking a 2:08:59 for 37th place via huge positive split. It seemed his goal in Tokyo was confidence building, as he hit halfway with the chase pack in 62:09 and picked off stragglers over the second half to finish ninth in 2:05:59. It’s an improvement, but almost certainly not the ceiling given Cheptegei’s resume.
Not everyone believes in running a negative split. Conventional wisdom—in America, at least—is that the ideal way to run a marathon is to stay within yourself for 20 miles or so, clocking even or slightly negative splits to maximize your chance at your best performance. But Japan’s distance runners have a long and storied history of full-sending every race no matter the consequences, and once again that strategy proved… inconsistent in outcomes, to put it politely. Aoyama Gakuin University runner Aoi Ota went out with the lead pacers and hit halfway in 61:19 (imagine if Stanford or Oregon’s top stud was leading Boston at half this year!) only to slow badly over the next chunk of the race and ultimately drop out at 35k. He wasn’t the only Japanese runner in the field to go out hard and pay the price, and ultimately top Japan honors went to one of the guys with the smallest first-second half gap, as Tsubasa Ichiyama got a new PB of 2:06:00 in 10th splitting 62:44-63:16.
David Melly
David began contributing to CITIUS in 2018, and quickly cemented himself as an integral part of the team thanks to his quick wit, hot takes, undying love for the sport and willingness to get yelled at online.
