2007 – End of Year Reviews – Road Running and Race Walks

Monte-Carlo – The respected track and field statisticians, A. Lennart Julin and Mirko Jalava continue their end of season review, with the 2007 competitive highlights of the road events, the Road Running and Race Walks – Part Five of eight.

MEN – Road – Road Running

The Half Marathon is in a stage of rapid progress and the 2007 World Championships held in Udine in mid-October was something special as it became the beginning of a new era, the era of "Sub-60 minutes is not so special anymore". This as all the first seven runners – representing five different nations – finished between 58:59 and 59:33.

To this it should be added that 2007 had three more races – Den Haag, Ras Al-Khaimah and Berlin – that saw sub-59:00 winning times and six more races produced performances below one hour. So those kinds of times are quickly becoming commonplace and the trend of improvement continuous deeper down in the World list where 2007 was the first year ever when it took sub-61:00 to get into the top-50.