Two world records over 25 kilometers were set on Sunday, May 10 in Berlin. This is the story of Mary Keitany, and where she has set her sights after her superb 25km world record! One keen observer of the sport, who was present at this race, believes that he has seen the 2012 gold medalist in the marathon already. His prediction? Mary Keitany.

Mary
Keitany sets sights on the marathon

after her
debut world record in BIG 25 Berlin

After her phenomenal world
record in the BIG 25 Berlin Mary Keitany looked ahead
to her next big goal, which will be the marathon. The 28 year-old Kenyan had
become the first female to clock a sub 1:20 time in a 25 k race, when
she ran 1:19:53 on Sunday in the German
capital. In her first race at the distance Keitany smashed the world record on
the Berlin roads, improving the mark
by a staggering 2:20 minutes. With this
performance she has given another strong indication, that she is capable of
becoming the world’s next great marathon runner. At the
London Olympics in 2012 the
classic race will be the event she hopes to win and an attempt to break Paula
Radcliffe’s legendary world marathon record may also be on the cards in
future.

One of her
elder sisters once motivated Mary Keitany to start running. While Mary Keitany
was born in the Baringo District the daughter of a farmer’s family grew up in
the Koibatek District (both belong to the Rift Valley Province). Keitany has
three sisters and one brother. Her eldest sister started running at school. “I
saw that she was talented and thought that I should try this as well,” says Mary
Keitany. While her sister gave up despite running on national level at school
Mary came through all the way to become the world’s number one road runner.

At the BIG 25
Berlin race Mary
Keitany was honoured with the AIMS/ASICS World Athlete of the Year Award.
In 2009 she had dominated the World Half Marathon Championships and with
a time of 66:36 minutes missed the world record by just eleven
seconds.

Mary Keitany
started running at school but it was not before the age of 18 that she trained
more seriously. She was at secondary school at that time. It was not before the
end of 2006, when she appeared in Europe for the first
time. She ran a half marathon and a road race in
Spain at first. At
that time Mary Keitany was coached by Philip Singoei, who won the Eindhoven
Marathon in 2007 with 2:07:57. “In April 2007
Gianni Demadonna opened a training camp in Iten, which is where Mary lives”,
explains her current coach Gabriele Nicola, who works for Demadonna’s
management.

Mary Keitany
soon joined in and then step by step Gabriele Nicola took over as a coach. “In
Iten I train with boys. My manager pays them to help us in training,” explains
Mary Keitany, whose female training partners include Peninah Arusei, the winner
of the BIG 25 Berlin in 2008 and
2009, and Helena Kirop, who won the Prague Marathon on Sunday. In 2007 Mary
Keitany won the silver medal in the World Half Marathon Championships, but then
pregnancy interrupted her running career.

“My son Jared
was born in June 2008,” says Mary
Keitany. She is married to Charles Koech, who has a 10 k PB of 27:56 and has run
a 61:27 half marathon. “Sometimes we train together. And we have a nanny to look
after our son.”

“When Mary came
back after giving birth we set some goals. The first one was to qualify for the
World Half Marathon Championships 2008 and to run well. The next goal was to win
the Abu
Dhabi half marathon and then we
set our sights on breaking the world 25 k record in
Berlin. All went very
well and she has achieved more than we had expected,” says Gabriele Nicola, who
spends a lot of time overseeing the training of his runners in Iten. “But we
have a team of coaches and physios in Iten so that there is always someone there
to help.”

The next step
will now be the marathon. In autumn Mary Keitany plans to run her debut at the
distance. But already now she is doing milages that suit a marahton runner. “Of
course it can vary a lot, but she has run between 180 and
200
kilometres in her recent training
already”, explains Gabriele Nicola, who intends to add some more kilometres to
this during the preparations for the marathon. “So far my longest training runs
were 30
kilometres“, says Mary Keitany. Asked
about her biggest goals she first mentions the Olympics in
London in 2012. “It
would be huge to win the Olympic gold medal in the marathon.” But there is also
another major dream in the future: “May be one day I am able to attack the world
marathon record,” says Mary Keitany. But she very well knows how tough it will
be to break Paula Radcliffe’s 2:15:25 from London
2003.

“Right now we
can not speak about the marathon world record. But Mary has the potential to go
for it in the future. That does not mean that she will break it. But there are
not many runners who can even think of attacking this record,” says Gabriele
Nicola. “Mary has great potential, we are lucky to have her. We will only get a
Mary Keitany every 20 years.”

More information about
BERLIN RUNS and the BIG 25
Berlin is available at:
www.berlin-runs.com

The title sponsor BIG
is a German online national
health service company (BIG direkt gesund). More information is available at:
www.big-direkt.de