61-Year-Old Runs 2:28 Marathon
French runner Mohammed El Yamani shattered the men's 60-64 marathon world record, clocking 2:28:00 at age 61 in Seville. Averaging 5:40 per mile, El Yamani's feat highlights the potential for high performance at any age and serves as inspiration for lifelong endurance training. The previous record was significantly slower, making this a landmark achievement in masters athletics.
The previous world record for the 60-64 age group was 2:30:02, set by Irish Olympian Tommy Hughes in 2020. El Yamani shattered this by a significant margin of 1 minute and 34 seconds. His performance is even more remarkable considering it was his first marathon in three years. El Yamani's record-breaking run came after a two-year hiatus from running due to a series of injuries that included gluteal tendonitis and two vertebral fractures. In an emotional social media post, he shared that he had battled self-doubt and depression during his recovery but never gave up on his dream. This is not El Yamani's first encounter with record-breaking performances. At 57, he set the French U55 age group record with a time of 2:26:56 at the Valencia Marathon, narrowly missing the then-world record by just one minute. He also holds several French age-group records for distances ranging from 3,000 meters to the half-marathon. A latecomer to the sport, El Yamani was inspired to start running at the age of 31 in 1995. He ran his first marathon in Berlin with an impressive debut time of 2:35. His personal best marathon time is 2:22:28, which he ran at the Berlin Marathon in 2001 at the age of 36. In the Seville Marathon, El Yamani finished 145th overall, a remarkable achievement in a field of elite international runners. His weekly training regimen has been known to reach up to 180 kilometers (111 miles), which he balanced with his career as a production manager for a classical music production company and his family life.
