
Hardbodies, strong wills: the beautiful Baltimore Marathon
Above: The winning woman runner, Olena Shurkhno, just before crossing the finish line in today’s Baltimore Marathon.
A 33-year-old Ukrainian woman and a 24-year-old Kenyan man won today’s 10th annual Under Armour Baltimore Marathon.
Under blue skies and cool, somewhat windy conditions, David Rutoh pushed up to the front of the pack at about the 22nd mile and finished with the second-fastest men’s time ever in the event, crossing the finish line in 2 hours, 13 minutes, race officials said.
“I wasn’t expecting to win,” said Rutoh, a surprise winner, who comes from the Kenyan town of Kericho. “There were a lot of strong guys.” Rutoh ran with Bib #3294, meaning he paid his own way instead of having expenses paid by the race as an elite athlete.
Olena Shurkhno, of Ukraine, won the women’s marathon with a time of 2:32:17, finishing eight seconds short of the women’s event record set last year by Iuliia Arkhipova.
Both Rutoh and Shurkhno received $23,000 for finishing first.
More than 22,000 entrants from all over the world came to compete in the 26.2 mile race.
Here’s a video Bill Hughes shot of the top runners as they came along Art Museum Drive near the Johns Hopkins Homewood campus.
If you listen closely you can hear Hughes give one of them directions.
“Take a right here.”
“A right?”
“Yeah, a right.”
