More than 130 people teamed up to break the two-hour marathon barrier in Glenbrook on Australia Day, while raising funds for the bushfire appeal in the process.
Clocking in at 1 hour 56 minutes 54 seconds, they romped it home. Woodford runner and UP Coaching founder Brendan Davies, and a committee of eight, pulled the event together in just a fortnight, with Davies estimating on Sunday they had raised almost $6000 for the Rural Fire Service and Blue Mountains branch of WIRES.
Held at Glenbrook Oval, runners from the Blue Mountains and Hawkesbury teamed up to form a relay, with each person running several 100m sprints, to make up a total of 105 laps in the 42km marathon.
Davies said breaking the sub-two hour marathon barrier "was the cherry on top of a great morning." "It has brought the community together for the bushfires [appeals] and WIRES," he said.
The youngest participant was just four, and the eldest, 79.
"It's been a tremendous success and I can't thank everyone enough for being involved," Davies said.
The runners achieved the milestone more than two minutes quicker than Eliud Kipchoge of Kenya, who made global headlines by running a sub two-hour marathon in Vienna in October 2019. While the event was not an official world record for the distance, as it wasn't run under race conditions, it was an incredible human feat.