An injury halted a breakthrough year for Joyce Chepkirui.
Chepkirui, who won the Honolulu Marathon in 2014 and 2015, returns for Sunday’s 26.2-mile race. It will serve as a testing ground for the Kenyan, who had a breakout year in 2016 before a right leg injury halted her for most of 2017. She’s recovered and ready, but the race will be an indicator of her health and fitness
“This weekend I want to try to run my best,” Chepkirui said of her goal for Sunday’s race.
Chepkirui ran at a near-record pace in 2015, leading the entire way and winning in 2 hours, 28 minutes and 34 seconds. The course record is 2:27:19. She followed that with two top-five finishes in major marathons in 2016, a third-place performance at the Boston Marathon and a fourth at the New York Marathon.
A former 10,000-meter runner who has transitioned into half-marathon and marathon running, Chepkirui cited her experience as a factor in her 2016 performances.
But an injury in New York lingered into this year, forcing her to pull out of April’s Boston Marathon. She made it up to 25 kilometers (15.5 miles) before pulling out. The injury got to the point where she took two months off over the summer.
“Gym, sauna, bike,” Chepkirui said of her activities during the rest period.
Healthy and recovered, Chepkirui has been logging six days of running, doing two workouts each day for five days and a longer run on the sixth. She averages about 200 kilometers a week, or 124-plus miles.
Chepkirui was in contention for a spot on the 2016 Kenyan Olympic team but was not selected for one of the three spots. She ran in the 2012 Olympics in the 10,000 and may consider Tokyo in 2020.
Any immediate plans could be answered after Sunday’s race, on a course where she’s familiar with the route and humidity.
“I don’t know for next year,” Chepkirui said. “Let me finish this one first.”
Chepkirui used part of her $40,000 prize money from the 2014 Honolulu Marathon victory to build apartments in her hometown in Kenya. Since then, she has funded the construction of eight more apartments.
Defending champion Brigid Kosgei of Kenya is back in this year’s field. The two Honolulu champions met each other in passing in Boston, but Chepkirui isn’t familiar with Kosgei.
Kosgei was eighth at this year’s Boston Marathon and is coming off a runner-up finish at October’s Chicago Marathon.
Kenyans round out the women’s elite field with Janet Rono, Lucy Karimi and Nancy Kiprop.
Karimi finished second to Chepkirui here in 2015 and won last year’s Prague Marathon in the Czech Republic. Kiprop won this year’s Vienna Marathon in Austria.
