There were athletics fireworks on the roads of Barcelona and Ghent on 31st December 2024 as two remarkable women ended the year in style with contrasting world records.

Competing in the Cursa dels Nassos 5K road race in Barcelona on New Year's Eve 2024, Beatrice Chebet – the Paris Olympic champion at 5000m and 10,000m – broke the record she had set in the same race in 2023 by an astonishing 19 seconds to become the first woman to run 5K in less than 14 minutes on any surface.

The 24-year-old Kenyan finished in 13 minutes and 54 seconds well ahead of Ethiopian athlete Medina Eisa (14:23) and Uganda's Belinda Chemutai (14:36). Chebet's kilometre splits were 2:46; 2:49; 2:49; 2:44 and 2:46 to finish 14th overall in the international race won by Matthew Kipkoech Kipruto (Kenya, 13:28).

Meanwhile, the turn of the year witnessed a completely different female record as 55-year-old Belgian ultrarunner Hilde Dosogne completed her 366th and final consecutive 26.2-mile run to achieve her goal of running a marathon every day for a year. With 2024 being a leap year there was an extra day available for Dosogne to become the first woman to manage this target.

Dosogne now hopes to join Hugo Farias who holds the Guinness World Record for the most consecutive days to run a marathon distance (male) who achieved his landmark on 28 August 2023 in Brazil. The currently recorded female Guinness World Record is 150 days by Erchana Murray-Bartlett (Australia) as we reported in runABC in December 2022.

Dosogne ran most of her marathons around a lake near Ghent where the exposed course saw windy conditions most days. She would run at 10K per hour to allow her friends and observers to join her for part of the marathon.

During the year she had to deal with contracting COVID-19, several falls, blisters, and bursitis. She told Euro News: "The mental strain is harder than the physical. Of course, physically, everything has to be okay. Otherwise, you can’t run for four hours every day. But it was more mental to be there at the starting line every day.”

Dosogne must now submit GPS data and other evidence to the Guinness World Records organisation and hopes to be credited with the new world record in around three months.

What an inspirational start to the new year by two outstanding female role models.

Photo of Hilde Dosogne courtesy of MarathonWoman 2024 on Facebook