Just how fast was Mary Keitany’s victorious comeback in NYC?

In case you haven’t heard, Mary Keitany ran an incredible race at the TCS New York Marathon yesterday. Her victory (in 2:22:48) marked her as only the second woman besides Norwegian runner Grete Waitz (who won NYC nine times between 1978 and 1988) to win in New York four times. (She won in 2014, 2015, and 2016 also.) But it’s not just the number of wins she’s racked up that elevates Keitany into the pantheon of legendary runners alongside Waitz and others, it’s her incredible speed.

RELATED: Mary Keitany wins the NYC Marathon without the Nike Vaporflys

Keitany runs 2:22:48 after going through half marathon in 1:15:50.

That means a 1:06:58 last half marathon… Insane

To put that in perspective, that's 27 seconds FASTER than Molly Huddle's american record in the half marathon.

— Steve Magness (@stevemagness) November 4, 2018

Keitany ran alone for much of the second half of the race yesterday, breaking the tape three minutes and 14 seconds ahead of second-place finisher Vivian Cheruiyot. 

Two years ago, Shalane Flanagan ran 30:52 to set the American record for 10k on the roads.

Mary Keitany just ran 30:53 from 25k to 35k in the NYC marathon.

— Jonathan Gault (@jgault13) November 4, 2018

As fans helpfully tweeted, Keitany ran an incredible negative split: the first 21.1K in a highly tactical 75:50, and the second in 66:58, her fastest-ever second-half split in NYC, and a whopping 27 seconds faster than Molly Huddle‘s American half-marathon record. 

The slower this women's race stays, the more that favors the Americans. None of the Americans were going to be able to win if this was a course record day, but if they're still there with a few miles to go…well, you saw what happened last year.

— Jonathan Gault (@jgault13) November 4, 2018

(Huddle was the second American woman to finish yesterday, in fourth place overall, with a huge personal best of 2:26:44.) And Keitany’s 10K split from 25K to 35K was just one second off Shalane Flanagan‘s 10K American road record. 

Elite women hit 1 mile in 6:41. Even remembering that mile 1 is uphill on the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, that is slow.

— Jonathan Gault (@jgault13) November 4, 2018

(Flanagan finished in third place yesterday, with a time of 2:26:21, 32 seconds faster than her winning time from 2017.) 

5:15
5:08
5:09
4:55 wut
4:58 huh
4:55 how
5:01 omg
5:01 hahaha
5:06
5:13
5:20
5:09 lolz
5:19

The final 13 mile splits for champ Mary Keitany. Transcendent, to say the least. pic.twitter.com/jiARNWbLg2

— Liam Boylan-Pett (@liam_bp) November 4, 2018

However, as another tweeter commented, that 66-minute split was actually more than two minutes off Keitany’s own half-marathon PB, which is 64:55. Which just goes to show that she is in a different league altogether.

Just adding a bit of perspective…
Keitany's second half was indeed fast, but it's 2min+ outside her HM PB (64:55).

Lots of women came close to their HM PBs in 2nd half.

In % terms:
1.3 Kieffer
2.0 Linden
2.9 Groner
3.1 Keitany
3.9 Flanagan
4.9 Brucehttps://t.co/WWzY666dua

— Jon Mulkeen (@Statman_Jon) November 5, 2018

Pundits commented on the slowness of the women’s race right up to mile 12, some time after which point Keitany fired up the jets and simply took off.