Once a Lumberjack, Now at Top of Marathon Tree
Geoffrey Mutai
Running the fastest marathon in history made Kenya's Geoffrey Mutai about $500,000 richer when he won the Boston Marathon in April. Not bad for a man who once worked as a lumberjack after injury stopped him from running.
"I was injured and stopped training," Mutai recalls of a period in 2005 when he took a job felling trees for electricity poles in Eldama Ravine, a town in the Rift Valley. "I didn't have any money and I needed a job."
Once Mutai's injury healed, he resumed training—fitting it in around his lumberjack duties. "I'd run at 6:00 a.m. for one hour, take breakfast, and start work at 8:30," he says.
After six months, he returned to full-time running, and in December 2007 he finished second in 2:12:22 in his debut marathon. "This was where my life turned around," Mutai recalls. In March 2008, Mutai achieved his first win outside Kenya, at the Monaco Marathon. He recorded two of the world's five quickest times of 2010, taking second in Rotterdam (2:04:55) and Berlin (2:05:10).
In his eighth marathon, in Boston this year, Mutai made world headlines when he ran an incredible 2:03:02—nearly a minute under Haile Gebrselassie's then–world record of 2:03:59. Because the Boston course is one-way and downhill, the time is not recognized as a world record. Still, he is among the strongest contenders for the ING New York City Marathon title on November 6.
Mutai is sometimes confused with Emmanuel Mutai, runner-up in New York last year. "He comes from a different place; we are not related," Geoffrey says. And only one of them has run 2:03:02.
