Kenyan barber wins an IAAF Gold Label Road Race.. at 41!

41-year-old Kenneth Mungara of Kenya

Kenneth Mungara won the 37th annual Gold Coast Airport Marathon on Sunday, 5th July 2015 in 2:08:42, breaking the course record set last year and slashing two seconds off his own Master40+ world record which he set by winning the SuisseGas Milano Marathon earlier this year. The Kenyan, beat last year’s race winner and previous record-holder Silah Limo by 12 seconds with Evans Ruto a further second behind in third.

Gold Coast Airport Marathon is an annual marathon race on the Gold Coast, Queensland Australia. Started on 2nd September 1979, it is one of the oldest popular marathons in Australia and one of the only two marathons holding an IAAF Gold Label Road Race status (the other being Sydney marathon).

Mungara, who hails from Limuru (about 40K from Nairobi), was a barber by profession and decided to take running seriously in his early 30s, when he started cutting hair of some world famous runners visiting his barber shop and drew inspiration after listening to their conversation on training regimes .

In 2007, he ran his first marathon at the age of 34 in Cologne, finishing fourth in 2:11:36. He won his first major international marathon in 2008, finishing the Prague Marathon in 2:11:06. He then won the Toronto Waterfront Marathon in 2:11:01, that year. In 2009, he won the Mumbai Marathon in 2:11:51, fastest ever on Indian soil, beating Shivnath Singh's record which had stood since 1978. Mungara continued with his stellar performance and went on to win more international marathons. His best ever performance was a timing of 2:7:36 in Prague Marathon 2011.

A runner who believes his best is still to come, Mungara is truely a living example of “where there’s a will, there’s is no age”!