21 Jul. 2015 – Chirine NJEIM, the winner of the 2014 Beirut Marathon, was placed 3rd in the Chicago Rock n’ Roll Half Marathon with an amazing time of 1:21:16! Only two seconds away from Maria Pia NEHME’s record of 1:21:14 established earlier this year in New York, 15th March 2015.
The winner of the Half Marathon was Maegan KRIFCHIN in 1:15:17 and the second was Yihunlish BEKELE in 1:17:32.
Chirine, who participated in three consecutive winter Olympic Games in Ski, in 2002, 2006 and 2010, and switched recently to long distance running. Running has always been part of her ski training, but it all started when she decided to run the Bank of America Chicago Marathon in 2011. “I wanted to do it just to say that I have ran a marathon” said Chirine back then.
Her journey in long distance running was very fruitful; she ran her first marathon in 2012 in 3:07:00, the year after she ran again the Chicago Marathon and clocked 3:05:40, in 2014, she ran three marathons a year: 3:06:52 at the Illinois Marathon, 3:03:53 at the Chicago Marathon and 3:09:35 at the Beirut Marathon two week after her Chicago Marathon.
This year she did a new personal best in the Marathon running the 42km in 3:02:29 back in April. She ran her last Half Marathon in Chicago 2013 in 1:28:49. With her 1:21:16, she will surely improve her time on the Marathon and get even more close to Maria Pia NEHME’s record of 3:00.02.
We expect to see a great improvement from the two women, which may lead to breaking records and improvement of the Lebanese level!
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