The Monday Musings awards 2024

From the Barkley Marathons to the Paris Olympics, there was so much to get excited about in the world of running in 2024

Me racing the tide in May 2024. Photograph: Jay Bullock

AND just like that, 2024 is done and dusted. For me personally the year started slowly, with a frustrating injury that took months to budge, but it ended up, after much patience from Jae Gruenke and her amazing fixing skills, becoming my biggest mileage year ever, just about pipping 2017, the year I started researching my book The Rise of the Ultra Runners.

As promised last week, here are my key Strava Year in Sport stats:

I won’t go on about my Ireland run here, suffice to say it was an incredible adventure that tested me to the limit, an adventure in which I only just managed to scrape over the line. You’ve seen the pictures. You've heard some of the stories. The book is still to come.

I would just like to say thank you to all my subscribers for your support along the way - it’s really helping this running/writer to keep on keeping on.

But less about me, what of the events out there in the big, wide world of running? Well, we had the Olympics - that’s always pretty big. From a British point of view, Keely Hodgkinson rocked like a superstar in the 800m and I was delighted to see her win the BBC Sports Personality of the Year award last week.

From a Kenyan point of view, Faith Kipyegon was poetry in motion in the 1500m as usual, bagging her third successive Olympic title in the event; but in the 5,000m she was pipped to gold by Beatrice Chebet, who sort of stole the show by also winning the 10,000m. In fact, Chebet is probably the Most Underrated Athlete of 2024, because you really never hear that much about her, yet as well as double Olympic gold, she also set a world record in May in the 10,000m.

That was quite the run. The race, at the Prefontaine Classic in Eugene, Oregon, was set up as a world record attempt by Ethopia’s Gudaf Tsegay, with Chebet there to help push along the pace. But when Tsegay started dropping off world record schedule with three laps to go, Chebet sped past her, caught up the lost time, and ended up running 28:54 to become the first woman ever to run under 29 minutes.

Considering she is also the reigning world cross country champion, Chebet has a strong claim to be the best distance runner in the world right now. Yet how many people would even know her name? Such dissonance always amazes me, and it usually involves East African runners.