Palle Redder, a 55-year-old triple Copenhagen Marathon champion, reached a rare milestone yesterday when he finished the Hamburg Marathon in a time of 2:56:12, making him the first Danish marathon runner to complete 100 of the 42km races in a time of under three hours.
Redder’s record should stand for a long time, as his closest rival has only completed 63 races beneath the magic threshold.
“This has been a goal of mine for ten years,” Redder told TV2 News. “At that time I was still short by 20 races. It is a great feeling to reach this milestone.”
A lifetime of running
Redder was “pretty sure” when he saw his time at the halfway point, which stood at 1:26, he would finish the race in good time.
“Then again, you never know what might happen in a marathon,” he said.
Redder ran his first marathon, the Copenhagen Marathon, in 1983. He achieved his personal best time in 1987, when he finished the London Marathon in 2:17:35.
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Redder has completed over 102 marathons and failed to break the three-minute mark in only two of them. One of those was the Boston Marathon in 2013 – the same day of the terrorist attacks in that city.
