consider breaking the 90-minute barrier as a real achievement for the half marathon distance , which requires an average pace of 4:15 / km , for elitelevel men , breaking 60 minutes is the true mark of greatness . That requires a phenomenal average pace of 2:50 / km ! The first athlete to dip under the one-hour mark for 21.1km was Moses Tanui of Kenya in 1993 , and the World Record for 21.1km currently stands at 58:01 , set by Geoffrey Kamworor of Kenya in September 2019 .

Stephen is always up with the frontrunners

Proudly flying the Boxer flag in SA

From a South African perspective , Hendrick Ramaala was long considered the undisputed king of half marathoning , with a best of 59:20 and second-best performance of 59:42 , both set in Lisbon , Portugal , run in 2000 and 2002 respectively . He had also narrowly missed a third sub-60 with a 1:00:01 finish in South Shields in the UK in 2003 , but all three of these performances were on aided courses – in other words , not ‘ legal ’ courses on which record times can be

recognised officially – and thus the official SA Record was his fourth-best time of 1:00:07 , run in Kosice , Slovakia in 1997 .

From 2000 all the way to 2019 , Hendrick remained the only South African to have broken 60 minutes , and he held seven of the fastest 10 times ever run by South Africans for the distance , but in August last year , he was finally joined in the sub-60 club by a man

Images : Roger Sedres / ImageSA , Tobias Ginsberg & courtesy Rhyn Swanepoel