The race had some big-name draw-cards including Ethiopian distance king Haile Gebrselassie, Australia’s Craig Mottram and Kenyan Patrick Makau.

Gebrselassie, suffering from jet-lag, still managed to dominate his rivals, wining the inaugural event in 42 minutes and 40 seconds.

Ethiopian great Haile Gebrselassie burnt off his rivals for a commanding win in the Great Australian Run through the city streets here on Sunday.

Makau trailed in 35 seconds behind Gebrselassie to take second in 43:15, with well performed Australia athlete Collis Birmingham beating Olympian Craig Mottram for third placing in 43:35.

Kenya’s two-time world marathon champion Catherine Ndereba easily won the the women’s event in 50:43, Ndereba, 36, was second behind Romania’s Constantina Dita in this year’s Beijing Olympic marathon, but finished well ahead of sixth-placed Dita in the shorter event.

New Zealand’s Alice Mason was second in 51:27 and third-placed Lisa Weightman was the leading Australian in 51:31.

Click on the following link for a more thorough report on the Great Australian Run of 2008.

Sports scientist Ross Tucker, presents a more analytical look at the chances of one day seeing a sub-2 hour marathon run. He borrows a little from the history of the event and also the commercial aspects that might in some respects prevent great athletes from breaking the record. He then speculates on who might come through in our lifetimes.

The Key Points:

• Marathon running is in something of a golden era, 10 years ago the marathon world record stood at 2:06:50 and since then has dropped almost 3 minutes!
• When the next generation of endurance runners, the Tergat’s, the Gebrselassie’s, the Hissou’s, moved up to the marathon and the anticipated “overhauls” in the Marathon were proven correct
• Ross correlates what’s happening in the marathon with what happened over 5,000m and 10,000m on the track in the 1990′s – the 10,000m was lowered an incredible 30 seconds over a four year period when Gebrselassie, Hissou and Tergat were going at it! The point being that this kind of performance over 10,000m predicted what would eventually happen in the marathon, because the best predictor of Marathon performance is 10k time.
• While the drop in 10,000m world record was dramatic, it has recently plateaued, and come down less than 5 seconds since 1998 (thanks to Kenenisa Bekele of Ethiopia), a similar thing has happened in the 5,000m, which fell by a staggering 18 seconds in the four years up to 1998, then took another six years to fall just 2 seconds (Bekele again)
• This would indicate that while there has been a dramatic decrease in times in the marathon, it is unlikely to keep falling at the same rate.

So it seems a sub 2-hour Marathon is unlikely for a while yet and this is not even taking into account the commercial aspect of professional Marathon running – Ross has some thoughts as well as an opinion on the most likely candidates to lower the world record, it’s an interesting read.

Starting in Albert Park the course will cover 15kms on Melbourne City roads, visiting some of it’s most famous landmarks, before returning to Albert Park for the finish. The event is to be televised internationally, so will be witnessed by millions around the globe being shown as part of the existing ‘Great Run’ series of programs.

The legendary endurance king will take on Australia’s Craig Mottram over the 15km event. The Ethiopian clocked 2:03:59 to win his third straight Berlin Marathon yesterday, beating the mark of 2:04:26 he set over the same flat course last year.

He also became the first runner to win the race three times.

Follow the link for full details on the the Great Australian Run.