Mo Farah has set his sights on beating Steve Jones’s 33-year-old British marathon record after a convincing victory in his first race for nearly six months.
Farah, who retired from the track last September, won the Vitality big half-marathon in the capital in 61min 40sec, beating last year’s London marathon winner Daniel Wanjiru by three seconds, with Callum Hawkins two seconds further back.
“The good thing is here I’ve learned I looked as good as Wanjiru,” said Farah, who said he was bursting with confidence before next month’s London marathon. “Some of my sessions and the work I’ve done in the past four weeks have been unbelievable. I think I still have it. It’s just the mental side where you go ‘I’m getting on a bit – am I still hungry and still there?’ We’ll see. But I still want to be as competitive as I was on the track, on the road.”
Farah also revealed for the first time that he was aiming to wear a British vest again in next year’s world championships in Doha. “Definitely, if I’m in shape, why not?”
He also praised Hawkins, who will run the marathon for Scotland in the Commonwealth Games next month. “Callum is a great athlete. He works hard. Over the years people have compared British people to the Kenyans and said we could never achieve. I don’t see that. But anything is possible if you train hard as Callum.”
The elite women’s race turned into a battle between Charlotte Purdue and Lily Partridge, before Purdue pulled clear to win in a new personal best time of 70:29.
