Gustavo Mora and Mónica Vargas competed yesterday in the prestigious "The Worlds Best 10k" race and had the opportunity to compete against many of the world's best runners.
This Puerto Rican competition is absolutely wild: more than 10,000 runners participate in total and it attracts top-level athletes because of its excellent prize money and its flat, favorable course for achieving good times, despite the humidity and heat typical of San Juan.
Gustavo's goal was to improve his personal best of 31:57 in the 10k, but he fell three seconds short. Gustavo finished in 26th place with a final time of 31:59. For her part, Mónica Vargas completed the 10k in 38:36, which placed her 18th among the women.
The international elite did not disappoint and both the men's and women's races were decided by less than 2 seconds. In the men's race, in fact, first and second place have the same official time of 27:42. It was the photo finish that crowned Kenyan Bidan Karoki the winner. As an example of the level of athletes this competition attracts, a total of nine men ran under 28:48 minutes, which stands as Costa Rica's national record for almost 30 years, set by Rafael Ángel Pérez.
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Among the women, Kenyan Mary Wacera (31:49) beat Ethiopian Belaynesh Oljira (31:51) by two seconds. In total, five women broke the 32-minute mark. To put it in perspective, perhaps only three men in Costa Rica are capable of achieving the times these women ran yesterday.
The prize money is part of what attracts so many good runners. The winner takes home $25,000. In this case, since Karoki broke 28 minutes, he received a $10,000 bonus (the women didn't break 31:00 so they didn't get a bonus, but $25,000 is nothing to scoff at). If they had broken the race record (27:19 for men and 30:19 for women), the organizers would have awarded them an additional $100,000.
