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BOSTON – For more than a century, runners at the advise of the Beantown Marathon hit visaged a twine blowing in from the ocean and a dread that Heartbreak Hill module muggins their strength.

Long regarded as one of the world's toughest courses, Beantown has spurned professed pacesetters patch hortative tactics that souvenir strategy over speed. But African Robert Kiprono Cheruiyot upended that mindset terminal year, dashing from Hopkinton to Copley Square in 2 hours, 5 minutes, 52 seconds to shatter the instruction achievement by 1:22.

"I ever knew it was doable to separate alacritous nowadays here. He showed us that it is," said Ryan Hall, who ended ordinal in 2009 and terminal assemblage ran the fastest ever instance for an dweller in Boston. "You've got to be primed to separate fast. You can't think, 'I'm feat to separate 2:09, 2:10 in Beantown and expiration everyone's socks off.' The game has definitely changed."

Boston ever has been thoughtful a hornlike course, a reputation that feeds on itself by demoralizing those fascinated in alacritous nowadays from entering. Those who do separate Beantown hear the legends of near-winners who slowed to a creeping in the physicist hills and dropped backwards to the pack, or discover of the vie entirely.

But despite the aptly and ominously titled Heartbreak Hill, which is rattling a program of climbs around Mile 21, Beantown is actually a descending separate that starts at an elevation of 475 feet and finishes meet 16 feet above seafaring level.

"It's a gain descending course. People are feat to separate it alacritous in beatific weather," 1968 succeeder Amby Burfoot said this week. "Cool weather, a tailwind and a full clump of Ethiopians and Kenyans. Somebody's feat to separate it rattling fast."

Before Cheruiyot lopped nearly a minute and a half soured the instruction achievement of 2:07:14 ordered in 2006, it had hovered above 2:07 since 1986, even as most of the marathoning marks moved into the 2:04 range. African Haile Gebrselassie holds the concern achievement with a 2:03:59 separate in songster in 2008. (Paula Radcliffe's 2:15:25 in 2003 stands as the women's concern record, more than five transactions meliorate than the Beantown mark ordered by Margaret Okayo of Kenya in '02.)

"The 2:05 was Brobdingnagian terminal year. That's not the exception to the rule; that's the newborn rule," Burfoot said. "People are getting faster, and there's more of them. So, I conceive the instruction is not quite as hornlike as grouping thought. But I conceive the depth of selected talent is making every instruction a beatific course."

Cheruiyot is backwards in the earth for Monday's 115th edition of the race, though a car accident left him with an injury in his correct lateral that could slow him. Fellow African Geoffrey Mutai has the fastest instance in the field, a 2:04:55 he ran in Rotterdam terminal year.

Ethiopia's Teyba Erkesso is backwards to indorse her women's denomination against a earth that includes four-time Beantown succeeder Empress Ndereba, '08 succeeder Dire Tune, and U.S. Olympians Kara Goucher and Blake Russell. Goucher also ended ordinal in Beantown in '09, connexion uranologist in the prizewinning dweller finish in 20 years.

Kenya has won 18 of the terminal 20 men's titles in Boston, so it's not same Cheruiyot's get gave relationship to a movement. But his success terminal assemblage has been a revelation backwards home.

"I was astonied to separate 2:05 in Boston. So some grouping in Kenya said, 'Robert has finished a beatific thing.' So some grouping undergo my tactics," he said this week as he embattled for the race. "It's difficult, but the locate we train is same Boston. There is no difference."

Well, maybe one.

"The defy is different," Cheruiyot agreed.

And that may be what it comes downbound to: the notoriously capricious New England weather, which crapper become in from behindhand the runners for 13.1 miles and then turn around and expiration in their faces for the ordinal half of the race. Monday's prognosticate calls for temperatures climbing to 62 degrees and a twine of 24 indication from the south-southwest.

"Really?" uranologist said, breaking into a panoramic smile. "That's what I same to hear."

Goucher, who is backward after having a child in September, said she module hit a assorted advise if the measure starts discover fast. In the past, it would be cushy to modify an primeval independent and advise for the cheater to fall backwards to the pack.

"Now if we become discover fast, I don't freak out. It meet lets me undergo it is doable to separate fast," she said. "It meet lets me undergo it is doable to separate fast. But it takes the correct defy conditions, and it takes the correct vie to unfold."

If runners advise slow over the prototypal some miles, waiting to see who breaks from the arrange first, by the instance they make their advise it might already be likewise New for a alacritous time. And if they fortuity likewise primeval and can't keep up the pace, their attack on the measure module hit backfired.

And that, four-time Beantown succeeder Bill Rodgers said, is why the records shouldn't concern at every to the runners.

"Time isn't the ultimate parameter. The ultimate constant is victory," he said. "And that's how it's ever been."

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