It Seems We Are Entering An Age,

of minimalist sports,

last week, we wrote about the monumental achievement of María Lorena Ramírez, a native Rarámuri woman from Mexico, who won a 50-kilometer ultramarathon in rubber sandals made from used car tires and wearing a long traditional skirt, and this week, Ibrahim Mukunga Wachira, a 27-year-old marathon runner from Kenya, became an overnight sensation in the Baltic country of Estonia, after winning the 35th annual Tartu Half-Marathon, a 23-kilometre race he ran in his socks, the amazing thing is that not only did he win he also set a new speed record, 

as it happened he arrived at the starting point with his running shoes, but gave them to someone for safe keeping, and just couldn’t retrieve them before the starting whistle, He even told the race organisers about this problem, and they tried to help him out, appealing to the public for a pair of shoes his size, but no one stepped up, so the Kenyan athlete was left with two options, drop out of the marathon, or run in his socks. He went for the latter,

“It was pretty difficult in the beginning,” Ibrahim told Estonian news site Delfi. “Especially on the asphalt, but on the dirt trail it was quite good to run and in the end I got used to it.” By the 11th kilometer of the marathon, Ibrahim Mukunga Wachira was already leading the race, and he ended up winning over 4 minutes ahead of the runner up, His official time of 1.13.23 was also a new speed record for the Tartu Half-Marathon, photos of the 27-year-old crossing the finish line in his worn out socks have been doing the rounds on Estonian social media and news sites for a month now, and he has become somewhat of a celebrity, and I have got to ask the question, would he have been quicker in his shoes, or slower lacking the driving force of knowing he had shoes?