It all started in Prague… and road running records have been falling ever since.
In 2020, the RunCzech series launched a project that has since regularly delivered national, continental, and even world records. The increasingly popular competition, known as “Adizero: Road to Records,” once again pushed the limits of human achievement this year — this time in the women’s 10 km road race. On the fast course in Herzogenaurach, a town in northern Bavaria, the race favorite Agnes Ngetich crossed the finish line on Saturday with an incredible time of 29:27 minutes. She became the first woman in history to run a sub-30-minute 10K in a women-only road race — without the assistance of male pacemakers.
The inaugural edition of this road running series took place five years ago at Letná Plain in Prague. It was September 2020, at a time when the world was gripped by the COVID-19 pandemic, and organizing athletic events seemed almost impossible.
“Because of the pandemic, all top runners around the world lost their chance to race, and we lost the opportunity to admire their incredible performances. So we decided to find a way to create something extraordinary for everyone,” recalls Carlo Capalbo, founder of the event and Chairman of the RunCzech organizing committee.
And extraordinary it truly was! On Saturday, September 5, 2020, Prague wrote its name in gold in the history of athletics when Kenyan runner Peres Jepchirchir set a world record in the women-only half marathon with a time of 1:05:34. The motto “Road to Records” was fulfilled right from the very first start line.
The following year, the project moved from Prague to Germany. Over time, the half marathon distance was dropped from the program in Herzogenaurach, due to scheduling conflicts with other endurance events during the season. The “10K road race” became the event’s signature discipline.
Even the first edition on German soil witnessed a world record: in 2021, Kenya’s Agnes Tirop triumphed with a time of 30:01.
Now, four years later — on Saturday, April 26, 2025 — another Agnes, Agnes Ngetich, took the crown with a historic 29:27 finish. The 24-year-old Kenyan set a remarkably fast from the very start, reaching the 5 km mark in an impressive 14:37. Ngetich also holds the absolute world record for the 10K on the road, having clocked 28:46 minutes in Valencia last year with the help of male pacemakers.
As always, the “Adizero: Road to Records” event — co-organized by RunCzech, adidas, and SCC EVENTS (the organizers of the Berlin Marathon) — saw a wave of remarkable performances across the 10K, 5K, and 1-mile races.
One of the standout achievements came from Kenya’s Emmanuel Wanyonyi, who set a new African record. The Olympic 800m champion from Paris won the mile race in 3:52.45, placing him third on the all-time world list. Runners from Japan, Taiwan, and other nations also traveled to Herzogenaurach in pursuit of national records.
“And this has always been the aim of this project — to inspire milestones and new records across countries and continents,” emphasized Carlo Capalbo, the project’s creator and race director.
