On Sunday, 3rd October, Jepkosgei became the seventh-fastest female marathoner in the world after winning the 41st Edition of the women's London Marathon in a time of 2:10:43 pocketing a total of USD 155,000 (Ksh 17,143,000).
The long-distance runner who also competes in the 5,000m, was born on December 8, 1993 in Kenya’s Rift Valley region.
28 year old Jepkosgei was filled with so much pride when watching her husband Nicholas Koech compete at the 2013 Kenyan Championships, she was inspired to take up running herself.
“He was my neighbour at home and seeing him training in the village and running locally gave me a lot of motivation,” says Jepkosgei, whose son Brandon was born in 2011. “There were not many people running in my village and he was, and still is, an example to me.”
Aged just 19 at the time, Jepkosgei had spent most of her youth running two kilometres to and from school, but had never seriously trained as a runner. Her husband started to coach her and they later moved from Nandi County to set up home in Iten. It was there where she was discovered by the RunCzech Racing team.
“There was something about the way she ran that caught our eye,” said athlete representative Davor Savija. “As we learned about her training and life and realised how young Joyciline was as a person and as an athlete, we saw there was a lot of room for improvement.”
Joyciline Jepkosgei is currently a member of the Kenya Defense Forces and debuted as a professional level athlete at the 2015 Nairobi Half Marathon, where she finished fifth in 1:14:06 minutes. Finishing in third place in the 10,000 m at the Kenyan Athletics Championships, Jepkosgei got her first international selection for the 2016 African Championships in Athletics. There, she took the bronze medal in a personal best of 31:28.28 minutes.
What followed next In November 2019 was her winning the New York City Marathon in her official debut at the distance with a time of 2:22:38; the second fastest time on the course for women. Jepkosgei now covers between 140 and 150 kilometres in a typical week, spread across about 14 sessions. Most of her runs are done on dirt roads and she trains alongside six or seven other men and one or two other women. Unsurprisingly for a half-marathon specialist, her favourite session is doing long runs of about 20-25 kilometres, while her longest run to date is 30 kilometres.