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Jafred Chirchir Kipchumba (born 8 August 1983) is a Kenyan long-distance runner who specialises in the marathon. He won the 2011 Eindhoven Marathon in a personal best time of 2:05:48 hours.

Biography

Hailing from Keiyo District in Kenya, he began training for marathon running in 2003.^[1] He made his first competitive appearance over the classic distance at an all-debutant version of the Vienna City Marathon in 2009. He finished in sixth place with a time of 2:10:42 hours.^[2] He again finished sixth at the Istanbul Eurasia Marathon in October later that year.^[3]

In his fourth outing over the 42.195 km distance, Kipchumba had his first competitive win. He defeated former world champion Charles Kamathi to win the Milano City Marathon in a personal best time of 2:10:42 hours and later declared that he himself had not expected to win the competition.^[1] He improved his time further at the Toronto Waterfront Marathon where he crossed the line after 2:08:09 hours to take the runner-up spot behind Kenneth Mungara, who ran the fastest time ever set in Canada.^[4] He made a significant career breakthrough at the 2011 Eindhoven Marathon: he ran a course record time of 2:05:48 hours, beating the previous course record by over a minute (Geoffrey Mutai's 2:07:01 from 2009). He was surprised by his achievement, stating after the race: "I was only thinking about running 2:07. I was not confident I was going to run faster".^[5]