100-year-old runner is the oldest person to complete marathon

Indian-born Fauja Singh earned a spot in the Guinness World Book of Records for his accomplishment. The 100-year-old runner became the oldest person to complete a full-distance marathon when he finished the Toronto Waterfront Marathon yesterday.

It took Singh eight hours, 25 minutes and 16 seconds to cross the finish line - more than six hours after Kenya's Kenneth Mungara won the event for the fourth straight year - and he was the last competitor to complete the course.

Event workers were dismantling the barricades along the finish line and taking down sponsor banners even as Singh was making his way up the final few hundred yards of the race.

"He's absolutely overjoyed, he's achieved his lifelong wish," his coach and translator Harmander Singh said.

Sunday's run was Singh's eighth marathon - he ran his first at age 89 - and wasn't the first time he set a record.

In the 2003 Toronto event, he set the mark in the over-90s category, finishing the race in 5 hours, 40 minutes and 1 second.

And on Thursday in Toronto, Singh broke world records for runners older than 100 in eight different distances ranging from 100 meters to 5,000 meters.

Singh said he's hopeful his next project will be participating in the torch relay for the 2012 London Games. He carried the torch during the relay for the 2004 Athens Games.

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