Aydee Loayza breaks circuit record at Viña del Mar Marathon 2026

There are records that are broken by seconds and records that are shattered. Aydee Loayza's belongs to the second category. The Peruvian marathoner crossed the finish line of the Viña del Mar Marathon 2026 in 2:30:08, a time that not only gave her the title but demolished the circuit record and improved her own 2024 mark by nearly five minutes. To put it in perspective: in a marathon, cutting five minutes isn't a fine adjustment, it's a complete leap in level. And the Peruvian celebration didn't end there: Nicolasa Condori took the 21K, completing a historic weekend for the country's distance running.

The context

The Viña del Mar Marathon is one of the most traditional events on the South American running calendar, a coastal circuit that combines temperate climate, relatively flat terrain, and a running community that has made it a reference destination for Chilean runners and athletes throughout the region. When a circuit record doesn't last long or is broken by wide margins, it typically indicates two things: favorable racing conditions (temperature, wind, hydration logistics) and a real jump in the level of whoever achieves it.

Loayza had already set her mark in 2024, but returning two years later and cutting nearly five minutes off her own time proves this wasn't a lucky day: there's a training process behind it that's yielding sustained results. This is relevant for South American running because it positions the region in conversations historically dominated by Kenya, Ethiopia, and some European countries. Every time a local athlete decisively lowers her time, the ceiling for what the rest of the field believes is possible rises, and that has a cascading effect across clubs, youth programs, and development initiatives.

What the science says

Improving nearly five minutes in a marathon isn't a matter of a single factor—it's the sum of variables that sports science has been isolating with precision.

First, pacing and its management. Evidence on marathon pacing shows that elite female runners, compared to recreational runners, tend to manage a more controlled pace slowdown (positive split) in the second half of the race, and that fine management of sustainable effort is one of the factors that most separates record breakers from those who simply finish (Cuk et al., 2024; Nikolaidis et al., 2019). A 2:30:08 with a negative or even split demands extremely refined body awareness of sustainable effort.

Second, perceived fatigue and its management during self-paced exertion. Literature on fatigue in self-paced endurance exercise describes how high-performance athletes manage to delay the perception of critical effort through pacing strategies and internal regulation trained over months (Azevedo et al., 2021). It's not pure pain tolerance: it's specific training of the brain and body working together.

Third, carbohydrate nutrition during the event. Recent reviews of carbohydrate supplementation in elite distance runners confirm that intake strategy—amount, timing, type of carbohydrate—is decisive for sustaining pace in the final 10K, precisely where records are either broken or solidified (Cao et al., 2025).

And we shouldn't forget the baseline physiological component: sex differences in endurance show that women typically have advantages in energy substrate utilization and fatigue resistance in longer events, which helps explain why women's marathoning continues to see marked improvements in athletes who optimize their training (Besson et al., 2022).

For your training

You don't need to be elite to apply what led Loayza to this result:

• Train your pace, don't improvise it. Practice your race goal pace on your long runs so your body—and your mind—learn to recognize it without a watch.
• Design your carbohydrate strategy in advance. Don't wait until race day to decide how much and when to eat; test it during your long runs.
• Work on strength. Strength training has been shown to improve running economy even in a fatigued state, exactly the scenario from kilometer 35 onward (Zanini et al., 2025).
• Be patient with the process. Loayza didn't drop five minutes overnight: it took two years of work. Your best marathon is also built over seasons, not weeks.

References

• Cuk I, Markovic S, Weiss K. "Running Variability in Marathon-Evaluation of the Pacing Variables." Medicina (Kaunas), 2024. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38399506/
• Nikolaidis PT, Ćuk I, Knechtle B. "Pacing of Women and Men in Half-Marathon and Marathon Races." Medicina (Kaunas), 2019. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30646638/
• Azevedo RA, Silva-Cavalcante MD, Lima-Silva AE. "Fatigue development and perceived response during self-paced endurance exercise: state-of-the-art review." Eur J Appl Physiol, 2021. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33389141/
• Cao W, He Y, Fu R. "A Review of Carbohydrate Supplementation Approaches and Strategies for Optimizing Performance in Elite Long-Distance Endurance." Nutrients, 2025. https://pubmed