T&T long-dis­tance run­ner Sjae­lan Evans com­plet­ed the Lon­don marathon yes­ter­day in 3:18:56, fin­ish­ing 388th among a field of over 7,500 run­ners. Evans was one of five Trinidad and To­ba­go run­ners tak­ing part in the 2019 edi­tion of the pop­u­lar marathon, all of whom ran in the 18-39 cat­e­go­ry.

Ko­rey Gill, who ran along­side Evans, didn’t fin­ish the race while Ri­anne Mor­gan clocked a time of 4:12:24 to fin­ish 2,693rd. Ka­reem Richard­son placed 5,540th in a time of 4:05:45 while Aman­da Sal­loum end­ed 7,692th, stop­ping the clock at 5:4715.

The marathon was won by Kenya's Eli­ud Kip­choge, who ran the sec­ond fastest marathon in his­to­ry to win for the fourth time. He fin­ished in a time of 2:02:38, which was 59 sec­onds shy of his world record. Brigid Kos­gei, 25, al­so from Kenya, be­came the youngest fe­male Lon­don win­ner in a time of 2:18.20.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia Sports af­ter the race, Evans said she didn’t press the gas in this race in her bid to reg­is­ter a time of few­er than three hours this year. “It wasn’t a dif­fi­cult race for me at all. It was smooth sail­ing. This one was just a fun run for me but I re­al­ly want to break the sub-three-hour marathon be­fore the end of the year so I’m look­ing for a good race to do that in,” Evans said.

She had high prais­es for the Lon­don event. While en­joy­ing a beer with her friend Gill af­ter the marathon, she said, “Lon­don was my favourite ex­pe­ri­ence so far. The sup­port­ers were amaz­ing, the weath­er was amaz­ing. Last year in Boston, I was freez­ing, but every­thing was re­al­ly or­ga­nized here, and I en­joyed every sec­ond of the race.”

Her time wasn’t too much faster than what she ran in Bar­ba­dos in De­cem­ber last year. She went on to say, “I think my time was okay. I did three hours and 19 sec­onds in Bar­ba­dos which was hot as hell and now I did three hours and 19 sec­onds in Lon­don, which is cold as hell, so I’m hap­py with my re­sult. We had a re­al­ly good time.”

Evans is ex­pect­ed to run the To­ba­go Sea to Sea Marathon on the week­end of May 18th and 19th. How­ev­er, she is now search­ing for her next in­ter­na­tion­al voy­age. She said, “I’m look­ing for a re­al­ly nice course to run at the end of the year for my next in­ter­na­tion­al race. I re­al­ly want to break that sub-three hour mark. I didn’t try for Lon­don but I feel like I can do it so that’s my next goal.”