She ran 2hrs 47min. 19sec. at the TCS Sydney Marathon, which is the newest of the World Majors – a status attained last year – and also the hilliest.
Chapple had debuted over the distance at the 2023 London Marathon, moved to Australia for the start of the following year and usurped Louise Perrio as Guernsey’s 26.2-mile queen with her 2-49-14 run at Gold Coast last July.
She came away rather pleased on Sunday after her fourth marathon and second on this course, which accumulates 313m of elevation gain and, though net downhill by 83m, has this descent biased awkwardly towards the closing and finishing miles.
‘Very happy with how Sunday went,’ the 29-year-old said after her big personal best.
‘On the hilliest of all the World Majors, I managed to settle into a good pace and dig deep to improve my time by 2min. from 2025.
‘I was sick at the start of last week so was worried I wouldn’t even be well enough to race, so to come away with a PB was honestly a dream.’
Chapple reached the spectacular Sydney Opera House finish line as the 26th woman home, having climbed several positions in the second half.
This follows Chapple lowering her half marathon PB to 1-18-51 in the summer for a time that only Perrio has beaten among Sarnians.
Closer to home, at the Stratford Speed Grand Prix season finale, the island’s top two sprinters were not a mile off existing Guernsey records.
Theo Le Tissier returned to the site where he dipped under 11sec. last year to claim the U17 100m record, which has since been scrubbed from Guernsey Athletics’ record books by a shift in age-grouping.
Guernsey’s current fastest man won his heat in 10.84 this time out but had been unfortunate to see an above-the-limit wind reading. This matched a similarly wind-assisted time from Basingstoke in May and was 0.02sec. short of Joe Chadwick’s U18 mark.
It was a similar case for Abi Galpin as she took third in a strong heat with 11.81, just 0.04sec. off her Guernsey senior mark, but again with a slightly excessive tailwind.
She also ran 24.65 over 200m.
400m hurdles ace Alastair Chalmers put in a season-closing effort in tough conditions at the world’s oldest one-day invitational track meet – Germany’s Internationales Stadionfest.
Competing at the Olympic Stadium of Berlin, he finished third and as the top non-German athlete but some way outside his best with a 49.14.
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