at the berlin marathon on 25 september 2011, makau was set to duel against haile gebrselassie, the world record holder from ethiopia. the kenyan dropped his more experienced rival after the halfway point and went on to finish in a world record time of 2:03:38 (an average pace of 4:42.9 per mile), beating the existing record by 21 seconds. prior to the race, he stated that he wanted to bring the marathon world record back to kenya, following on from a former record holder paul tergat. speaking after the race, makau said "in the morning my body was not good but after i started the race, it started reacting very well. i started thinking about the record" and "at 32 km i thought i could win the race and even break the world record. it was hard [over] the last 10 kilometres".