On April 27, 2026, Sebastian Sawe crossed the finish line of the London Marathon in 1:59:04 – the first person in history to run an officially ratified sub-2-hour marathon. The time shattered the previous world record and rewrote what the human body is capable of.

And on his wrist? A Garmin Forerunner 255. Retail price: €349.

The Run That Changed Everything

Sawe's performance in London wasn't just fast – it was historic. For decades, breaking the two-hour barrier had been the sport's moon landing moment. Eliud Kipchoge's famous 1:59:40 in Vienna in 2019 didn't count as an official record due to the controlled conditions. London 2026 was different: an open road, a certified course, a legal race.

Sawe's pace of 2:50 per kilometer – sustained for 42.195 km – represents a level of physiological output that exercise scientists are still struggling to fully explain. His VO2 max, running economy, and lactate threshold all operate at the absolute ceiling of what human biology has produced.

The Budget Behind the Record

Make no mistake: Sawe's preparation was expensive. Carbon-plate racing shoes, custom nutrition protocols, altitude training camps – elite marathon preparation at this level costs tens of thousands of euros per season. Shoes and nutrition alone represent a serious ongoing investment that most amateur runners never approach.

The Watch That Didn't Cost Much

Which makes the Garmin Forerunner 255 on his wrist so striking.

The Forerunner 255 is a solid mid-range GPS running watch – capable and reliable, but nowhere near the top of Garmin's lineup. It does the essentials exceptionally well: GPS tracking, heart rate monitoring, pace, distance, and cadence. It syncs to Garmin Connect, earns you badges, and costs a fraction of what Sawe spends on shoes.

What it doesn't have: full-color maps, music storage in the base model, multi-band GPS, ECG, or the premium materials of Garmin's Fenix or Epix lines.

And yet – Sawe wore it to a world record.

The reason is simple: at the elite level, the watch is largely irrelevant to performance. A professional runner doesn't need a €1,000 Fenix 8 to run 2:50 per kilometer. They need to know their pace and heart rate. The Forerunner 255 handles both without issue.

It's a reminder that gear budgets scale very differently depending on what actually moves the needle. Shoes and nutrition are biomechanically and physiologically load-bearing. A GPS watch is informational infrastructure. Both matter, but not equally to performance.

What This Means for the Rest of Us

Sawe's record will drive a wave of attention toward Garmin – particularly toward the Forerunner 255, which is suddenly the watch worn by the fastest marathon runner in history.

For recreational runners, the lesson cuts both ways. If you're spending €50 on shoes but €600 on a smartwatch, you might want to reconsider your priorities. But if you're holding off on investing in proper footwear because you're eyeing a premium watch upgrade first – Sawe just made the case for doing it the other way around.

The Forerunner 255 tracks your Garmin Connect activity, earns you the same running badges as any other Garmin device, and costs a fraction of the elite gear that actually drives performance. It syncs everything to the Garmin ecosystem – including the challenge badges that thousands of runners collect and track on sites like Badgehero.

The record belongs to Sebastian Sawe. But the watch on his wrist is available to anyone.