Recently retired Australian sets insane time at Valencia half-marathon

In the Netherlands, there has been a lot of talk recently about the marathon run by Tom Dumoulin, who completed the 42.195 kilometers in Amsterdam in under 2 hours and 30 minutes. Mathieu van der Poel and Wout van Aert also show on Instagram and Strava that they are clocking up quite a few kilometers in their running shoes, achieving some impressive times.

Compared to Whelan, however, it's still child's play. The 29-year-old Aussie retired from professional cycling at the end of 2024, after three seasons with EF Education-EasyPost and a final year with Q36.5. In Europe, we know him best for winning the Tour of Flanders for promising young riders in 2018.

After his career, he put his running shoes back on. “He's only been running again for a year, but he's already run 1:01 in the Valencia half marathon. That's a speed of 2:54 minutes per kilometer. I can hardly describe how fast that is,” his coach said on social media. Whelan finished 22nd with that time.

“James ran when he was younger, until he was 20. But he suffered many injuries and decided to focus on cycling. He has had a great career, including riding the Giro, which meant he didn't run more than once a week for eight years. The fact that he is now running 1:01 in the half-marathon is unbelievable. And he still has a lot of potential."