Hi Letsrun,
I come to you with a fascinating question. Someone in my running club recently ran 2:58 at the Jersey City Marathon. Solid time, but nothing Earth-shattering.
However, it's recently come to our attention that this was not only his first ever marathon, but his first ever RACE. I'm thinking this has got to be a world record of some kind - I'd imagine most people who's first ever race is a marathon are people doing it just to check off the "i did it" bucket list item and are probably finishing in 6 hours. Figure if you had even a modicum of talent you'd have run a 5k at some point in your life.
But I'd love to be proven wrong - what's the fastest debut race marathon you know of?