Victoria Fiddick came into this race low on confidence and spent the entire 13.1 miles 'running scared'.

However, in conditions that were hot, incredibly difficult, and just plain brutal, Fiddick shook off her tag as perennial runner-up to claim victory in a time of one hour, 30 minutes and 33 seconds in one of the most historic races so far.

It was the title they all wanted, the winner of the 100th race, and it showed. Runner-up Jennifer Alen pushed so hard she collapsed just after finishing in 1:32.58 and was rushed away on a stretcher, while Karen Bordage, one of the pre-race favourites, pushed Fiddick early on, but then faltered and came in third in a time of 1:34.39.

"It feels amazing to have won my first May 24th," said Fiddick. "To win the 100th too is pretty special and I couldn't be happier.

"I was really, really worried about this race. I knew Karen (Bordage) was going to be so strong and I really expected her to actually take me today.

"You want to prepare as well as you can for a race, and when you're not 100 percent your confidence goes down and you're not really sure what you can do."

For Fiddick, it was a title that she had begun to wonder if she'd ever win, and for a time during the race just finishing was the only thing on her mind.

"Today I couldn't really run for time, it was brutal out there. The heat, the humidity, it's really, really tough. I just decided to do my own kind of race. I know what pace I can do, so I just decided to stick to it.

"And wherever she (Karen) was, she was just going to have to stick with it. She was with me for the first little while, and I could hear her breathing pretty hard, actually. But I felt comfortable because I thought 'no, this isn't going to work for you dear', because you can't be breathing hard after two miles, because you have a long way to go."

Even then, having seemingly shaken off the attentions of Bordage, Fiddick was unable to relax.

"It was scary because I never knew where she was, I had no idea where she was behind me, nobody told me," said Fiddick.

"I didn't know where the competition was and I was running scared the whole way, you think 'they're coming, they're coming, they're coming'.