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Sharon Lokedi is the back-to-back Boston Marathon champion and course record holder, despite forgetting her watch at her hotel before the 2026 race and having to borrow one. She is seeking her first Mastercard New York Mini 10K win in her fourth attempt. Lokedi made her New York Road Runners racing debut at the 2022 event, finishing second.

Lokedi has had much success in New York, finishing runner-up in her past two New York Road Runners races—the 2026 United Airlines NYC Half and the 2025 TCS New York City Marathon. She won the United Airlines NYC Half in 2025—where she broke the event record—and the 2022 TCS New York City Marathon, her 26.2-mile debut. 

She narrowly missed a medal at the 2024 Paris Olympics, finishing fourth in the marathon, just four seconds off the podium after stepping in as a late replacement for the Kenyan team.

Lokedi grew up in Kenya’s Kalenjin tribe as the oldest of four children, and it was a long journey to the University of Kansas in the United States. When she was 14, following the Kenyan presidential election results, her family fled their home village of Burnt Forest, which became the center of the Kenyan crisis and violence due to the population’s conflicting loyalties. For a month, her family lived in silence and fear with no shelter, possessions, or steady source of food. After the conflict ended, they returned to their home safely, and that’s when Lokedi started running four kilometers to and from school each day.

She improved her running so much over the next few years, attending camps and working with coaches, that she was recruited by the University of Kansas, where she studied nursing and competed in track and cross country from 2015 to 2019. She was a 10-time All American and won the 10,000 meters at the NCAA Outdoor Track and Field Championships in 2018. She went on to win her first race as a pro, taking the Carlsbad 5000 title in 15:38.