A dentist striving to give his patients the perfect smile cannot stop smiling himself. Borivli’s Dr Pritam Assrani is just back in Mumbai, post clocking a zippy 2:59:13 in the Chicago marathon (42-km) run on October 11. The 48-year-old runner has gone under three hours in the race, which is one of eight majors (called the Big 8) in the marathon world.

The time is runtastic fantastic achieved by extremely few, and a major benchmark for competitive amateur runners. A sub-three-hour marathon is widely considered a very impressive achievement — a rarity achieved by only roughly 5 per cent of all amateur marathon finishers. The average marathon finish time globally is roughly 4:30, 4:20-4:25 for men and 4:45-4:50 for women. That makes three hours a significant jump on the speedometer.