Kenyans Isabella Ochichi and Shadrack Kemboi battered the hot and humid weather conditions to sweep to respective women and men victories at the Sanlam Cape Town Marathon on Sunday.

It's Ochichi, the 2004 Athens Olympics 5,000m silver medallist, who set a new course record with a personal best of 2 hours and 30:20 minutes, slicing off 37 seconds from previous record set last year by Meseret Biru from Ethiopia.

Ochichi, the 2006 Melbourne Commonwealth 5,000m champion, edged out Kenyan born Eunice Chumba from Bahrain to second position in 2:33:12 as Jemila Shure from Ethiopia wrapped up the last podium place a further 4 minutes and 33 seconds off the pace.

It took more than a minute from the 2:31:38 PB she set on her marathon debut in Amsterdam. It was also her first marathon victory after finishing fourth in Amsterdam in 2013 and third in Honolulu in 2014.

Ochichi and Chumba were toe-to-toe in the first half, which was covered in 1:14:22, well inside course record pace.

Chumba then began to fade, leaving Ochichi to run alongside some male athletes on her way to victory.

"I always wanted a marathon victory," said Ochichi. "I thought that it would come in Honolulu in 2014, but I got it today on my home continent - Africa - and I couldn't be happier," she added.

Kemboi, who finished fourth in this race last year, was home and dry this time around winning in 2:11:41, with South Africans Lungile Gongqa (2:11:59) finishing second and Michael Mazibuko (2:12:29) finishing third.

Another Kenya Peter Kamais was fourth in 2:14:08 while former New York Marathon champion Hendrick Ramaala was 10th in 2:17:12.

After an hour and a half of running in the men's race, a group of nine athletes were still together.

Gongqa was the first to try to make a break, but he was reeled back in after a few minutes.

Nevertheless, his injection of pace helped to break up the leading pack.

Just a few minutes later, Kemboi was the next to make a move. He hit the front and soon opened up a gap on the field, one which grew until the finish line.

After a 1:07:01 first half, the second half was significantly quicker with Kemboi covering the final 13.1 miles in 1:04:40.

 Source: Daily Nation