A Nike runner missed a world record because his shoes fell apart

Kenyan runner Eliud Kipchoge fell 63 seconds short of breaking a marathon world record over the weekend - and he blames his Nike shoes for the failure.

Kipchoge's shoes fell apart while he was running in the Berlin Marathon on Sunday, Runner's World reports.

The insoles started to fall out of the shoes in the first mile of the race, according to the report.

By the 10-mile mark, the insoles of both shoes had almost completely fallen out and were flopping against his ankles.

Despite the shoe malfunction, Kipchoge was able to win the race with a personal record of 2:04:00.

But he ended up with bloodied, blistered feet as a result, and he was 63 seconds behind the 2:02:57 world record set by Dennis Kimetto last year.

"It was not easy," he told Runner's World. "There are blisters on the left foot and my big toe is cut, with lots of blood."

Nike blamed the embarrassing malfunction on the fact that Kipchoge was testing a prototype.

"As he has done in previous races, Eliud was testing a prototype racing flat which we've been working on together for several months," Nike spokesman T.J. Crawford told the Wall Street Journal. "As with any prototype, elements can sometimes go wrong. On this occasion, the sockliner didn't work. As in all innovation, we will learn quickly from mistakes."