
Eliud Kipchoge Breaks Two-Hour Marathon Barrier - Fezzik
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/12/sports/eliud-kipchoge-marathon-record.html
======
benmarks
Given that "[i]t will not be recognised as the official marathon world record
because it was not in open competition and he used a team of rotating
pacemakers," Mr. Kipchoge's attitude represents the best of sport:

"Now I've done it, I am expecting more people to do it after me... This shows
the positivity of sport. I want to make it a clean and interesting sport.
Together when we run, we can make it a beautiful world."

An amazing boundary to breach.

~~~
antpls
For the non-initiated among us, what does it mean to "use a team of
pacemakers"?

Why are those pacemakers that important?

~~~
francisofascii
When Roger Bannister broke the 4 minute mile, he also had pacers.

~~~
brantonb
The rule for pacers is that they must start the race at the same time and be
able to keep up with the runner being paced, though they don’t have to finish
it. Swapping fresh legs in mid-race isn’t allowed.

In a college indoor track 5K, one of my teammates was being lapped by another
teammate competing for a podium spot. The guy being lapped started sprinting
to help the guy near the front of the race finish strong. That was ruled
illegal pacing and they were both disqualified. It was a similar sort of
situation — in order to legally pace you must be able to keep up with the
runner your pacing.

~~~
ultrarunner
It varies by event. Personal pacers in the marathon are uncommon to begin
with. In ultramarathons they are specifically not allowed until late in the
race. That a track event would rule that way had become an unfortunate
expectation.

~~~
brantonb
Pacers in ultras largely serve a different purpose. They’re there for safety,
especially once it gets dark. In events 50 miles and shorter, pacers usually
aren’t allowed. Sure, the elite runners could get some actual pacing at the
end but that’s a very small portion of pacing in ultras.

------
js2
Link to full video in case you didn’t watch it live (in which case, what’s
wrong with you?):

[https://youtu.be/k-XgKRJUEgQ](https://youtu.be/k-XgKRJUEgQ)

This is an extraordinary achievement. It was just last September that Kipchoge
set the W.R. time of 2:01:39[1]. It’s only a matter of time (no pun intended)
till sub-2 is broken in competition. Probably at Berlin. Just knowing it’s
possible is a huge barrier to break through.

I’ve run over two dozen marathons and it took me more than a decade of running
(I started running in my 30s) before I was able to qualify for Boston. But
once I did so, I was able to easily do so many times thereafter. Much of that
was finally getting into proper physical conditioning, but knowing something
is possible cannot be discounted. (My next goal is sub-3.)

Kipchoge’s next goal is surely a second Olympic marathon gold at Tokyo 2020.
At that point he’ll be 35. He’ll have a few more years of prime marathon
running after that at best, so I’m not sure he can run a sub-2 in competition
but only he knows how much is in him. He’s the most accomplished marathoner of
our time, but still, in 2013 the W.R. was lowered at Berlin by Kipsang. We’ll
see.

1\. [https://www.runnersworld.com/news/a23279362/eliud-
kipchoge-m...](https://www.runnersworld.com/news/a23279362/eliud-kipchoge-
marathon-world-record/)

~~~
canucker2016
"At that point he'll be 35..."

A well-known secret in running circles - many Ethiopian and Kenyan runners
have dubious official birth years including Eliud Kipchoge.

from [https://runningmagazine.ca/the-scene/zane-robertson-
swears-k...](https://runningmagazine.ca/the-scene/zane-robertson-swears-
kipchoge-is-over-40/)

(Zane Robertson, one of two identical twin brothers from NZ who live & train
in Kenya and ran 2:08:19 for the marathon):

"That’s when Robertson got involved, commenting that Kipchoge is over 40. When
challenged on this, Robertson claims “There [sic] passport ages are all fake
so they can cheat Jr’s and get contracts,” and claiming authority on the
subject because he lives and trains in Kenya, along with his brother."

Jr's refers to races for men & women under 20 years old.

It's much easier to do well against non-African teenagers if you're several
years older and have trained for that much longer.

~~~
confidantlake
If he is really 40, which I don't believe, that would make this record even
more remarkable.

~~~
avinium
That was my initial reaction, too. Or is long distance running much less of a
"young person sport" than others?

~~~
llamataboot
Ultra-marathons and ultra-endurance events are very much less of a young
person sport, and we are still trying to figure out exactly why performance
can keep increasing into the 40s and even early 50s. Marathoning is a
considerably younger peak though, usually thought to be 20-35, so depends on
whether you think that is "young" or not :)

------
anonu
Reminds me of this post on HN from 5 years ago: what will it take to run a 2
hour marathon?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8439408](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8439408)

Unfortunately the linked article seems to have disappeared.

I wonder if today's record was run with those special Nike shoes with the
blades inside... The ones that supposedly give you a 1 percent boost or
something similar... If you have shoes that give you such a boost, is it
doping?

Edit: thank you web Archive:
[http://web.archive.org/web/20141010142108/http://rw.runnersw...](http://web.archive.org/web/20141010142108/http://rw.runnersworld.com/sub-2/)

~~~
morelisp
I remembered this article also, thanks for digging it up again.

Its predictions were pretty spot-on:

\- Predicted in November, actual mid-October

\- Predicted in Debno, actual in Vienna, but both are very flat courses (I
can't find if Debno is flatter)

\- "The pacemakers will form a human wall" \- yes, pacemaker strategy seemed
critical here.

\- "Mindblowing pay-day" \- No clue, no articles seem to mention it.

\- "Kenyans who dominate world marathon lists generally do little, if any,
weight training, which may represent an untapped source of improvement." \-
"To his normal preparations he added workouts focused on core strength"
(though unclear if weights were a focus).

\- "5' 6" and [120lb]" \- Kipchoge is 5'5" and 125lb.

\- "access to [technology] we can't imagine" \- the shoes I guess - I don't
know how big an advance these are - compared to his last attempt the
pacemakers and location seem more relevant.

\- "early 20s" \- complete miss.

\- "I’m saying the year is...2075" and two generations late.

Interestingly, it predicts very precisely the characteristics of the run and
the runner, except for time - both the runner's age, and the time until it
would happen.

~~~
sorenjan
> the shoes I guess - I don't know how big an advance these are

The pacers wore Vaporfly, Kipchoge wore a prototype. The Vaporfly have been
shown to actually make a difference of around 4%.

[https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/07/18/upshot/nike-v...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/07/18/upshot/nike-
vaporfly-shoe-strava.html)

~~~
demiourgos
No way. That was advertisement. You can check the results on strava or
elsewhere. Nobody had 4% decrease in time after switching to this shoes.

~~~
sorenjan
NY Times used data from Strava to write the article, and there are other
sources as well. Like this study from 2017:

A Comparison of the Energetic Cost of Running in Marathon Racing Shoes

> Conclusion

> The prototype shoes lowered the energetic cost of running by 4% on average.
> We predict that with these shoes, top athletes could run substantially
> faster and achieve the first sub-2-hour marathon.

[https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40279-017-0811-2](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40279-017-0811-2)

~~~
demiourgos
Not that easy. NYT data shows not only 4% increase for VaporFly, but also 3%
increase for Streak. Springer is harder. Though 18 male aren't enough to prove
anything, the data is quite consistent. But 4% equals to 5 min in marathon.
That means that a lot of athletes from 2013-14 could break 2 hours in that
shoes easily. Probably 5 min on a treadmill at 18 km/h has little in common
with 2 hours at 21 km/h.

------
YeGoblynQueenne
So Kipchoge had rotating teams of pacemakers running _before_ him, throughout
the race. Each team was able to outrun Kipchoge for a short amount of time,
but of course Kipchoge himself had to keep the same pace throughout the race.

This reminded me of an episode from Terry Pratchett's _Small Gods_. This is
mostly from memory, but he describes an invasion of the country Ephebe where
the invasion force comes from the side of a desert considered impassable,
because no expeditionary force could carry enough provisions to make it
through the desert. The trick is that a number of expeditions have preceded
the invasion whose function was to leave caches of provisions for the actual
invasion force to use. Each expedition only has to carry enough provisions to
make it to a cache location and back and of course multiple expeditions can
deposit provisions to the same cache location, until it is sufficiently
stocked for the invading force.

It's a slow and costly process, but it gets the job done and it made me wonder
if there are algorithms like that, that can compute results otherwise
uncomputable. I'm pretty sure there are- in fact I'm pretty sure it's
something blindingly obvious that I'm missing because I'm thinking of it in
terms of runners and soldiers crossing deserts... Maybe divide and conquer
strategies, or dynamic programming?

~~~
arctangent
I don't know for sure but I strongly suspect that Pratchett was heavily
influenced by Operation Black Buck:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Black_Buck](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Black_Buck)

In particular, this diagram from that page makes the process clear:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Black_Buck#/media/Fi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Black_Buck#/media/File:Refuelling.plan.black.buck.svg)

Hopefully the name of the original mission is enough to help you find a link
to some relevant mathematics :-)

~~~
NickBusey
That diagram is anything but “clear”.

~~~
Someone
I find it fairly clear.

\- each vertical line is the flight of an airplane

\- each horizontal/diagonal line is a refueling operation

So, planes take of from Ascension Island at the bottom, only one reaches the
Falkland Islands.

Ignoring the gray vertical lines (they are for ‘insurance’, in case other
planes would have hit a problem), we have:

\- 6 Victors taking of

\- 3 of them refueling the other 3 after a short while (presumably because
taking of and getting to flight height uses more fuel than steady flight),
immediately returning to base afterwards.

\- the bomber taking off

\- a seventh Victor taking off, refueling the bomber twice, and then returning
to base

\- one of the 3 Victors of the first wave refuels the bomber twice, then
refuels another of the three before returning to base

\- that second one refuels the third one and returns to base

Etc.

------
bandrami
I can't sprint that fast nowadays. When I was in the Marines 20 years ago, my
3-mile pace was slower than that, and I still had a class "A" run time. This
is amazing.

~~~
loeg
He's literally the fastest distance runner in the world. It's not surprising
you were slower than him. (I am too!)

~~~
JshWright
It's still amazing to point out that the pace he runs over 26 miles is a pace
that most people wouldn't be able to maintain for one lap around the track at
their local high school.

------
mcintyre1994
His pace was an incredibly consistent 2:50/km which to someone who casually
runs with a workout tracker and runs far less distance than a marathon is
absurd. I know his official race time is barely slower and this was about
shaving a few seconds per km off that, but that pace is just insane.

~~~
jobigoud
Here is a short (45s) video showing side by side comparison of 4-hour, 3-hour
and 2-hour pace.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTlmxYwiqw4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTlmxYwiqw4)

~~~
todd8
Austin has a nice and popular trail where many runners train along town lake
so back when I was jogging, I would occasionally gets passed by a really great
runner (like our local Gilbert Tuhabonye[1]). It's really awe inspiring to be
right there--like the difference between only watching Andy Roddick serve at
150+ mph and what I imagine its like trying to return it.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilbert_Tuhabonye](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilbert_Tuhabonye)

------
ggregoire
That's running 42km at 21km/h… Anybody who already tried to run a sub20 5km
(5km at 15km/h) knows how crazy this is.

~~~
cehrlich
Exactly, I was a middle distance runner back in high school and nowadays focus
on half and full marathons. I'm far from being an elite runner, but I do
alright at local events.

I can barely keep Kipchoge's pace for 1km.

~~~
usaphp
It’s crazy that he runs 1km under 2:50s, and he does it 42 times straight!

------
jobigoud
Interesting image showing the reversed-V formation of the pace maker runners,
tested in a wind tunnel. (inverse of what birds do).

[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EGqIhcSXUAca387?format=jpg&name=...](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EGqIhcSXUAca387?format=jpg&name=large)

From
[https://twitter.com/BertBlocken/status/1182907965306748929](https://twitter.com/BertBlocken/status/1182907965306748929)

~~~
JshWright
Birds are optimizing for max efficiency gains across the flock, as opposed to
the pace runners, who are optimizing for a single member of the group

------
toppy
Here's the fantastic documentary on his previous try:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLSRitGNAjY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLSRitGNAjY)

It shows how big this achievement is and how precisely it was organized.

~~~
shmageggy
Really great watch, thanks for the link.

------
surfsvammel
What makes this even more perfect is that Kipchoge seems like such a great
guy.

Been waiting for this. Marathons have always been my favourite distance. This
got me inspired. Will go out and test my old and broken knees tonight!

------
hyperion2010
For those of us who have only ever run shorter distance, this is an average
mile time over the whole course of about 4:33.84 minutes.

The current world record for a single mile is 3:43.13, which would shave about
22 minutes off the two hours, for a hypothetical 1:38:00 minimum time if we
assume perfectly linear extrapolation of human physiology given the proper
training techniques (seems unlikely, given that you would need 26 pacers that
could all run at world record pace or something like that). Said another way
this would allow one to run about 6 additional miles in the same time if you
could sustain the pace for the duration rather than the distance.

------
hestefisk
For the non-imperial unit folks amongst HN, he ran his last km in pace 2m40s.
That’s very fast after 41km.

~~~
surfsvammel
That’s basically the speed of the 10k WR.

------
tonystubblebine
The LetsRun thread on this is pretty great, starting with a heated debate
about his shoes. Were they too springy?

[https://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=9640871](https://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=9640871)

~~~
segmondy
Wow, that was not heated but toxic. I had to nope out of that after reading
the first 2 pages.

~~~
bagacrap
Not toxic, just informed. When people follow a sport closely ("passionately")
they're more likely to be offended by and call out bullshit. The shoes provide
a significant mechanical advantage that most consider unfair. Others claim
they're just shoes, but then you might as well claim that rollerblades are
shoes.

This comes on the heels of US anti doping handing a 4 year ban to the coach of
Nike's elite running team. People who follow that side of the sport have
little faith that athletics (or cycling, or any other sport) is any cleaner
now than in past decades, which is to say, every successful endurance athlete
is on some kind of gear.

~~~
Aperocky
Informed? Did you see the guy with a full on explanation on how basic physics
work got shat on by people who claim the shoe 'rebound 2 or 3 times higher
than other shoes'. You literally can't communicate with toxic people like
that.

------
nradov
With sports performance a lot of the barriers are psychological. Even though
this wasn't a real sanctioned race, Mr. Kipchoge showed it's possible for the
human body so now I expect he or someone else will do it in a race within a
few years.

~~~
paganel
The recent Salazar scandal proves otherwise, i.e. that a lot of today’s
athletics-related performances are reached based on same old drug cheating.
Too bad, athletics as a competitive sport used to be an event that genuinely
filled up big stadiums (like in 1993 in Stuttgart or in 1999 in Sevilla),
nowadays we’re left wondering which results will be wiped out in 5 years’
time, while the recent 100-meter World Champs final only attracted 8,000
people in Doha.

~~~
nradov
While Kipchoge is sponsored by Nike, he was never part of Salazar's Nike
Oregon Project and has never failed a doping test.

Doha is a rather terrible site for an athletics meet. Plus Qatar is under a
travel ban from Saudi Arabia and other neighboring countries. So the low
attendance attendence doesn't necessarily mean much.

~~~
mjhagen
Armstrong never failed a doping test either.

------
gameswithgo
It should be noted there are, at least 3 things here that make this quite a
bit different than a normal marathon:

* questionable shoes, but personally I'm fine with this, its just better shoes!

* the pace car is too close providing large aerodynamic advantage

* the pace makers aren't in the race from the start, might as well just let the car get even closer and dispense with the charade entirely

The last two points make it kind of silly, like top speed bicycle records
where you are behind a vehicle and go over 100mph.

It is still fun, of course! But it isn't a story of physical achievement as
much as basic engineering and clever showmanship. Other than, of course, you
need a human who can run 2:03 without a car to draft to start with, which is
insane.

~~~
nradov
I watched the video. The pace car was too far in front to provide any real
aerodynamic advantage at that speed.

------
peter303
I wonder how much of a factor the pace car drawing the optimal path on the
street with a laser was. In races you might wobble a bit on the road and add
extra steps to your run. In a pack side-pathing is inevitable. Not everyone
can be the optimal path.

------
usaphp
Here is a list of all current best results in marathon for reference:
[http://www.alltime-athletics.com/mmaraok.htm](http://www.alltime-
athletics.com/mmaraok.htm)

------
dm3730
Factor of 4 difference between Eliud and the average human male. Factor of 4!

~~~
arh68
Citation needed ?

> _He ran behind a timing car driving 4:34 per mile_

I think most men could pull 12 minute miles (26 in a row, that is), so _maybe_
a factor of 3?

~~~
yomly
Define "could", my intuition is that there is a vast population of men who
couldn't complete a one mile run (right now with no training)

~~~
rimliu
Interesting. Your intution bascially says that vast population of man could
not walk a single mile. Because factor of 3 means walking, not running.

~~~
yomly
Well a brisk walk (from memory) is about 15 minutes a mile.

So people under the age of 10 and over 60 probably start having a non-
negligible numbers of people who can't complete a mile in 15 mins.

And then you have an obesity + overweight rating of 57.6% in the USA according
to Wikipedia (and this may not cover people who are not overweight but
physically fit) and you can start seeing how maybe not _everyone_ can do even
a 15 minute mile walk.

For the record I know BMI is a bit of a weak metric for covering obesity given
that anyone "swole" will have a very high BMI...

------
AtlasBarfed
This was done with: \- full on pack drafting (draft benefit of a pack is 70%
in cycling, so probably at least in the 20% range at running speeds \- laser-
guided least distance path \- all nutrition and liquids delivered by rotating
cast of drafters

I've also seen no details on the drug controls, which even with biological
passport are weak. The liklihood this record didn't involve EPO microdosing at
a minimum is very unlikely.

Distance records took a massive hammering as EPO became prevalent (it could
not be tested initially and still is very difficult to detect using
microdosing), and the records are still falling.

Such was the drop in times from EPO use that there is little chance a bunch of
training techniques were invented to compensate for its effects.

People are still on it using microdosing and other drugs. There was a british
journalist that willingly went on EPO microdosing with biological passport to
personally test if he would have been caught.

Answer: nope.

There has also been a cycling magazine writer that went on HGH, steroids, and
EPO to test each of them out. EPO was a ludicrous advantage.

But... news headline justifies everything.

------
Shivetya
Anyone have estimated of how many calories he burned during this run? I wonder
how much he ate before starting and when? Are they allowed calorie dense
drinks during these runs?

I do not do runs, walking sure, so I am just really curious how much it takes
for the human body to do this type of run

~~~
nradov
Kipchoge probably burned about 2500 kcal according to online calculators.
Maybe slightly less in reality due to drafting off his pacers and having an
exceptionally efficient running form.

Runners can drink anything they want as long as it doesn't violate doping
rules. The elites all have customized carbohydrate mixes.

~~~
tlringer
Probably much less. It is not just running form that makes elite runners
efficient. Due to both genetics and training, their bodies use fuel more
efficiently, too.

~~~
salty_biscuits
Probably not much less. Physics is physics. I'd be super sceptical of any
claim about efficiency of something like running being much different from
person to person (happy to see any quality research that proves my scepticism
to be unfounded though). People like this are just monstrously fit compared to
your average person, they still have the same thermodynamic considerations.

------
u-dissolve
What, specifically, made this attempt (and the Breaking2 attempt) not eligible
for a world record? Pacemakers are allowed under IAAF criteria:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_world_records_in_athle...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_world_records_in_athletics#Criteria)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marathon_world_record_progress...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marathon_world_record_progression#Criteria_for_record_eligibility)

~~~
vmurthy
The article mentions “Not open conditions”. Other words, this course was
chosen for the record.

Also, per the linked Wiki reference “and meet other criteria that rule out
artificially fast times produced on courses aided by downhill slope or
tailwind.[8] The criteria include:

"The start and finish points of a course, measured along a theoretical
straight line between them, shall not be further apart than 50% of the race
distance."[6] "The decrease in elevation between the start and finish shall
not exceed an average of one in a thousand, i.e. 1m per km."[6]

~~~
u-dissolve
I don't think the course itself breaks any criteria. It was just a big loop,
so any slopes or tailwind would not help the runner. "Each lap of the course
featured two 4.3-kilometre (2.7-mile) out-and-back stretches... There is only
2.4 metres (7.9 feet) of incline over the entire route."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INEOS_1%3A59_Challenge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INEOS_1%3A59_Challenge)

------
0xFFFE
In this documentary he had said "I think it is possible" after failing to
break the 2 hours. Highly recommended.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVPeK39lNp8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVPeK39lNp8)

------
jacobevelyn
For anyone curious about just how fast this pace would be for other distances:
[https://pace.ninja/marathon-in-1h59m40s](https://pace.ninja/marathon-
in-1h59m40s)

------
elijahparker
This documentary of the first attempt a couple years ago gives some
background: [https://youtu.be/sVPeK39lNp8](https://youtu.be/sVPeK39lNp8)

------
hop
4.6 minute miles, dang that is cooking.

------
DevX101
At this pace he would beat lots of amateurs ON A BIKE!

~~~
bagacrap
Maybe a tourist cruising down the beach path would go slower. But this guy
went 13.1 mph which, on a bike, is actually a bit less cardiac output than a
3mph walk.

~~~
Noumenon72
I biked to work on a dirt bike for many years and never hit this speed. Later
I learned you are supposed to use an easy gear and pedal at a cadence of 60-90
rpm, instead of a hard gear and pushing hard with each stroke, and hit it
easily.

------
moonbug
again, not a barrier.

------
mkl
While an amazing achievement, this seems quite artificial. A team of human
pacemakers and following a car going at just the right speed.

Non paywalled link with photo of laser-guiding pace-car:
[https://edition.cnn.com/2019/10/12/sport/eliud-kipchoge-
mara...](https://edition.cnn.com/2019/10/12/sport/eliud-kipchoge-marathon-
vienna-intl/index.html)

I can't find anything about anyone doing it on a treadmill before this,
though. Maybe that's harder for some reason?

Eliud Kipchoge's world record is 2:01:39, which was 1:18 better than the
record before (just 4 years earlier), so it seems pretty likely that <2 hours
will happen in competition too, soon.

~~~
scabarott
Well the first 4-minute mile was achieved in a similar manner and for some
reason it is well known in the popular imagination. To be honest I think these
arbitrary marks of achievement are all very artificial and more about good PR
more than anything else. Personally I think the 2 hour marathon is slightly
less arbitrary than the 4-minute mile but breaking it was only a matter of
time.

~~~
bainsfather
No, it was a genuine race (the 'pacemakers' were also competing, were not
lapped, and had to finish the race).

~~~
evgen
They completed the race (not hard to do when it is only a mile) but please do
not try to suggest that Chataway or Brasher were in that race as anything
other than designated pacesetters and windbreaks for Bannister.

~~~
bainsfather
Sure. But to pace Bannister on e.g. lap 3, his pacemaker had to run those 3
laps at wr pace. And Bannister had to run the final lap alone.

------
Moeg
Can we please stop posting news from sites that you need an account for? I'm
sure this article has been posted on several more user friendly websites.

------
danschumann
Count it! Cuz in everyone's mind, we do! We don't care about the
technicalities, we care what a human was capable of doing. The crowd was a
huge help in getting him there. Nike's course was sterile, this one
specifically had crowds to help.

~~~
pferde
Nobody denies that this is a tremendous achievement, but there are rules to
world records which have to apply to everyone, if they apply at all.

I'm sure even people at IAAF who decided not to accept this as an official
record are happy for Eliud. But the rules are the rules.

In my mind, it's not detracting from what Eliud has achieved in the slightest.

