For those living under a rock, Sabastian Sawe AND Yomif Kejelcha both broke 2 hours at the London Marathon on Sunday.
The History
The two hour mark is a mystical time, similar to the 4 minute mile, except that very few really thought it was doable. Geb ran 2:03:59 in 2008. Patrick Makau moved it to 2:03:38 in 2011 and Kimetto to 2:02:57 in 2014.
Those marks seemed incomprehensibly fast at the time and we were still three full minutes away from sub 2:00! Logic would suggest that each minute gets harder to shave off. Sub 2:00 was a very cool and obvious milestone, but don’t get your hopes up.
The Super Shoes
Then “super shoes” came about. Shortly after Kimetto’s record, Nike released the Vaporfly which have a history on this blog. They billed them as 4% faster. I thought at the time it seemed like an odd marketing campaign. Running is such a pure sport and you’re selling the product as a blatant shortcut to get faster. It felt wrong, but that’s why I’m bad at marketing.
Soon all the road records weren’t just getting broken, they were getting destroyed. The marathon is particularly susceptible to the impacts of these shoes given the nature of the race and the all-time lists were rewritten every year. This table from Letsrun summarizes this well.
Kipchoge then Kiptum redefined what was possible in the event, and suddenly, after Kipchoge’s 2:01:09 in 2022, and Kiptum’s 2:00:35 the next year, sub 2:00 felt not only possible, but inevitable.
In London this weekend, four of the top five finishers were wearing Adidas new Adizero Adios Pro Evo 3s, the latest and greatest in super shoe technology. It feels it’s taken the sport from the Prefontaine days of “you’re going to have to bleed to beat me” (I know that’s not the actual quote) to “if you’re not wearing these, you don’t have a chance“.
Many runners feel conflicted about this. But simply put you can’t NOT wear some version of these shoes if you want to compete on a global level. It’s the sad reality of the sport. The obvious thought is “have any of these dudes worn the old shoes to prove the difference?” and to my knowledge, no, not really. I would love to see what Connor Mantz would run with 2007 shoes. Would he actually be faster than Ryan Hall or is it just the shoes?
The impossible question is where do you draw the line?
The Nike Victory’s I wore in high school were undoubtedly ‘faster’ than the shoes Roger Bannister wore in his sub 4 mile. Why is that different? I don’t know, but there’s just something not right about what’s happened. You’re not comparing apples to apples. Even apples to oranges feels like a stretch.
The Fueling
Marathon fueling has come a long way. Bill Rodgers wrote in his book that in the four Bostons he won he barely ever drank water or Gatorade during the race.
Read below about Yomif Kejelcha’s fueling for the London. It’s insanely scientific. They’ve got it down to the number of grams of carbs they’re aiming him to take in on race day (287.4). It’s hard to know what’s hoopla and what’s a difference maker, but it holds up that if Bill Rodgers had this kind of fueling, he might’ve run a minute or two faster.
Where does that leave me?
It’s hard to feel excited anymore about accomplishments like this. No doubt Sawe, Kejelcha, Kiplimo, etc. are all-time talents, but it’s not a fair fight. A sub 60:00 half meant you were world class just 15 years ago. Now it’s slower than the marathon record pace.
Perhaps in 5 years I’ll change my tune, as I somewhat have about Cheptegei breaking Bekele’s records. But Cheptegei broke the record by 2 seconds. When someone breaks El G’s 1500m record or Rudisha’s 800m record, I will be more impressed.
No one likes the party pooper, but this, though obviously amazing and impressive, feels a little hollow in the moment.
Recent Comments