Sub 2-hour marathon

[Cudzoziemiec]

Which was the better performance, this one or the 2:01:39 WR he ran in Berlin?
For me, probably Berlin. Homologated shoes, restricted pacemakers, no car with green lasers, actual race. Less publicity/discussion about that one though.

only if you think the shoes are worth 2 minutes.

That's if you think "better performance" means "faster time". Which in the case of a record breaking event it pretty much has to, but in a normal race, it might not; just as in football, a match in which your team plays superbly but loses might be better – or not – than one in which they play badly but win.

[DuncanM]

Which was the better performance, this one or the 2:01:39 WR he ran in Berlin?
For me, probably Berlin. Homologated shoes, restricted pacemakers, no car with green lasers, actual race. Less publicity/discussion about that one though.

only if you think the shoes are worth 2 minutes.

Let's face it, those shoes will be available to all within 6 months, then it's up to the IAAF to decide if they fit within their vague rules or not.

REmember another unbreakable barrier? The 4-min mile, finally broken with (shhh!) the aid of pacemakers.  Anyone want to denigrate Sir Roger as well?

No, it's not just the shoes. In the race there were pacemakers, but they didn't run in a flying V to shelter him (with a car to shelter them), they started at the start and ran until they couldn't hold the pace (25km or so). After that, he was on his own.
Bannister's pacemakers were the normal sort - the ones that start the race and run until they blow up. The rules at that point were such that they had to finish, so they dragged themselves around the last lap or 2 finishing ages down. The same conditions as Kipchoge's Berlin race in fact.

And I'm not denigrating the athlete. He's the world record holder, and he's run 3 marathon distances faster than any other athlete (he was the fastest of the 3 in the previous "Breaking 2" circus which involved running behind a Tesla around Monza (if they had chosen a flatter course he could have gone sub 2 that day)). He belongs in the pantheon of great marathon runners, and has a fair claim to be right at the top of that list. He's won 4 Londons, 3 Berlins,  1 Chicago, an Olympics and various other "smaller" marathons.

[fuaran]

only if you think the shoes are worth 2 minutes.

Let's face it, those shoes will be available to all within 6 months, then it's up to the IAAF to decide if they fit within their vague rules or not.

Nike claim the latest shoes are up to 1% better than the previous version, which is over 1 minute anyway.
If those shoes are custom designs specifically for Kipchoge, they may not be able to buy. In 6 months time, Nike could have made a new even better version.

An interesting chart of how many top runners are wearing Nike.
https://www.runningshoesguru.com/2018/11/shoes-of-the-winners-of-the-2018-world-marathon-majors-infographic/

[mattc]

Did the pacemakers for the marathon start the race? They did for the 4 min mile, I believe.

It wasn't a race. It was a record breaking event. The pacers alternated, and were arranged to give the most aerodynamic benefit. There was also an electric car, which dictated the record pace. Dave Brailsford helped organise these 'marginal gains', as it was an INEOS-backed enterprise.

Arguably it wasn't even a record-breaking event! I don't believe there was a recognised record for a marathon run under those conditions. (of course I think you knew that ... )

Bannister's run WAS record-breaking - there were established rules under which the record had been lowered many times over the years.

You can debate whether pacemakers are "sporting" , but those were/are the rules.


It's a publicity stunt, but certainly an interesting one 

[Greenbank]

The shoe homologation aspect is an interesting one.

At one end of the spectrum you have someone running barefoot. No cushioning, no extra "bounce" or "spring".

At the other end you have the theoretical case of someone using large springs attached to the bottom of the shoes (or integrated into the shoes), and probably making the average person able to run faster than 13mph for 2 hours.

All running shoes will be somewhere between these two extremes. Some offer more bounce/response/spring than others. The IAAF will have drawn the line somewhere.

What the IAAF allows in order for a shoe to be homologated will not be found in a vague two line snippet in its rules about shoes. There's probably going to be some big technical document in a dusty filing cabinet in the IAAF head offices that maybe Nike are aware of and have a copy of and knew how to push the limits of.

Those shoes will probably be tested at some point, or are already undergoing testing, by the IAAF. They'll either be found to be ok, and loads of people will want to wear them as they will be homologated, or the IAAF will kick up a fuss and say they offer too much "bounce/spring" and no-one will be allowed to use them in a standard race.

Either way, Kipchoge ran a marathon in under 2 hours on a near flat closed (to people and other competitors) course, with rotating pacemakers, laser pacing, in shoes that may or may not get the IAAF stamp of approval, and probably even some mild benefit from a car 15 yards or so in front of him (physics says it would be negligible given the pacemaker formation in front of him).

There are a lot of caveats there but, now that this has happened, I don't think it will take long before it's done again under normal marathon conditions (open event, no rotating pacemakers, no car to potential aid the draft, etc).

There are also other ways to run faster "marathons" that don't comply with the same rules:-
* Running down a big mountain would give you a really good advantage, but the marathon record rules prohibit excessive elevation loss between start and finish.
* Canicross could also give a good marathon runner a really good chance (I believe there are some sub 13-minute canicross parkrun times out there and one runner+dog combo was closing in on a sub-12 minute parkrun[1]
* etc

but, of course, these do not qualify as the "marathon record" since that has a bunch of stipulations which were ignored for the official record (some of which are entirely arbitrary too, such as the maximum amount of elevation loss).

1. https://www.fastrunning.com/features/ben-robinson-aims-sub-12-minute-5k-help-blake/9867

[Greenbank]

And that reminds me, someone has got a pair of them and tried them out and got a big PB on both a 10k run and on the track:-

https://twitter.com/Raworthontherun/status/1184100262182563840/photo/1

(Caveat: sample set size of 1, could have just been a good day for the runner in question and a result of rest and improvement from previous training.)

[Jaded]

Did the pacemakers for the marathon start the race? They did for the 4 min mile, I believe.

It wasn't a race. It was a record breaking event. The pacers alternated, and were arranged to give the most aerodynamic benefit. There was also an electric car, which dictated the record pace. Dave Brailsford helped organise these 'marginal gains', as it was an INEOS-backed enterprise.

I asked a question. You went off on one at better than World Beating Event Pace!

[Pingu]

It's not about the shoes 

[ElyDave]

It's not about the shoes 

I'm glad you said that before I did.

[Pingu]

It's not about the shoes 

I'm glad you said that before I did.

I've been holding back for ages 

[Greenbank]

Did the pacemakers for the marathon start the race? They did for the 4 min mile, I believe.

It wasn't a race. It was a record breaking event. The pacers alternated, and were arranged to give the most aerodynamic benefit. There was also an electric car, which dictated the record pace. Dave Brailsford helped organise these 'marginal gains', as it was an INEOS-backed enterprise.

I asked a question. You went off on one at better than World Beating Event Pace!

Both events resulted de facto records though, they just have different sets of rules applied to them.

Kipchoge's wasn't an official "marathon" record because:-
* Shoes not currently homologated by IAAF
* He used pacemakers that only ran sections of the run. The 7 pacemakers that started with him only ran the first ~5km with him, then they were replaced by another fresh 7 pacemakers who hadn't run the first 5km. Lather, rinse, repeat. I doubt any of the pacemakers ran more than their 5km stint.[1]
* Laser guided pacemaking and lead car
* It wasn't an open event like a public marathon, so there was no competition on the circuit

Anyone else is free to attempt to do the similar, with a similar setup, it's just prohibitively expensive. Hence the generally accepted "marathon record" criteria to be homologated shoes in an organised marathon event with no pacemakers joining fresh part way through.

Comparing Kipchoge's record and Bannister's record is pointless, both were completed under a certain set of rules/regulations and therefore are records within those sets of rules/regulations.

If you really want to go there, then on those 4 particular points, Bannister's sub 4-minute mile:-
* Shoes were ok obviously, no shoe doping in 1954
* He used pacemakers but they ran with him from the start and completed the full distance, he didn't benefit from fresh pacemakers coming in at any time
* No lasers and no lead car
* But it too wasn't an open event, there was no competition on the track (unless you try and claim the other pacemakers were competition)

The point is both of them ran to within the rules of the event they were running in. Both have records (or we wouldn't be talking about either of them). And there are way more than one set of rules (and therefore more than one type of record) for any particular distance.

1. One of the biggest logistical nightmares of the whole thing must have been the need to assemble 40-odd reliable runners capable of running a 14:10 5k all in one place at the same time

[Exit Stage Left]

Did the pacemakers for the marathon start the race? They did for the 4 min mile, I believe.

It wasn't a race. It was a record breaking event. The pacers alternated, and were arranged to give the most aerodynamic benefit. There was also an electric car, which dictated the record pace. Dave Brailsford helped organise these 'marginal gains', as it was an INEOS-backed enterprise.

I asked a question. You went off on one at better than World Beating Event Pace!

You asked about a race. It wasn't one.

[Jaded]

Did the pacemakers for the marathon start the race? They did for the 4 min mile, I believe.

It wasn't a race. It was a record breaking event. The pacers alternated, and were arranged to give the most aerodynamic benefit. There was also an electric car, which dictated the record pace. Dave Brailsford helped organise these 'marginal gains', as it was an INEOS-backed enterprise.

I asked a question. You went off on one at better than World Beating Event Pace!

You asked about a race. It wasn't one.

Hmmm.

"a. A competition of speed, as in running or riding."
"a contest of speed, as in running, riding, driving, or sailing."

etc.

So, in your view it wasn't about speed?

[Exit Stage Left]

There's money in breaking records in competition, and there will be tremendous kudos for the first sub-2 hour performance in competition. The ideal progress towards that for the athletes is to shave as little as possible off the record each time, as that gives the most bites at that cherry. This record-breaking stunt is a proof of concept, but preserves the prospect of a sub-2 hour run in competition.

If another event is staged by a different team, with a different runner, to the same formula. Then I'd view that that as a contest.

[Cudzoziemiec]

The shoes seem a bit marginal gains stuff, a bit UCI rules about the shape of your saddle rails, etc. Not that the gains are small, but that they aren't actually gains, they're reductions in losses, efficiencies; the energy still has to come from the runner. Kipchoge might have started the runners' HPC.

[fimm]

... Bannister's sub 4-minute mile:-...
* But it too wasn't an open event, there was no competition on the track (unless you try and claim the other pacemakers were competition)

Pedantic point, but I'm pretty sure there were other people 'racing' Bannister, in the sense that there were 2nd and 3rd placed runners who were not the pacemakers. I don't think it was a set up just for him to have a crack at the time, it was a normal athletics meet.

[MeFeinMcCabe]

Just give them all drugs and see what happens, records will tumble no doubt

[Greenbank]

Interesting thread dredge. Almost a year!

Just give them all drugs and see what happens, records will tumble no doubt

Sure, as will athletes tumbling to an early grave.

Allowing them to take drugs would be hugely unethical.

[rafletcher]

And only their third post, and the first since 2014!