Eliud Kipchoge: 1st man to run a marathon under 2 hours.

[Tender Branson]

Just happened in Vienna.

Eliud Kipchoge Breaks Two-Hour Marathon Barrier

VIENNA — On Saturday morning in Vienna, on a course specially chosen for speed, in an athletic spectacle of historic proportions, Eliud Kipchoge of Kenya ran 26.2 miles in a once-inconceivable time of 1 hour 59 minutes 40 seconds.



In becoming the first person to cover the marathon distance in less than two hours, Kipchoge, 34, achieved a sports milestone granted almost mythical status in the running world, breaking through a temporal barrier that many would have deemed untouchable only a few years ago.

(Still, the eye-popping time will not be officially recognized as a world record because it was not run under open marathon conditions because it featured a dense rotation of Olympic pacesetters.)

https://www.bbc.com/sport/athletics/50025543

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2019/oct/12/eliud-kipchoge-makes-history-sub-two-hour-marathon

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/12/sports/eliud-kipchoge-marathon-record.html

Congrats !

[Tender Branson]

https://twitter.com/INEOS159/status/1182933612162945024

[GeorgiaModerate]

Incredibly impressive, but note:

It 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.

[Kingpoleon]

So he averaged slightly over thirteen miles an hour? Impressive!

[Meclazine for Israel]

It was deliberately staged with timing lights, runners etc.

But fast nonetheless.

I can run 600m in 3 mins.

Which is 4.2km in 21 mins.

Which is 42km in 210 mins or 3.5 hours.

And that is on the proviso i could run 42km.

My 5km runs are usually all i can muster between 25-30 mins.

Running 42km in under 120 mins is flying.

[Kingpoleon]

It was deliberately staged with timing lights, runners etc.

But fast nonetheless.

I can run 600m in 3 mins.

Which is 4.2km in 21 mins.

Which is 42km in 210 mins or 3.5 hours.

And that is on the proviso i could run 42km.

My 5km runs are usually all i can muster between 25-30 mins.

Running 42km in under 120 mins is flying.

... This is not how anything works. If it was, and as fast as you could go for a short distance applied for dozens of kilometers/miles, Usain Bolt could run a marathon in ~60 minutes.

[GeorgiaModerate]

It was deliberately staged with timing lights, runners etc.

But fast nonetheless.

I can run 600m in 3 mins.

Which is 4.2km in 21 mins.

Which is 42km in 210 mins or 3.5 hours.

And that is on the proviso i could run 42km.

My 5km runs are usually all i can muster between 25-30 mins.

Running 42km in under 120 mins is flying.

... This is not how anything works. If it was, and as fast as you could go for a short distance applied for dozens of kilometers/miles, Usain Bolt could run a marathon in ~60 minutes.

Yep, short distance and long distance are very different.  I saw an interview with Usain Bolt a few years ago where he said he had never run a full mile in his life.

[parochial boy]

Impressive stuff, but it kind of sums up the descent of running from competitive sport to set piece gimmick; which is a little bit sad though. Don't blame Kipchoge for taking the money though, but it would have been amazing to see him vs Bekele in a balls out race in Berlin.

And you're running speed doesn't slow down that much once you get into distances over about 5000m. My 5k pace is around 3.10/km; over a half marathon it's still around 3.25/km - so I slow down about as much between 1500m and 5k as I do between 5k and 21k.