Eliud Kipchoge finishes marathon in 2 hours, 25 seconds | Hacker News Reader

Eliud Kipchoge finishes marathon in 2 hours, 25 seconds

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45 pointshappyopossum18 comments

So, a 4:30 mile, 26.2 times in a row. A 5 minute, single mile, is a decent finish time for high school track kids. Incredible.

~4:30, rather than ~5:30.

Yes, thanks... corrected. So he would likely beat 26 good high school track runners set up as a relay, all by himself.

No, he is not that fast. I broke a five minute mile comfortably in High school, and no one would have considered me for a scholarship. Most of the fast guys were deep into the low fours, at least in Texas.

Not taking away from the accomplishment! He's absurdly fast.

Yes...I did mean "good", not absolute top level. You would have to find 26 sub 4:30 mile runners to tie or win.

To put that in perspective, your pool would have to be from the top 160ish high school 1600m runners in Texas: https://www.athletic.net/TrackAndField/Division/Event.aspx?D...

There are 3,709 high schools in Texas, so that means most of the high schools wouldn't even have a contender for this lopsided competition.

Makes you wonder where they got the pacers from. I don't think I could sustain that speed for even 200m.

Some years ago I watched the marathon race at the track and field world championships. I had no idea how fast these guys run. From up close it looks like a normal person running full speed. Incredible.

They were all Nike-sponsored professional runners that have their own racing schedule. Some of the Americans I saw helping out were Chris Derrick, Bernard Lagat, Lopez Lomong, and Andrew Bumbalough, in case you're interested in seeing what the pacers are capable of.

I always do this calculation: how long could I keep up? Two miles? Half mile?

I run regularly and I could maybe do 200m in 34s sprinting as fast as I can. Eliud then proceeded to do 209 more of those.

Unreal.

Closer to 4:35. 4:30 would be under 1:58. Every second slower is obviously 26 seconds. So he missed the record by 1 second per mile!

Incredible, what some people can achieve. As a Kenyan, I am really proud of these athletes.

Here's a related FiveThirtyEight discussion on the topic: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/can-science-help-runner...

One of the quotes:

"A few years ago, I predicted it would happen in 2075, which gives a sense of where my thinking was at that point."

Here's a direct link to that prediction: http://rw.runnersworld.com/sub-2/

Lots of data, but I don't see how the 2075 date is calculated, is it just an intuitive guess?

It seems more like an intuitive guess, since some others [0] have suggested something around ~2020 to 2030. A while ago (when Tergat still had the record) I tried to simply fit a line to the All-time Athletics list [1] and thought 2050 was reasonable, IIRC.

Have to wonder if Kipchoge's time will end up being Beamonesque and we'll be at 2030 before those last ~25s are shaved off.

[0] http://jap.physiology.org/content/110/1/275

[1] http://www.alltime-athletics.com/mmaraok.htm

>despite the aid of a shoe that designers say will make runners 4 percent more efficient.

Seems like this could be a big factor. A shoe itself acting as a spring and helping the runner make bigger strides with the same effort. I won't be surprised if the official race wouldn't allow these "enhanced" shoes.

Apparently one of the factors that made this attempt invalid for the official world record time was the absence of a wada-sanctioned drug test.

It's an impressive feat if they're clean. If they shaved two minutes off the world record by pumping themselves full of PEDs then it's not really noteworthy.

Look up the Nike Oregon Project, which is Nike's running team, re pushing the limits of non-banned drugs.

I was under the impression that the runners were drug tested (at least, the commentators were talking about them needing to take fluids after the race in order to produce a sample). The time is not record eligible because they were cycling pacers in and out and because they were providing fluids whenever the Kipchoge, Tadese, and Desisa wanted, rather than at designated stations.

EDIT: Nike officials stated that the athletes would be drug tested according to Ken Goe [0]

0. http://www.oregonlive.com/trackandfield/index.ssf/2017/04/go...

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