Eliud Kipchoge Breaks Two-Hour Marathon Barrier | Hacker News Reader

Eliud Kipchoge Breaks Two-Hour Marathon Barrier

nytimes.com

626 pointsFezzik267 comments

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.

> he used a team of rotating pacemakers

Many of whom might be considered his competitors, too

nit-picking but of all the pacers (40-ish) only 10 or so are (or were in their past) "marathoners" and none would be considered Kipchoge's competitors. If I remember correctly they all have PRs in the 02:05-02:10 range.

Considering the required speed most pacers were 5000m and 1000m people

I just formed my own officiating world record certification body called WASI; We All Saw It. WASI rejects who-evers claim to a monopoly on declaring who ran what, when, and where. WASI officially recognizes Elluid Kipchoge as the most badass marathon distance runner alive.

I like this a LOT

he's also the 'normal' marathon world champion. He just didn't exceed his own previous record with this because it didn't qualify in this category.

You wouldn't allow a rocket propelled and self driving formel1 car into the same bracket as the normal league either.... Though the difference is significantly less here

His achievements are listed on Wikipedia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliud_Kipchoge

it's important to be precise: he is not the world champion. "world record holder" means something different. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_World_Athletics_Champions...

WASI recognizes Eliud Kipchoge's 1 hour, 59 minutes, and 40 seconds time as the current world record marathon distance running time.

It seems a shame that 99.99% of humans will never have the opportunity to break the record. If only there was a category for people who race unassisted by a large team of pacers, cyclists who feed them specially designed gel, and laser-equipped pacer cars.

It's unfortunate that Eliud Kipchoge can afford to run first class while others can only run coach. However fueling is available at aid stations and along the route from a runners support crew in coach. Many people cannot even afford coach and will be lucky to run verified once or twice in their life. Pheidippides would likely be very jealous of coach, never mind first class.

WASI does not hate the player. WASI hates the game.

Also you are missing a bunch of nines because out of the 7.7bn people on earth there are probably only a a few capable of running that time; lasers or no lasers :) Seriously though, he ran the distance under his own power and nobody denies that. They are all just like *"Unfortunately it's not going to be official". Not official why?! Oh, because the IAAF doesn't recognize it; a little fact almost every news release leaves out. That sounds trivial and arbitrary. It should be called the "IAAF World Record".

WeWork will try to trademark this Monday morning

Besides, he already has the official world record anyway. This was an experiment to see if it was possible to shave a couple dozen seconds off the marathon time of the greatest marathon runner of all time. Doing it again in race conditions—whether it’s by Kipchoge or another runner—will be a historic milestone but there is greater confidence that it will happen now.

Besides, I know you can’t control for adrenaline and elation, but the fact that he picked up 10 seconds of pace at the end—when he was running only 10 seconds shy of 2 hours for the whole marathon—and then spent a good half hour running around and celebrating after he crossed the finish line might be a hint that we haven’t even found the real limits yet.

I'm not alone in thinking this, but it's not just his pace that makes him truly remarkable, it's his consistency. I can't remember accurate numbers, but I think it's like in ten consecutive marathons, he came first nine times.

Runners are prone to injury, and if you're not feeling 100% on the race you're likely to not win or run at your best.

He has won all ten of his last ten marathons. He was beaten by Wilson Kipsang in the 2013 Berlin marathon, but Kipsang ran a world record time. Kipchoge is incredibly consistent in arguably the most competitive field in history. He is an extraordinary athlete in both performance and spirit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliud_Kipchoge#Competition_rec...

If I remember correctly, he is unbeaten since that moment in 2013.

How is marathon running more competitive field than football or American football or basketball?

Any able-bodied person who owns shoes can run. Even people too poor to own shoes can often become excellent runners. Coaches help, but many people have reached near elite levels before having access to a coach.

It's the one sport that's open to just about everyone.

Perversely, this makes its highest levels open to only the most extreme of genetic freaks.

You need a lot more than shoes to run a marathon. The time and environment required to get there is much less accessible than something like soccer, football, or basketball.

You don't even need the shoes in all cases:

> "Many theories are offered up as the secret to Kenya's success in long distance running, but one of the most commonly cited, especially by Kenyans themselves, is the hard, active life the children here lead. Most run long distances to school each morning, and when they get home they are sent out to tend to the goats or sheep. There are few televisions, let alone PlayStations or Xboxes."

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2014/11/04/3614032...

It's definitely true that the marathon is somewhat less accessible than short or mid-distance running, but it doesn't take years of marathon running to be a top marathoner. Much of the fitness transfers from mid-distances. Many competitive 10k runners post elite times in their very first marathon race. This means that in practice, the marathon is very nearly as competitive as that for a middle distance race.

I think the team did not fully grasp how huge of a difference laser guided pacemaker and fully covered wind guard makes. The difference could have been greater -- maybe we're even going to see a peloton effect in future marathons utilized to the fullest.

Forgive my ignorance: what's the Peloton effect (I know the company; not sure what the "effect" is), and what's the laser guided pacemaker you're referring to?

Lead cyclists take turns riding at the front of the pack (the peloton, from which the company took its name), blocking the apparent wind and allowing teammates to ride in their slipstream. The protected riders use less energy to maintain the same pace.

Peloton is the same idea as tailgating (driving behind a truck on highway in order to save fuel), front cyclists/runners use extra energy to "break" the air so that those behind them can save some strength.

Tailgating is just what jerks do because they are inconsiderate and unsafe.

I believe the word you were looking for is "drafting".

If you look on youtube for this event, you'll see there was a vehicle driving in front of the pack that was aiming a laser at the feet of the runners. It appears to make it easier to follow a pace very accurately by making sure your feet are following the laser.

They did exactly this two years ago and failed

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

Why are those pacemakers that important?

It's a group of runners there to keep up the running pace, to block wind and generally add morale.

Over the duration of the attempt, runners will hop in and hop out of the run to keep the running pace alongside Kipchoge as well as block wind (a non-trivial factor) over 26.2 miles. Also, it is mentally boosting to have teammates and even competitors of his run along side him as he pushes his body and mind farther than he has ever had before.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drafting_(aerodynamics)#Runnin...:

”Drafting behind another runner can conserve energy, although the effect is less than in cycling due to the fact that speeds are lower.”

There also is a psychological effect. It is easier to keep a constant pace if there’s somebody in front of you that does it, too.

So use an AR headset to put a virtual person in front of you keeping a constant pace?

Marathon runners would run naked if they could. Certainly don’t want or need some heavy gadget on their head.

A device like google glass wouldn't be much heavier than their usual glasses.

Every once counts. Also, it would be a pain to keep on while running.

Are there any ultramarathon runners that wear glasses while they run?

It’s very common to wear sunglasses in an ultramarathon. Runners usually also wear a vest to carry their water, food, safety gear, headlamp, etc.

Different sport altogether, it’s more the endurance so the pace is generally lower. Also you usually won’t have much support along the way so carrying water & food is pretty essential.

There are specific limits on the size and functionality of sunglasses at sanctioned track and field events.

Some events don't even allow the use of Garmin watches (by elite runners) because they can be used for pacing.

Very much a non-elite runner here, but yeah, "run vs my previous best pace" is a standard mode and seeing "you are 12 seconds ahead and will finish with a time of xx:yy" is very, very motivating.

No need for AR in this case. There was a laser grid projected onto the road in front of the runners by a pacing car.

https://image.businessinsider.com/5da1887a4af90974904877c2

https://static.standard.co.uk/s3fs-public/thumbnails/image/2...

But that can't provide the drafting and morale benefit of running behind your teammates

Wait ... why a laser projection? You could just use the car for pacing.

Maybe for keeping a safe distance without having to eyeball it, or for avoiding the fumes.

Might want to use an electric car to avoid the fumes. I do wonder if the car, even a larger distance ahead, does more for drafting than a human in front of the runner.

I don't have the source on hand, but there was an interview with the person who designed the unusual reverse-V shaped pacer formation, where he said that if it was up to him there wouldn't be a car in front of the runners. The goal is to have as much air as possible hit the front pacers.

According to the article, it was an electric car.

They used an Audi e-Tron car for pacing the Ineos 1:59.

For the previous attempt at the Breaking 2 event at Monza racetrack, they used a Tesla as a pace car.

Road cyclists frequently draft behind a car or motorcycle; motor-paced racing used to be a very popular discipline and motorcycles are still used for pacing the Keirin event.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor-paced_racing

Could be a requirement to stay a certain distance back to keep the car from performing too much of the drafting maybe?

The pace car was a Tesla so no fumes :)

IIRC it was done that way as a way to follow the optimal path, instead of eyeballing it and taking corners too wide and adding more distance. Might not seem like much, but he had to shave off less than a minute of his previous attempt, so every little helps.

That would be amazing for many sports, I think. Gamers are used to ghosts in races showing them what others have done. Doing this for real-life sports could really change how people train.

Personally, I find this a very inspirational idea.

> Doing this for real-life sports could really change how people train.

Strava live segments kind of do this already and it's more of a curse during training. The hardest part of training for running, aside from the consistent long hours, is taking it easy most of the time. Strava segments cause you to compete with yourself and others and go too hard. This quickly leads to burnout and injury. Slow, consistent runs are what you need during training, and a GPS watch can already give you that.

I won't argue that nobody will use it incorrectly. In fact, I'm positive that it'll happen just like you say at first.

And then the internet will be flooded with bloggers talking about how everyone is doing it wrong since they're now self-proclaimed experts, repeating the same things they've heard someone else say.

And eventually, most people will get on the right track with it. It'll be a "GPS watch" in their head that's far more effective.

And I'm sure people will take it beyond that in ways that neither of us are prepared to imagine yet.

What possible benefit would AR provide in this situation?

phkahler thinks if the record attempt is invalid because of the team of pace runners, why not use a simulated pace runner to gain the benefit without breaking the rule?

Of course, if the speed benefit of pacing is down to psychology and camaraderie rather than purely information, a simulated pacer might not offer the same benefit.

There were 3 reasons why the record is invalid: swapping pacers, drinks handed directly to him by support team (on bicycles), not an 'open event'.

AR would allow each athlete their own personal pacing grid, or ghost racer, or ideal line. You can run that on a watch or bike computer (or heads-up display), but AR would be that much more intuitive.

It doesn't apply to this one-person demonstration event, but it would sell like crazy to the gear nuts.

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

Those were different; they all started at the same time as him.

Having pacemakers in marathons that way is deemed acceptable. The organization of a marathon will even specifically hire runners to, say, run the first half in one hour ten minutes, after which they are free to step out of the race.

Here, each pacemaker, including the ones that accompanied him to the finish line, ran for only about 9 km (my guess, given 35 pacemakers used and using groups of 7). So, the last group only started running when Kipchoge has run for over one and a half hours.

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.

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.

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.

Reminds me of that adage: "There is nothing noble in being superior to some other man. The true nobility is in being superior to your former self."

Back then people didn’t believe a four minute mile is possible, but after the barrier has been broken, dozens followed suit. In his eyes, his achievement is not the run, but breaking the barrier, and I appreciate him for that.

> after the barrier has been broken, dozens followed suit.

I read an interesting article about that explaining that this wasn't really down to any kind of barriers but more having pacers and a better track (which is coincidentally about the previous 2h marathon attempt.)

https://sportsscientists.com/2014/12/2-hour-marathon-4-min-m...

That, plus having enough time for a generation of runners to blossom after WW2.

For an interesting read + obit of Roger Bannister, who first broke the 4-minute barrier:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/04/obituaries/roger-banniste...

I often wonder in cases like that if those who followed suit were not so much emboldened as already nipping at the heels of the one who did it first.

To mix metaphor with reality, there was perhaps a pack speeding toward the finish line, and one crossed it first.

It's probably a mix of both. Surprisingly (to me), not many were able to break the sub 4min mile immediately after Bannister broke that record - Landy was the second to break the mark a month or so after but he was already working towards it. I read in the 20 year span after the record, only 300 runners were able to match the sub 4 feat.

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

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...

> but knowing something is possible cannot be discounted

This applies to other areas of life. On a few occasions, I didn't try things because I thought it was not possible based on my background/age (e.g. applying for some position, school, or switching careers), only to realize later that people with the exact same profile managed to do it....

Congratulations on qualifying for Boston. I found "Jack Daniel's Running Formula" an invaluable resource in learning how to obtain the best performance from your body. His V-Dot fitness estimator can predict your marathon time (with optimal training) from your 5k race performance. I also had a goal to run a 3 hour marathon, but my 5k race time was just a few seconds too slow to extrapolate a 3 hour marathon. I did hit my predicted marathon performance (3:06), so I was able to give up the 3 hour goal with no regret. I recognized that it might not be realistic to improve my leg speed and 5k times at age 40, having over 6 years of good training, coaching, and racing experience under my belt.

Thanks. Sorry to hear you've written off sub-3. I've got that book and many others. :-) I got myself from a first marathon of 4:22 to a 3:36 with Pfitzinger and stubbornness, to a 3:22 with Crossfit, improved running form, and more training, and to a 3:12 BQ and then 3:07 PR with better training. I respond well to mileage, but need the strength training so I can put in higher mileage without injury. Knocking off another 7 minutes, especially in my late 40s now, will probably take some coaching help.

I don't know how much credence to give to VDOT or any of the other calculators working from 5K or 10K estimates. I think they are okay for guidelines but wouldn't use one to say I can't unless it was way out of range. I much prefer a half-marathon and fast-finish long runs for predictors. I do like to run Yasso 800s for confidence though.

I agree that longer runs are better predictors than 5k's. I was limited to about 45 miles over 4 days per week to avoid injury, so you may be in a better position. The marathon is a multidimensional challenge, so there are lots of levers to play with. Good luck.

I’m not sure if you tried it, but I credit mostly strengthening my hips and core with squats and deadlifts to allow me to increase my mileage. I used to injure my Achilles over 45 mpw before strength training. After strength training I was able to average over 60 mpw with peak weeks in the 90s without trouble. In 2016 I managed 16 marathons including two PRS, a few ultras, and 3300 miles for the year. I was running doubles 3-5 days/week. Just something to consider.

I was fortunate to be able to spend about 7 hours a week on physical exercise when I was racing. My family was very accommodating for this, but my modest physical talents did not justify any more investment. I never felt the pull for Ultras or other endurance events. At 62, I think I still maintain the benefits of fitness with moderate varied exercise, with no training or racing calendar ruling my life. I've been able to scratch several other deep long term itches after I stopped racing.

"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...

(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.

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

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

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 :)

Look at the following table that has been compiled about how much contribution from the body's aerobic and anaerobic systems are used for various race distances:

From https://www.runnersworld.com/advanced/a20805305/owners-manua...

  Distance    Gastin Aerobic/Anaerobic Ratio
  Marathon    97.5/2.5
       10K    90/10
        5K    84/16
  1500m/mile  84/16
      800m    66/34
      400m    43/57

Marathon running is mostly aerobic vs running 1500m or even shorter distances like 800m or 400m.

So any loss of speed as marathoners get older won't be catastrophic versus competing in shorter races.

Most of the times I am good at guessing other people's age. With Kipchoge I was really confused! His voice, his face his move. He looks older than me (37) and now it's probably getting clear. But still I am not surprised. Maybe you get older and you loose some aerobic capacity but your are getting more experienced and the body more immune to injuries!

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

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...

> If you have shoes that give you such a boost, is it doping?

Definitely not, as doping is about drugs. It may be cheating though.

Motor doping is the term for hiding a small electric motor in race bikes. So doping could apply to situations outside of using drugs to enhance your body.

I used the definition from Wikipedia:

> In competitive sports, doping is the use of banned athletic performance-enhancing drugs by athletic competitors.

Admittedly, this may not be the best source.

By definition it's impossible to "cheat" in an event like this. It was an exhibition with no rules, not a sanctioned race.

I think you have jumped to a conclusion here: blood doping isn't about drugs.

Yes. I heard he ran with a Nike prototype called alphaFly, which is probably superior to the VaporFly.

I mean rebound energy is great for a force to hit the ground with less Cush under foot. Newton’s law of physics bounce a ball off pavement and then on a pillow and see what has better rebound energy

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.

> 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...

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.

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

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.

But he also wore Vaporfly for his 2017 attempt, I thought - I doubt the prototype is 4% on top of that, or even 4% compared to what top-class runners were wearing before.

He did, but that was at Monza with more turns, maybe more elevation difference, not as good drafting strategy, etc. He said he learned a lot from that, so who knows how fast he would run if he had made another attempt in the exact same conditions but with the added experience.

At Monza he ran in 2:00:25 and this race took 1:59:40, that's 0.62% faster. Definitely within reason for a technical improvement.

Large parts of the track were re-paved specially for this event with fine-grained asphalt to avoid holes and unevenness. The re-pavement was paid by a project sponsor.

I'm in Kenya and the word is it's a $4m official payday with many other well wishers pledging to pay him now.

He ran with prototype shoes with carbon fiber in the sole.

https://www.believeintherun.com/2019/10/09/a-breakdown-of-th...

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?

Aye, found the passage from Small Gods:

Hierarchy, Vorbis said later. The Ephebians didn't think in terms of hierarchies.

No army could cross the desert. But maybe a small army could get a quarter of the way, and leave a cache of water. And do that several times. And another small army could use part of that cache to go further, maybe reach halfway, and leave a cache. And another small army . . .

It had taken months. A third of the men had died, of heat and dehydration and wild animals and worse things, the worse things that the desert held . . .

Maybe some kind of opportunistic prefetching if you have regular deadlines and can expect a regular complex problem deadline. But maybe concurrent threads would be easier, so this could make sense only in a super limited embedded environment.

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

In particular, this diagram from that page makes the process clear: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Black_Buck#/media/Fi...

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

That diagram is anything but “clear”.

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.

Here's a bit better diagram: https://i.imgur.com/LZLSlI3.jpg

Of all the aicraft that took off, only one actually flew over the target. It had to be refueled seven times on outbound journey, and the last tanker itself had to be refueled three times to fly that far.

Yeah, OK, wow. That's ... complicated. And I think they didn't manage to get a very good return for all this effort, from a diagonal reading of the article.

Er. Sorry, I'm being thick, but your hint about the link to the relevant maths etc went way over my head. I might be missing a cultural reference? :0

I think it rather alludes to caravans and their trade with beduins accross established trade routes

Didn't the British do something similar in the Desert Campaign during WW2, burying supplies to be recovered later. The Long Range Desert Group perhaps?

Reminds me of the rescue of the Thai football team too, where the divers were dropping oxygen tanks further and further in to reach the boys.

This blog post has a great detailed description of Operation Black Buck: https://www.navalgazing.net/Falklands-Part-6

This is great, thank you for sharing!

There is an excellent book about XM607/ Operation black buck written by Rowland White. It’s not just about the actual mission it’s also about retiring the Vulcan then bringing them back and all the other bit that led up to the mission.

http://www.rowlandwhite.com/portfolio-view/vulcan-607/

If you have even a passing interest in aviation then this book is a must read. Very deep, yet incredibly compelling. I kept finding myself on edge...

Sounds like dynamic programming

It kind of does. I have dynamic programming in my mind also, these days hence why I'm not sure- maybe I'm seeing dynamic programming everywhere.

First thing that comes to mind is using an HP-12c calculator and only having 4 stacks available. You can go further than a regular calculator, but only a little bit at a time so you keep chipping away at a long equation and eventually your stack collapses down into the final answer across the desert ;-)

That's how a good chunk of the arctic was discovered. Previous expeditions would go in for the sole purpose of leaving caches of foods and other useful goods.

I've seen this problem several times expressed using camels and bananas [1]

I would also think it's related to the rocket equation - with each iteration of "grab bananas, turn around" you have fewer bananas to carry with you, but it forms a parabolic curve as you need many bananas at the start of the desert, fewer as you go onwards and don't need to make trips to retrieve the bananas you've already eaten.

[1]http://www.crazyforcode.com/camel-bananas-puzzle/

Another example is rockets. Most fuel in rockets is used to propell the remaining fuel up the gravity well

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Black_Buck

Great example

The benefit of the support runners wasn't just to help him keep pace (he could probably do this with music). They also provide a drafting help to limit any head-on air resistance.

Is that significant when running?

Yes, for an attempt like this where every marginal gain is necessary https://www.runnersworld.com/training/a20823445/does-draftin...

Even a 1% benefit is significant, considering that he beat the 7200 second goal by just 20 seconds (0.28%).

It's supposed to be good for about 2% at marathon pace. I'm not quite sure how long pace makers last in a traditional marathon, but I assume at least half way. So the rotating pace makers today explain maybe 1:12 of the two minute difference to his traditional best time.

This is also why rockets have multiple stages. A single rocket can’t make orbital velocity with significant cargo, but a bigger rocket can get the small rocker part of the way there. It works because the second stage’s lower weight allows for smaller engines and fewer fuel tanks etc.

The Tower of Hanoi!

Actually sounds very similar to how the rocket equation works, too.

I don't know about uncomputable but for intractable, I think, and as rco8786 has already pointed out, dynamic programming sorts of fit the bill. Similarly, this is what reinforcement learning does for search. Recursive or sequential monte carlo algorithms where states hold memory across transitions probably also fit this bill. And most generally, this is what humanity does with science, skills and knowledge.

No single human could discover general relativity, but generation after generation, from the first humans who worked out how to count symbolically to the definition of a Lorentzian manifold, we've been leaving caches of knowledge for each other so each next generation could reach ever farther.

Seems similar to Conway checkers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_Soldiers

Described in idealized form here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeep_problem

I don't play many video games, but when I do they tend to be military strategy games of various types. After reading your comment, it made me think if I ever deployed such a tactic in the video games that I've played and I couldn't think of a situation. I found this very interesting! Seems like an amazing dynamic to add to a video game if it were possible.

Some commenters responded saying rockets have this property... but I don't know. I'm having a hard time reconciling that mere stages model this concept. Since if so, you could argue that anything that introduces a progression satisfies this condition. Maybe there is some nuance here, for example, the caches can't be directly controlled by a player.

Solution to the Byzantine General’s Problem using proof of work is possibly an example. The basic problem is: how do you make sure that multiple entities, which are separated by distance, are in absolute full agreement before an action is taken?

If one is not trying to solve it in the fastest time, then an agreed ‘truth’ can be reached after ‘some time’ without a central entity. By deciding to go ‘slow’, a solution can be found eventually.

> 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

The catch with certain classes (maybe/probably all? disclaimer: am not theoretical computer scientist/mathematician) of uncomputable problems is that they are such that there is no notion of "getting closer" to the solution that's analogous to traversing the desert to a known location. There is no way to verify whether the next incremental step is taking you closer to or farther from the solution because calculating such is essentially the same problem as the root problem. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undecidable_problem

No, you're right. I say "uncomputable" but that's not what's happening here. The problem is not "uncomputable" it's just that the result is negative (X men can't cross Y distance carrying Z provisions).

Thanks for pointing this out, my bad for using "uncomputable" wrong.

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.

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

Likely the fastest human distance runner that has ever lived on this earth.

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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRYtn0j5ccA

In the Marines you may not have been 5' 6" and 126 pounds with a BMI of 20.3. Kipchoge and his pacers have a similar physique.

https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/thumbnails/imag...

It’s a whole different thing to try and picture it than see it!

I ran a 1/2 marathon where a highly ranked runner was competing in the full.

He passed me at mile 11 of the 1/2, so about 23 of the full. His pace for 26 miles was absolutely faster than I can run for one, maybe two blocks.

Just giant effortless strides, with a damn smile on his face. Iirc, his marathon time was 2:12.

What was the "Class A time" for the Marines 20 years ago? No offense but if you broke 18 minutes (6:00 mile) for the 3 mile I'd be surprised. Kipchoge just ran a 4:30 mile for 26 miles.

Hell, the best marathoner the US had in the 2000 Olympics ran a 2:30. Literally a half hour slower than Kipchoge.

> No offense but if you broke 18 minutes (6:00 mile) for the 3 mile I'd be surprised.

Curious, but why? That's an extremely achievable time for anybody who is athletic and trains.

(no disagreement that 4:30 pace is vastly more difficult than 6:00)

“Who trains”, yes.

Not saying that someone couldn’t do that in a PT test but more often than not, people aren’t training to the level they’d achieve that. If they were running distance in high school, sure. It’s an ordinary time for a high school varsity cross country runner.

shrug I think 6:00/mi for 3 miles is very achievable for a normally athletic male who practices running a small amount.

(Just went back to my logs: when I picked up running at age 34, it took me four months of running ~4 days a week to run a 5k at <6:00/mi. I say this not to brag, but to say that it's a pretty pedestrian time, especially for a young presumably fit marine)

I mean, you do run a whole lot in the Marines, you know?

> That's an extremely achievable time for anybody who is athletic and trains.

Right, a number of people in my high school did that regularly in PE class (unfortunately, I’d usually come in a half-dozen minutes later…). This isn’t anything special.

> No offense but if you broke 18 minutes (6:00 mile) for the 3 mile I'd be surprised.

Ummm... why? Back then I ran 5 miles 3 times a week. They tend to nudge you out of infantry if you aren't getting a class A PFT; I would usually traipse in at 17:30 or so.

Back in the 1980's I lived next to a park that had a wonderful 5K loop that many people used. One morning I was out running my usual 5k, on track for close to a personal best when someone passed me so quickly and quietly that it startled me. There was a noticeable breeze from her passing. She lapped me twice in the course of my 5K (meaning she did close to 15K).

I found out later she was the current world record holder at 10K meters. And she wasn't pushing it that day.

These folks can run like you wouldn't believe.

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.

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

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

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.

Exactly, this is crazy. I can barely hold more than 3 minutes at 20km/h.

17.1 per 100m. 10*42 times...

Put another way, it’s an average 4:35 mile sustained for 26 miles. It’s hard to even get my head around how a human being could accomplish this.

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.

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

It's a 14 minute 5K over and over for 42K.

a normal recreational runner could keep up for between 400 and 800 meters.

not even one mile!

And that's a normal "good" recreational runner. I suspect few could even manage 400m (that's a 68 second lap...).

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=...

From https://twitter.com/BertBlocken/status/1182907965306748929

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

Here's the fantastic documentary on his previous try: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLSRitGNAjY

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

Really great watch, thanks for the link.

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!

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.

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

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

*metric

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

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

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.

All top level athletes are on gear. Modern sports live off of constant feats of wonder and congested schedules. Neither of which are sustainable without performance enhancement. However when all of them are on, you could still say that the winner/record breaker did it fair and square.

I'm no fan of Nike, but if you call rollerblades shoes, you might as well call F1 cars airplanes.

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.

Letsrun is unfortunately a very toxic forum, but also has loads of knowledgeable folks. It's like reading a wikipedia article with commentary from 4chan on the side.

That is all of LetsRun. It is an incredibly toxic community full of experts and trolls.

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.

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.

The Salazar scandal involves a case in which doping of athletes was very specifically not proven.

Giving thyroid medication to otherwise healthy athletes for sporting reasons only is still morally doping, and this is just the tip of the iceberg. The Armstrong scandal dragged on for years until actual doping was legally “found”, so to speak. All this does is to scare away both the public and potential new and not-cheating athletes while endangering the health of the cheating athletes who actually go down this route.

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.

Armstrong never failed a doping test either.

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.

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

Do the pacemakers not provide an aerodynamic advantage, when they are running in a close group just before him?

The Nike shoes are legal, though controversial. Give it a few more years of further improvements to the shoe technology, and they will probably be banned and asterisks will be placed next to every record, like in swimming when technology got too good.

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.

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

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

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?

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)

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

A 13-minute mile would be a very fast walk, or more likely a gentle jog.

Factor 3 (7 km/hour) is very fast walking for ‘normal’ people.

Speed walkers can go over twice as fast, but they don’t really walk.

https://www.iaaf.org/responsive/download/downloaddirect?file... defines it as

”Race Walking is a progression of steps so taken that the walker makes contact with the ground, so that no visible (to the human eye) loss of contact occurs. The advancing leg must be straightened (i.e. not bent at the knee) from the moment of first contact with the ground until the vertical upright position.”

and also states:

”All the Judges shall act in an individual capacity and their judgements shall be based on observations made by the human eye.”

Of note here is the “to the human eye” phrase. If one were to introduce electronic aids similar to those used in fencing to detect whether there always is a foot on the ground, speeds would decrease significantly.

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...

Most meaning the median person ? I doubt it

5 mph, not much more than walking speed? I have doubts about keeping it up for 5 hours, though.

I think running 5mph for 5 hours is a very ... achievable goal for the median person, but I don't think I would put money on the median person, or at least, American, completing that time without additional training from their current condition.

If you took a random sample of people -- or at least a random sample of people 18-50 with no outstanding health issues -- and put them on a "couch to marathon" 6 month training program, yeah, I think you could plausibly get a median finish of 5 hours (for comparison, the Boston marathon has a median finish time of a little under 4 hours).

I honestly wouldn't bet on the median person with no training getting off the couch and moving 26.2 miles in less than ~10 hours.

I don't really have much of an idea of what the median would be for time required to walk/run 26 miles. I doubt that there's any good data. The original comment just specified "men", which is presumably global and would include the elderly. I've read that about 45% of people are non-urban, which may be expected to increase fitness, perhaps.

It would be difference between Eliud running and average male walking.

I would not dare event to try running a marathon, but I've done 100km walks 3 times already, and numerous shorter distances. Never walked extactly the marathon distance, but it should take me ~6:00 hours. However, I am definitely among the faster walkers (at the last 100km event they told me I was the first to finish, but it was not a competition, so who knows).

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.

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

Not sure about this specific situation, but the rule of thumb is you burn about 100 calories per mile... 2600 calories for a whole marathon. You'd imagine elite runners would have higher efficiency? So lower caloric consumption per mile?

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.

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.

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.

The issue isn't calories so much. Even a very lean runner like Kipchoge has sufficient fat stores to walk this distance in a fasted state. The issue is glycogen, which is necessary for maintaining aerobic performance. Glycogen is only stored in the muscles and liver and once you exhaust it, you switch to fat burning, which uses a different metabolic path and significantly slows you down. This is the infamous "hitting the wall." [4]

In addition, you can only digest and metabolize a certain number of calories per time unit. This limits how many carbohydrates you can consume during the race.

The idea behind carbo-loading [1] is to pack as much glycogen as possible into your muscles and liver before the race. You then top up those stores just before the race with more carbs, and then during the race you take on as many additional carbs as your body allows.

The faster you run, the more quickly you use up glycogen, similar to driving a car more quickly.

One thing that training does is to make you a more efficient/economic runner. [2] Your body can run faster using less fuel. I don't think we know exactly how all this works. Some of running economy comes from improved form, and indeed, Kipchoge has perfect running form. As well, your body's vascular system improves. You improve your mitochondrial volume. And so on and so forth. [3]

But at the end of the day, you eventually run out of glycogen and slow down. You just hope you've picked a pace not too fast for your ability so that you cross the finish line before that happens.

This is largely why ultra runners run at a significantly slower pace.

Lastly, metabolic factors[5] are only one many things that ultimately limit marathon performance.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbohydrate_loading

2. https://runscribe.com/improving-run-efficiency-what-research...

3. https://www.issaonline.com/blog/index.cfm/2018/mitochondrial...

4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitting_the_wall

5. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2958805/

As js2 notes, it's not the calories that runners are worried about during a marathon.

They're worried about ingesting carbs to supplement what they have stored via carb-loading over the previous day(s) before the marathon.

Kipchoge has used Maurten supplements (see https://www.maurten.com/ ) for a previous race.

The commentators during the Ineos159 broadcast also referred to his use of Maurten supplements every 5km during the Ineos159 run.

Why Maurten? One of the supposed benefits of Maurten GEL is the use of two forms of carbs (maltodextrin and fructose).

Early carb supplements (Gatorade, etc) typically used one type of sugar to supply carbs to the body. The rate of carb absorption by the body was thought to be 1 gram per minute (60g/hr).

Researchers discovered that fructose was ingested via a different pathway than other sugars and when combined with another sugar could increase the absorption rate of carbs up to 90g carbs/hr. see https://www.torqfitness.co.uk/news/maltodextrinfructose for more info.

Kipchoge was taking drinks every 5km, at target pace of 21.1km/hr - 21.1/5 = ~4 times/hr

Each serving of Maurten GEL has 25g. So, assuming each drink is close to one serving of GEL, he'd get ~100g carbs/hr which his body would absorb close to 90%.

The support team also believed that the cause of Kipchoge's slowdown in the previous Breaking2 attempt was that Kipchoge wasn't supplementing enough and hit the wall near the end of the run. To reduce the chance of that happening, they gathered the used drink bottle after Kipchoge was finished and analyzed how much supplement was remaining. Not sure what they would do if they found he wasn't drinking enough other than verbal encouragement.

Elite runners tend to burn much less than normal runners over the same distance, since they are typically lighter and more efficient.

This race didn't follow the rules so he could do whatever he wanted. Under official rules, you can have a custom drink placed on a table, which you run by and pick up yourself. Most marathons with an elite wave do this for elite runners. Nobody can hand you your drink.

However, it is not common to have very calorie-dense drinks because it is just not necessary over that distance. You want a little bit of carbohydrate so that you don't deplete your glycogen stores or get low blood sugar. That is about it. So most runners will consume maybe 200-300 calories during a marathon. Elite runners will typically consume less, again since they are more efficient.

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/Marathon_world_record_progress...

Because the pacemakers rotated, they weren't the same all of the way through.

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]

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

The fact that bottles were handed to him by a cyclist instead of picking them up himself is one of the issues

For one, pacemakers have to enter the race and start the race with him. You can't have pacemakers enter partway. They all have to be eligible to hit the record too if they are capable. Per IAAF rules, pacemakers are basically just competitors that you pay to go out too fast and drop out partway.

Also just not a sanctioned course, not proper testing protocol for doping, not open to other competitors, and so on.

(Former USATF apprentice official, though stopped officiating once I started grad school)

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

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

This documentary of the first attempt a couple years ago gives some background: https://youtu.be/sVPeK39lNp8

4.6 minute miles, dang that is cooking.

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

This is one of the points I think most about. I've run a marathon and I bike for fun, but even when I bike my pace is slower than the pace of this marathon.

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.

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.

again, not a barrier.

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...

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.

Would a treadmill be safe at that pace? 13mph is extremely fast especially over a sustained period of time.

I don't know how safe it is, but people have done times in that general speed range, e.g. Eric Blake's 2:21:40: https://www.recordholders.org/en/list/treadmill.html

2:21 is not even in the same ballpark as <2:00. 2:21 is a very respectable time, but not even international/national standard. It's a chasm.

When you're talking about treadmill speed and the mechanics of that (which we are), it's definitely in the same ballpark. In terms of running, no.

Here is Haile Gebreselassie demoing a 4 minutes per mile pace on a treadmill: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSp1r1QhUSY

of course it is somewhat staged for optimal conditions, but still an amazing achievement. It's not an official world record and everybody is aware of that.

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.

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

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.

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.

they did not have an suv to draft behind, and the pacers had to keep up from the start

This doesn't make it any less artificial or arbitrary. The marathon is a different beast from the mile and it doesn't make much sense to compare two different eras.

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.

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.

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.

He already holds the WR, that's why he set out to achieve it on any conditions.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com