Science, Nike and a super-fast runner nearly pulled off a 2-hour marathon

Updated May 6 at 4 a.m.

Missed it by 25 seconds.

No one smashed the two-hour marathon barrier overnight, but wow, Eliud Kipchoge came close.

On a Formula One track near Monza, Italy, the 32-year-old Kenyan ran an astounding 2 minutes, 32 seconds faster over 26.2 miles than anyone had before, finishing in 2:00:25. It was a seismic leap forward in an event where records fall by seconds rather than minutes, and it may reframe the way people think about marathon times from now on.

It will not, however, rewrite the record books. Well before the race, organizers and athletes decided they would forgo record consideration and simply try to find out how fast a human could run. So some of the strategies that created optimal running conditions made the results ineligible for a world record.

The spectacle, more science experiment than road race, involved three world-class marathoners, a clock-carrying Tesla, a rotating cast of big-name pacers and all the engineering and marketing firepower shoe giant Nike could muster.

The two runners besides Kipchoge were Lelisa Desisa of Ethiopia and Zersenay Tadese of Eritrea, who holds the half-marathon world record of 58:23. The three skipped the lucrative spring marathon season to focus their training on this event.

Plenty of people derided it all as a slick marketing stunt, and few thought it would work. Of 24 experts polled by Runner’s World before the race, just three thought any of the three participants could break two hours.

Why 2 hours is a big deal

For decades as the marathon world record has inched downward, people in the sport have speculated about a two-hour marathon for the simple reason that it is a nice round number. (That might sound silly, but hey, we still talk about the four-minute mile — a barrier that was broken exactly 63 years ago.)

It seemed potentially doable when, in a 1991 paper, performance physiologist Mike Joyner calculated the theoretical limit of human physiology to be a 1:57:58 marathon. But at least before this morning, most scientists and sages of the sport didn’t expect to see a sub-two-hour marathon for years or even decades. The current world record is nearly three minutes slower.

Kenya’s Dennis Kimetto set the current record of 2:02:57 in 2014 at the Berlin Marathon. No man has taken 2:58 or more off the world record in one chunk since 1952, years before prize money, appearance fees and endorsement deals lured the globe’s best runners to the marathon. (The last jump that large happened in 1979 on the women’s side. The current women’s world record is 2:15:25, set in 2003 by Britain’s Paula Radcliffe.)

Why this event was so unusual

The scene, live-streamed to the world, was surreal. A small cheering section lined a short stretch of the track, but for most of each mile-and-a-half lap, it was just runners, a car, a couple of bicycles and empty bleachers at dusk, as though some very fit guys and their buddies had sneaked onto a race track. It was the opposite of the usual televised marathon, so quiet that you heard the skritch-skritch-skritch of shoes on pavement. The pace car projected green laser beams that gave the pacers a literal line to chase.

According to Runner’s World, which chronicled the process leading up to the race, scientists at Nike’s research lab analyzed all kinds of metrics, such as oxygen usage, skin temperature and how much carbohydrate the runners stored in their legs. The athletes trained with their own coaches, but lab scientists received heart rate and GPS data on every workout. The data informed choices in training, nutrition, clothing and, of course, shoes.

The track was chosen for its near-ideal conditions as far as wind (light to none), topography (nearly flat), turns (gradual), temperature (cool but not cold) and elevation (600 feet, so there was no shortage of oxygen).

And of course, Nike engineered the heck out of the shoes, which were custom-made for each runner. The company says lab tests showed that runners ran 4 percent more efficiently in the shoes, which contained ultra-lightweight foam and a carbon-fiber plate that pops back as the toes push off. Whether these shoes run afoul of an International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) rule about “unfair advantage” is a matter of debate. Runner’s World reported Wednesday that Nike said the IAAF approved, but as of Friday, the governing body had not released a formal statement. Regardless, the company will soon release two mass-market versions for mere mortal runners.

Some other oddities:

• Flexible date: Organizers picked a three-day window and didn’t announce a firm time and date until late in the week so they could wait for the day with the best weather forecast..
• Corner-free laps: The asphalt loop was chosen for speed rather than scenery. It had sweeping turns rather than sharper corners that would require slowing down.
• Rotating rabbits: Choreographed groups of pacers rotated in and out of the race behind the pace car so that six were on the track at nearly all times. They ran in a diamond or V-formation to block the wind and allow the three marathoners to draft behind them. Pacers can’t come in and out of a race according to IAAF rules, one of the reasons the result will not count as a world record.
• Sports drink delivery: Another IAAF no-no was the fluid delivery system. A Nike scientist on a bike handed fluid bottles to the runners as they ran so they didn’t have to break stride to grab a drink from a table.
• Drug testing? The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that Nike did not plan to use IAAF drug testing, but reporters in Monza said the athletes were tested in some way after the race. As professional runners, the athletes are still subject to random IAAF testing as well.

About 50 minutes into the race, Desisa dropped back. (He would finish in 2:14:10, and Tadese would run 2:06:51.)

By the half, Kipchoge was running alone behind the protective shield of the pacers, and it was merely a matter of how long he could keep going.

With about three miles to go, he lagged just yards behind the pace car, and the prevailing mood of the skeptical community following on Twitter had evolved into outright awe. The consensus was that Kipchoge probably wasn’t going to break two hours, but he was going faster than anyone ever had, and dang, he looked good.

On the last lap, when he could see the finish line, he started to sprint — as much of a sprint as a person can muster after running 26 crazy-fast miles. The pacers who were with him on the track yelled and waved like little kids, then pulled aside to let him churn to the finish line alone.

When it was over, after he had come within a second per mile of the goal, he lay on the asphalt for a few moments, then addressed the cameras. He thanked his pacers for sharing their energy with him.

“I’m happy to have run,” he said. Then he jogged along the home stretch, high-fiving everyone he saw.

If you didn’t stay up for this event, you will probably get more chances.

Adidas is working on the sub-two-hour marathon as well. The company has released few details but told the Wall Street Journal that its athletes will attempt the feat at a record-eligible marathon. And British sports scientist Yannis Pitsiladis launched a project in Kenya with the goal of breaking two hours by 2019.

It seems a bit more likely now.