Stunning results at the top of the field. Some interesting takeaways on both fuelling and shoes.
Maurten spent months working with Sawe and other runners getting their gut capacity trained so they could absorb and burn 100 carbs per hour[0][1]
> The Maurten research team was embedded with Sawe’s team in Kenya for 32 days across six trips between last and this April. They were training his gut to absorb that load by mimicking race-day protocol in training. The hydrogel technology they have developed over the past 10 years now allows athletes to absorb 90–120 grams of carbs per hour without GI distress.
Second is the shoes. Adidas Adizero weigh 96 grams[2] with new foam tech and new carbon plates
Nike and INEOS spent millions over years to get Kipchoge to a sub-2 in artificial conditions, and now the elite end of the field are knocking that barrier out in race conditions. Unreal.
Running tech and training have been revolutionized in the past few years.
burning a hundred calories an hour is trivial. Most people will burn 100 calories per mile when walking or running, and more if moving as fast as these athletes, and many, many humans can do this for far, far longer than 2 hours.
It's the absorbtion that's the challenge. Maurten is not somehow alone in the particular stuff they've developed - ultra runners are generally shifting up into the 90-120 gram/hr range (or beyond!), using a variety of different companies' products. The gut training protocols for this are widely discussed in the world of running for almost any distance above a half marathon.
GP left out the units but is clearly talking about grams ("absorb ... 100 carbs per hour"), not calories (no one needs training to absorb 25g/hr). Carbs are 4 kcal/g. 100g of carb (400 kcal) an hour isn't replacement level for even casual athletic efforts, but it does mitigate the loss of glycogen in muscle somewhat.
The last few years, cycling and triathlon have been experimenting with upto 120g carbs intake per hour. Last year, Cameron Wurf ate 200g carbs per hour when he broke the world record for fastest bike split ever in a triathlon (which was broken again a few months later).
I've read that even if you absorb it all, there's some question about whether it's useful. This Alex Hutchinson article suggests, among other things, that it may spare your fat stores rather than your muscle glycogen:
> Even if you can absorb 120 grams per hour, it might not make you faster. In Podlogar’s study, cyclists burned more exogenous carbs when they consumed 120 rather than 90 grams per hour, but that didn’t reduce their rate of endogenous carb-burning—that is, they were still depleting the glycogen stores in their muscles just as quickly.
Where does discussion on gut training occur? All I know is you need a 5:4 ratio of glucose to fructose? Then when you train, you use the gels and the more you do it, the more capable your gut gets at absorbing without distress.
Yes but the science is actually achieving that and finding the limits. It used to be thought that 60g carbs/hour was the limit, then 100g, now it’s thought to be 120g.
It’s also about the methods of achieving that under stress without spewing it all back up. Ironman athletes would stuff their faces on the bike under the assumption that this volume of carb absorption wasn’t possible while running.
Some of the challenge in research will come from competitors not wanting to publish results to maintain an edge. It is mitigated by the visual of the race by (you can see athletes pounding carbs), as well as the nutrition companies wanting to sell more product. This will cause them to publish some information to convince us amateurs to quadruple our purchase volume ;-)
Wow so he was absorbing 400 calories per hour with this gel, but he was likely burning 3-4x that amount (or even more) while running 13.1 miles per hour!
In a two hour race that’s still 800 bonus calories, that’s something.
The race to tolerate lots of carbs is usually something you think of in 8 hour Ironmans. The good part is you can do most of it on the bike, which is much easier to eat as you go. As far as I know, many elite runners were doing like 50% water, 50% sports drink and consuming way under 100g.
> As far as I know, many elite runners were doing like 50% water, 50% sports drink and consuming way under 100g.
This used to be true, and is still true for many athletes up the marathon distance. Above that, however, the momentum has swung heavily to very high carb intake. Most (though not all) of the world's best ultra runners (we're talking 7:00 min/mile pace through mountainous terrain) are picking this up, with many getting to and beyond 100g/hr of carb consumption.
> The Maurten research team was embedded with Sawe’s team in Kenya for 32 days across six trips between last and this April. They were training his gut to absorb that load by mimicking race-day protocol in training. The hydrogel technology they have developed over the past 10 years now allows athletes to absorb 90–120 grams of carbs per hour without GI distress.
That common knowledge, nothing revolutionary here.
There are 2 types of sugar, fructose and glucose, you can max out on glucose around 60g/hour and train you guts to max out also on fucose.
Personally I reached 90g/hour without training, no diarrhea or vomiting.
And you know the best ? White sugar in everyone kitchen is almost perfectly 50% glucose, 50% fructose.
You don't need 'advanced' gel to do that, a bottle of water with 120g of white sugar an hour.
And the shoes, yeah they're light but guess what. Other competitors also have sponsors and excellent shoes, some even run bare feet and yet they don't go faster.
No the real reason why he is able to run so fast is first excellent genetic, that's the common base.
Secondly, excellent training, coaching.
Third, his steroid/peds program is on point and his body is responding well to it.
Typically for endurance runner you want profiles with low natural hematocrit so you can max out on the EPO, but there are also other considerations. For instance, are his tendons responding well to GH and other peptides ?
> That common knowledge, nothing revolutionary here.
I've never read about that. So it's not "common knowledge" - except maybe in the running community.
I like your comment for putting some facts into place (how far you can go with common options). But as I never heard of this before, I have no idea how common it actually is and the effects and the science around it, what research does say to this, how and why this is used in other sports - or why not.
> You don't need 'advanced' gel to do that, a bottle of water with 120g of white sugar an hour.
Did you carry all of these bottles on a marathon? Did you have to stop to get them out of your bag? How did you find drinking whilst running?
I find gels much more compact and for the amount of time I need to run one - over 4 hours there's a lot of weight I need to carry. I can store a lot of them up front in my running vest and keep going.
I'm not the expert on the bio but the gel has the advantage of being consumable while running.
Try drinking while running. Even at a slower pace it's hard not to spill. If you want the dosage correct you can't spill.
Because calories simply do not matter. At high intensities of working out, it's the amount of carbohydrates you can consume that allow more fuel to be burnt.
"In the aerobic exercise domain up to ~100% of maximal oxygen uptake (VO2max), CHO is the dominant fuel, as CHO-based oxidative metabolism can be activated quickly, provide all of the fuel at high aerobic power outputs (> 85-90% VO2max) and is a more efficient fuel (kcal/L O2 used) when compared to fat."
Calories do matter (obviously, as energy intake is the entire point) but as you note the specific form that the fuel takes matters. However "carbs" is a catch all that includes plenty of things that (I assume) would be of similarly minimal use in this scenario. The calories need to take a very specific chemical form for this to work.
The wording is certainly confusing here, but yes the calories don’t matter as much as the form. Eating protein and fats simply give you minimal useful calories during the race. Even most carbs won’t be useful if they are more complex.
Then why replace one imprecise term with another? Fiber is a carbohydrate. Humans use close to nothing from its energy. (Though it plays another important role in the digesive system.)
Try eating 100g of grass per hour during a marathon and you will see. That's the metabolic edge horses have over humans.
It’s also confusing that most nutritional labels say “calories” (Cal) when they really mean kilocalories (kcal). And those are different from regular (‘small’) calories
(a measure of energy needed to heat 1g water 1c).
1 food calorie as listed on a food label is enough to heat 1kg of water by 1c
(If the nutritional calories in the drink had been only the same number of thermodynamic calories, the drink would have been energetically negative for the body because of its low temperature.)
I normally consume 90g of carbs per hour when long distance biking, so do a few other riders I know. No GI issues. I use Skratch some other guys like Precision.
Yeah, I just literally use table sugar, which is 1:1 glucose:fructose. Maurten et al using 1:0.8, close enough! And I don't believe the hydrogel thing is any magic, just marketing.
But yeah, this is a thing. There is some gut distress for sure at higher levels of intake. See guy finishing second -- still under 2 hrs! immediately puking, which is fairly common at the high intakes. I've heard of Blumenfeld (the triathlete) taking like 200g/hr or more. Insane. Though he's had some epic GI disasters too, lol.
The hydrogel textures (not maurten but naak, but close enough), for me, allow while racing to swallow a full 40g gel in half a second without feeling the sugary taste a lot, which is nice. Compared to thick syrup-like gels, it’s a way better experience in a marathon.
But I only buy for actual races, rest of the time, I do my own 1:0.8 mix with a bit of thickener, in soft flasks. Much more cost effective.
It's much easier when cycling and there is much more freedom with your breakfast choice and timing. You are stable on the bike. When running there are constant vibrations and up and down movement that can easily upset your stomach/intestines.
Race day super shoes certainly help a lot but another difference is that super shoes allow them to train a lot more. Running training is limited by tendons. This is the reason even elite runners often train only 9-11 hours a week while many dedicated amateurs can easily spend 20+ hours per week cycling.
This is also the main reason runners "double" that is they run 2 times a day. The body absorbs 2x45 minute session much better than one 1x90 minutes session.
Super shoes are changing the game here allowing for more volume for months without injuries. When you look at Sawe's training his volume is insane. His easy/endurance days are 20km in the morning and 10km in the evening. This is some 100-110 minutes of running on "easy" days. His total time on feet must be around 14-15 hours per week - approaching cycling volume territory (especially when you consider that cyclists do significant % of their volume cruising/descending without putting almost any power at all which inflates the time).
Can someone explain this in more details? Like will you run out of energy, your result will suffer drastically, anything else?
The reason I am asking - I hike a lot, and for shorter hikes (<35km) I don't even bother with food. Just last Saturday I did 28km hike with 550m elevation gain - last meal I had was 5pm on Friday. No breakfast. No problem. I walk at a brisk (for layman) pace, ~7±2 km/h. Am I missing something by not caring about food there, or for my level of "performance" it does not matter anyway? The original question still stands.
Your muscles need energy to work. You have a variety of energy stores in your body, which range from small amounts of quickly available energy (ATP) to large amounts of slowly available energy (fat). Most relevant to this discussion is glycogen, which is is a carbohydrate. You have about 500g in your body, which is about 2000kcal. It is more readily accessible than fat, and 2000kcal is enough for an hour, or maybe two, of high intensity exercise.
These gels and drinks are trying to replenish glycogen stores. The idea is to keep the runner using glycogen for the entire race, as it provides more energy per unit time than fat metabolism.
In your hikes your energy demands probably aren't exceeding the rate that your fat metabolism can provide.
I'm not an expert, so do some research, but it's probably a bit of a) you've trained yourself to burn fat more (a good thing) b) you're not exercising as strenously c) yes, if you ate you'd probably "perform better".
I'd recommend you to do your own research though.
But to add - yes, if you don't eat you will "bonk" on a long bike ride.
Which is why this feels so artificial and why it’s the 3rd most read article on the front page of the FT. Running as a sport has been very sadly and irremediably gentrified, gone are the days of Zatopek and of Abebe Bikila winning an Olympic marathon barefooted. Fuck Ineos and its owner, too, while I’m at it.
> Maurten spent months working with Sawe and other runners getting their gut capacity trained so they could absorb and burn 100 carbs per hour[0][1]
In trail running especially it's not uncommon to exceed the recommendation of 1g/Kg bodyweight/hour, up to 120g of carbs per hour, for those that can take it.
Do we know of any adverse effects on such long term consumption of that amount of simplest carbs? While good source of immediate energy, simple carbs are basically a slow acting poison to various internal organs and over time bring stuff like diabetes.
Its great they don't sit idly around in the body and get transformed into fat but rather they are burned in muscles, but still flooding body again and again with this may have long term negative effects that far outweigh any health gains gained from doing these sports, even at such intensity.
Definitely not a diet one could recommend for regular sporty guys, unless they are uber-competitive freaks who have to win at all costs.
adidas introduces the Adizero Adios Pro Evo 3 – the lightest and fastest Adizero shoe ever, weighing an average 97* grams.
The race-day shoe represents the culmination of three years of cutting-edge research. It is 30% lighter, delivers 11% greater forefoot energy return, and improves running economy by 1.6% compared to its predecessor - making it a record breaker before it’s even laced up.
The shoe will launch with a highly limited release, with ambitious runners able to sign up for the chance to get their hands on a pair from April 23. This will be followed by a wider release in the fall marathon season. The Adizero adios Pro Evo 3 will cost $500/€500.
For other marathon racing shoes, Google says:
The Nike Alphafly 3 is the lightest in the series, weighing approximately 7.0–7.7 oz (198–218g) for a men's size 9, and 6.1 oz (174g) for women's sizes.
The PUMA Deviate NITRO™ Elite 3 is exceptionally lightweight, typically weighing 194g (6.8 oz) for a men's size 8 (UK)
If anyone's interested, the shoe being purchasable by the general public is a condition of them being deemed legal for pros, after a crackdown on Supershoes a few years ago.
The other conditions as I recall are there is only allowed to be one carbon plate in them and a maximum stack height of 40mm.
It really is incredible that Nike kicked off this Supershoe arms race ten years ago and spent (presumably) an incredible amount on R&D, marketing and hype to try and complete the mission of being the first shoe to go Sub-2, and Adidas has pipped them at the last minute... twice in one race. Oh to be a fly on the wall at HQ today...
Though I assume they made a lot of that cash back in the interim selling these things to weekend warrior suckers like myself!
Most superfoam shoes actually last longer than older EVA-based foams:
> Improved durability: Supercritical foaming produces a more consistent cell structure in a midsole. This should translate to pressure and weight being more evenly distributed, which should lead to greater durability of the midsole. “We’ve done a lot of testing of what foams look like on a dynamic impactor fresh versus 300 or 500 miles later, and we see less degradation in those materials longer-term,” FitzPatrick says.
> At least in terms of the midsole’s life span, super foams may have done away with the conventional benchmark that running shoes last about 300 miles. “I think it’s a dated standard,” Caprara of Brooks says. “It’s an easy go-to to help simplify. But every foam is different, and it’s not just the foam—it’s how it’s constructed, the shoe’s geometry, the rubber underneath it. There are so many factors. If I were to tell you the Glycerin Max lasts 300 miles, that’s probably less accurate than it is accurate. It’s probably closer to 500.”
You don't need to be competing on the world stage to enjoy some of the benefits of Alpha flys or those pumas. 500 for the new Adidas does seem a little silly though.
While the foam may last longer than older EVA foam shoes, the outsoles of the shoes have gotten ridiculously thin these days.
The continental rubber outsole on these Adidas Adios Pro EVO 3 shoes are so thin (less than two sheets of paper, I think), that they don't even appear in side/profile views of the shoes. The outsole doesn't even extend the length of the entire shoe, it stops around the middle of the shoe. So heel strikers aren't welcome and will have loads of fun in wet weather. see https://www.adidas.com/us/adizero-adios-pro-evo-3/KH7678.htm...
In general, these high stack, forward-leaning shoes are meant for going straight ahead - imagine ladies' high heel shoes with an inch and a half of foam on the bottom - any sharp turns will force the runner to slow down or they'll twist their ankles. Looking at the London Marathon course, https://www.londonmarathonevents.co.uk/london-marathon/cours..., there's about twenty ninety-degree or sharper turns.
What sort of gain would that be for a non-world class runner? I'm unfamiliar with high level running, but I'm curious as in most sports these sort of things provide a small benefit at the top level (seems to be about a ~3% reduction in times over the past decade since the shoe wars began), and that quickly becomes statistical noise outside of the top due to diminishing returns.
But if you really want to reduce your marathon time by 15 minutes, then gaining a few minutes from better shoes, a few minutes from a high altitude training camp/holiday in Flagstaff/Dolomites, and a few minutes from a day at a gait analysis centre, may be worthwhile - or atleast a fun way to spend money on your hobby.
It's his first marathon ever, but he's a very experienced runner. It would be hard to find a better prospect for a good first marathon. He's a multiple (former) world record holder and medalist at shorter distances from the mile up to half marathon. His half marathon is still 2nd all time.
I wouldn't have predicted this out of nowhere, but if you told me a marathon debut went this well and asked me to guess whose it was, I like to think I'd have come up with Kejelcha in my top few picks.
That said, great 5000/10000 athletes don't always have great marathon careers. An example from this race is the world record holder at both those distances, Joshua Cheptegei. He's run several marathons but none spectacular by his standards. He was in this race too but 7 minutes back.
Super shoes. Most shoes have carbon plates in them now, they act as a spring, storing energy and propelling athletes forwards.
Better understanding of fuelling. Most athletes are taking between 100-120g carbs (sugar) per hour. Bicarbonate of soda has also been effective.
Better planning tools. Athletes look at elevation, headwind, tailwind and will plan a strategy around going harder into the hard stuff and knowing when they can back off and rest.
And to be honest, probably a metric tonne of PEDs (performance enhancing drugs) - unfortunately this is very common across all sports at the top level.
> probably a metric tonne of PEDs (performance enhancing drugs)
Note that Sawe funded extra testing drug testing for himself for the 2 months before winning the Berlin marathon. The testing followed Athletics Integrity Unit protocols (so surprise testing etc):
This is news to me and genuinely impressive. Putting extra work into ensuring your attempt at one of the few records that will last the duration of humanity is damn smart.
> Most shoes have carbon plates in them now, they act as a spring, storing energy and propelling athletes forwards.
This seems unlikely to be true, although it is repeated in every article I read about carbon plated shoes. The people that study them in a lab environment seem to disagree. See some of the papers here:
Yes, most of the studies show there is a very large individual variation. The original 4% figure and similar studies were an average of something like 1-7% across runners.
Also interestingly, the shoe in this record uses much less carbon than past shoes, both saving weight and allowing even more super foam where much of the energy return comes from. Though there so much variance in shoe design and materials there are only theories on how much comes from the plate vs foam vs stack height vs weight vs other factors.
Quite possible there's a psychological benefit from super shoes, they certainly feel fast. Though there are enough plausible mechanisms it's unlikely to be the major factor.
There's an almost inhuman amount of mind over matter psychology when it comes to endurance running. Unless you can duplicate reality multiple times and swap out the shoes without anyone knowing to do properly scientific testing, we can't know for sure what did it. (The shoes probably helped.)
> Better understanding of fuelling. … Better planning tools.
When I was young everyone acted like running was all about who could endure misery the longest. I think if I had known about these aspects it would’ve seemed more strategic and interesting (especially with smart phones to help). Alas, these days all my effort is in making sure my run doesn’t kill my knees :\
As a 16 year wearer of mostly barefoot shoes, "barefoot" for me is about comfort in general day to day activity. It isn't a specialized tool and certainly isn't the obvious choice for extreme environments.
If I'm going bouldering I absolutely cram my toes into a tiny rock climbing shoe, because it allows me to stand on ledges I couldn't without the extra support from the shoe.
That being said, if barefoot generally feels good to you and you're not chasing the pinacle of performance it's probably a perfectly fine choice for your recreational runs.
Was the barefoot movement ever about running faster? I always thought they sold injury prevention by strengthening tissues that running shoes tend to over support.
Yes, that was the claim but it was never really backed by evidence. Vibram settled a lawsuit over false claims that their minimalist shoes reduced the risk of injuries. (I still like those shoes myself and use them on some slow recovery runs.)
This topic deserves so much more nuance, but it's always reduced to "barefoot running doesn't work" in internet forums. In every articles about the harm caused by barefoot running I've read, those reported injuries all end up being overuse injuries. The article you linked is specifically about bone marrow edema, which is basically bone bruise. Other possible injuries include muscle and tendon soreness.
If this were a bodybuilding discussion, you would get advice on how to manage DOMS symptoms and how to plan your loading schedule, nobody would say that weightlifting "doesn't work" because a beginner got sore after lifting a 80kg barbell for the first time. But people has been conditioned to think that running is a purely cardio activity, so we don't talk about how the muscles and tendons in the foot need to be loaded up gradually just like your bicep.
Barefoot running is a weightlifting activity. Your calf muscle has to lift your entire bodyweight for the forefoot stride. "No pain no gain" applies. Proper posture and techniques are important. Proper workout schedule and loading plan with rest days are important. Sufficient protein intake are important.
When Vibrams were first popular, I took to training with them on my runs. People told me to "take it easy" or you might get injured. I thought what's the worst that can happen? Well let me tell you. About a month into wearing them, I was doing a hard run and the trail had a section of concrete. My foot felt a sudden sharp pain and "snap!" I broke my 3rd metatarsal bone in my foot. Took a month or so to heal, and I decided to stop using the Vibrams.
the consensus seems to be that the foam itself is the spring (hence the successful adidas evo sl and dynafish xiaonian), and the carbon plate/rod/whatever is more to control/manage that "spring".
> going harder into the hard stuff and knowing when they can back off and rest.
Why is going harder in the hard stuff and easier in the easy stuff more efficient or faster than vice versa? I imagine arguments either way:
Going harder when it's easy gives you higher ROI. Or maybe going easier when it's hard is just too slow. And maybe that is too simplistic: Maybe it depends on how hard; that is, maybe there is a threshold.
Wind drag goes up with v squared, so power required goes up with v cubed.
If you run at 105% speed downhill,that requires almost 16% more power to overcome wind drag. You might be better off running at 100% speed downhill (and "saving" that 16% power), and pushing harder to run as close as you can to 100% speed on the uphill stretches that would otherwise have you running slower than 100%. The power used to increase your potential energy going uphill is "zero sum" because you get it back when you go back downhill -n there no pesky v squared or v cubed non linearity there (assuming the race starts and finishes at the same elevation).
A fun little effect is that average speed is time-averaged not distance-averaged. So when you go slower, you lose doubly - lower speed to average and over a longer time (higher weight). Hence one of the reasons why putting more energy into the harder bits is actually optimal.
Posted elsewhere, they have tightened regulations to clamp down on the "franken-shoes".
40mm stack height maximum
One carbon plate only (some shoes were including a second).
Must be on sale to the public for < 4 mths before the race in question
Puma makes a shoe that's non-compliant with the above (two plates, not sure about the stack height), for what it's worth.
There's something about the London course today that made for very good running.
Three athletes broke the men's world record. One athlete broke the women's world record, and three were in the all time top 5. An Irish record was also broken, likely other countries too that I'm not familiar with.
Not to take anything away from the achievements. Incredible running.
To add some color here:
It is very helpful to have someone pace you so that you can run an ideal pace without worrying about whether you are running the right speed. However, the rules require that pacers start with you [0], which means that by definition if you are running faster than anyone has ever gone before you have to run some of the race alone.
However, because marathon are often mixed gender and the best male runners are significantly faster than the best female runners, it is possible for a woman to be paced from the gun to the tape by a male runner. For this reason, there are separate records for the women's marathon for women's only events.
[0] This is one of the things that made Kipchoge's original sub 2 result not record-eligible.
I stand corrected, but I don't think this changes my point at all.
She broke the thing that the IAAF have gone back and forth on calling "the world record". It's the relevant record for this event - there was no more chance of her beating the man-paced record than of beating the men's record or the Le Mans lap record.
> Very few mere mortals could run that fast for even 100m.
That works out to roughly a 16.7-second 100m. While certainly not crawling, that would be a fairly average pace for a fairly fit middle- to early-high-schooler with a bit of practice.
Yes that’s insane to maintain for a marathon, but it’s not even remotely out of reach for 100m for most relatively-fit people at some point in their lives.
I think it's even slow for high schoolers. I didn't practice that much and ran 100m in 12.5s from rest at my peak. 4s slower is snail pace. I think most in my class could run that fast (or slow).
I agree. I ran mid 16s in 8th grade, and was in the 14s in high school, with the only training being whatever we did in gym class. But I do also look at the sheer number of overweight kids these days and figured, well maybe mid-16s is actually a reasonable average point.
Here's a random high school in Northern California. Everyone on the team is beating 16.7 seconds in the 100m. For the 1600m there are six kids with times under 4m30s and another seven with times under 4m40s, all in the last month.
Not sure that disproves the point :) Most people have never been anywhere close to competing with the top 6 athletes at a high school with ~2k students.
OK, so let's do the math. There's about 25k high schools in the USA. Let's suppose they all have a track team, and let's assume that they all have 5 team members who can break 04:30 for 1600m. Sure, at some schools that's too few, but at others it is too many.
That gives us 125k high schoolers in the USA who can break 04:30 for 1600m. There are about 18M high school students. So of just the high school population alone, about 0.7% of them can do this.
Assuming there are the 4x as many adults that can do this as there are high school students, that gives us slightly less than 0.2% of the total US population capable of this.
We just have different ideas of what constitutes "mere mortals." 1 in 150 high school students or even 1 in 500 from the general population doesn't sound super human to me at all. Talented, yes but not god like.
The fastest 1km I ever ran was around 3m20s, I felt like I was sprinting, and was fully cooked at the finish line.
Afterwards I did some quick numbers and realised the average marathon runner was not only going a lot quicker than I was, but they were doing it for a further 41km
Sometimes they have big running machines with a crash mat around them running at 2h marathon pace at running shows. I’ve o ly seen them on video - no one can keep up with it for more than 30 odd seconds. It’s INSANE they are running this fast.
Also bear in mind running a single mile under 4 mins was considered impossible for a long time.
We used to be amazed when I ran cross country in high school that these pro marathoners would best all of us in our approx 5K(3ish mile) races and then go on to repeat that distance multiple times.
And the only place this appears on ESPN is if you click on "Olympics," which has nothing to do with this race. Where coverage should be: on the home page.
It’s certainly noteworthy and interesting but I could see how Running as sport isn’t popular enough for front page. Especially during NBA and NHL playoffs, NFL draft, and whatever else might be going on.
If this happened at Chicago, it would be front page news. Boston and NY aren’t WR eligible. Since it happened in London, place it behind soccer in the priority list.
The previous official record was Kelvin Kiptum's time of 2:00:35 in 2023. Eliud Kipchoge did 1:59:40 in 2019, but that wasn't record-eligible as it was held under controlled conditions. Source: The article.
Weather and course conditions were good but not perfect. There is potential to take a few more seconds off the world record in slightly colder conditions and on a course with fewer turns. I wouldn't be surprised to see someone run 1:58 in the next few years.
Pacing is a big part of endurance sport. If you're in the lead you know intellectually you want to pace for sub-2 hours, but if you're watching someone beat you maybe it gives you the extra edge?
It does sound like the course and the weather made it more likely to happen. And technical advances in shoe composition.
That's not a description of how the pacing for this race actually happened.
> The leading men went through halfway in 60 minutes and 29 seconds: fast but not exceptionally so. But it turned out that Sawe was merely warming up.
Between 30 and 35 kilometres, Sawe and Kejelcha ran a stunning 13:54 for 5km to see off Kiplimo. Yet, staggeringly, more was to come as the pair covered kilometres 35 to 40 in 13:42. To put this into context, that time is two seconds faster than the 5km parkrun world record, set by the Irish international Nick Griggs.
It was only after a 24th mile, run in 4:12, that Kejelcha wilted. But still Sawe kept going. Astonishingly, he crossed the line having run the second half in just over 59 minutes.
“Before 41 kilometres, I’m enjoying, I’m relaxed,” said Kejelcha, who had won silver over 10,000m at last year’s world championships.
“My body is all great. At exactly 41 kilometres, my body stopped. I tried to push, but my legs were done.
Sawe, though, powered on to set the fastest official marathon time in history. For good measure, it was also 10 seconds faster than Eliud Kipchoge’s unofficial 26.2 mile best, set in Vienna in 2019.
2:50m/km. most people couldn't sustain that pace for even 2 minutes. id go as far as saying most people couldn't close their eyes and imagine consistently how fast that is.
A 1:59 half marathon time is achievable for pretty much anyone who doesn't have a serious physical disability and is willing to put in the necessary training. I've done it a few times and have no particular talent for running.
That's a 9m10sec per mile for 2 hours. While I'd agree that there are millions or even billions of people who could train to do that, I think it's wrong to suggest that "pretty much anyone" could do that.
My predicted half time is under 2 hours and I was sedentary for years before starting to run 9 months ago, and I'm 40 years old.
Endurance sports are quite accessible and don't require that much time, effort, or talent to get way better than the vast majority of people, it's just consistency.
I've been an endurance athlete most of my life, running 100 miles at 17, a 5:30 mile at 50, and lots of other stuff in between. I know that a 9min/mile pace is "easily achievable" by many folks, which is why I noted that millions or billions of people could do this. Nevertheless, I think it is really important to not overstate how achievable this is - there are many more people who could not do this than could, I think.
FWIW, that now includes me, as a 62 year old. I can hit 6:30 pace for 400m, but find it almost impossible to get under 10:0x for a mile. And that's even after 6 months of training for a 50 mile trail race.
Great achievement. Worth remembering also the previous world record holder, Kelvin Kiptum who sadly died at 24 in a car accident a couple of years ago.
Insane; and second place was sub-2:00 as well. Relegated to trivia questions for the next decade.
It would be interesting to adjust this speed to account for the insane advancements in shoe technology over the last decade. Could it be as simple as measuring the delta in median marathon performance? Then look backwards to, say, 1996 and see what the technology-adjusted 2:00 mark is.
I suspect there would be larger deltas due to improvements in nutrition and fueling. As another poster has mentioned, today's runners are ingesting so many more carbs per hour than 20 or 30 years ago. And if doping trends have changed over time, that's another factor. (No clue either way, but it's a potential factor.)
There's been lots of research into shoes though, so you might be able to work something out. For instance Jack Daniels (the running coach, not the beverage!) found that adding 100 grams to a running shoe increased aerobic effort by around 1%.
> Could it be as simple as measuring the delta in median marathon performance?
The popularity of running waxes and wanes - and the performance of the median runner varies with popularity.
Back in the 1980s the average half marathon finishing time was 1 hour 40 minutes - whereas today it's a little above 2 hours because there are a lot more people particpating.
The confounding variable is higher carbohydrate intake based on optimizing the glucose/fructose ratio and improved techniques for gut training. That happened at about the same time as the new carbon fiber shoes so it's hard to isolate how much impact the shoes had alone.
Kipchoge broke 2h a few years ago, but it was on a closed, low altitude track, with a fleet of rotating runners in front of him, providing wind blocking/drafting as well as pacing
Amazing these guys did it in a real race with no one in front of them (at the end at least)
It's always interesting to see East Africans doing so well. Even with technology like advances in shoes and diet/training, genetics is still a huge factor.
Also it must be an crazy feeling to be Kejelcha, the guy who came in 2nd place. It would have been a world record, except for Sawe!
This is historic. To put this into perspective for people how to not follow running: This is about about as big as "derGrobe" beating the one-minute-mark in 4b2c.
Why not? People were not far from it and have been getting closer and closer to it for years. To me it seemed almost certain that it would happen this decade or next.
Stunning results at the top of the field. Some interesting takeaways on both fuelling and shoes.
Maurten spent months working with Sawe and other runners getting their gut capacity trained so they could absorb and burn 100 carbs per hour[0][1]
> The Maurten research team was embedded with Sawe’s team in Kenya for 32 days across six trips between last and this April. They were training his gut to absorb that load by mimicking race-day protocol in training. The hydrogel technology they have developed over the past 10 years now allows athletes to absorb 90–120 grams of carbs per hour without GI distress.
Second is the shoes. Adidas Adizero weigh 96 grams[2] with new foam tech and new carbon plates
Nike and INEOS spent millions over years to get Kipchoge to a sub-2 in artificial conditions, and now the elite end of the field are knocking that barrier out in race conditions. Unreal.
Running tech and training have been revolutionized in the past few years.
[0] https://marathonhandbook.com/sebastian-sawe-arrives-in-londo...
[1] https://www.instagram.com/p/DXmvAUvkWaq/
[2] https://www.runnersworld.com/uk/gear/shoes/a71129333/sabasti...
edit: correct :s/calories/carbs thanks
> could absorb and burn 100 calories per hour
burning a hundred calories an hour is trivial. Most people will burn 100 calories per mile when walking or running, and more if moving as fast as these athletes, and many, many humans can do this for far, far longer than 2 hours.
It's the absorbtion that's the challenge. Maurten is not somehow alone in the particular stuff they've developed - ultra runners are generally shifting up into the 90-120 gram/hr range (or beyond!), using a variety of different companies' products. The gut training protocols for this are widely discussed in the world of running for almost any distance above a half marathon.
> burning a hundred calories
GP left out the units but is clearly talking about grams ("absorb ... 100 carbs per hour"), not calories (no one needs training to absorb 25g/hr). Carbs are 4 kcal/g. 100g of carb (400 kcal) an hour isn't replacement level for even casual athletic efforts, but it does mitigate the loss of glycogen in muscle somewhat.
Exogenous carbohydrate doesn't spare muscle glycogen, only liver glycogen.
The last few years, cycling and triathlon have been experimenting with upto 120g carbs intake per hour. Last year, Cameron Wurf ate 200g carbs per hour when he broke the world record for fastest bike split ever in a triathlon (which was broken again a few months later).
I've read that even if you absorb it all, there's some question about whether it's useful. This Alex Hutchinson article suggests, among other things, that it may spare your fat stores rather than your muscle glycogen:
> Even if you can absorb 120 grams per hour, it might not make you faster. In Podlogar’s study, cyclists burned more exogenous carbs when they consumed 120 rather than 90 grams per hour, but that didn’t reduce their rate of endogenous carb-burning—that is, they were still depleting the glycogen stores in their muscles just as quickly.
https://www.outsideonline.com/health/training-performance/en...
https://archive.ph/Vpk0h
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9560939/
That may still be worthwhile if fat is harder to recruit than exogenous carbs.
Where does discussion on gut training occur? All I know is you need a 5:4 ratio of glucose to fructose? Then when you train, you use the gels and the more you do it, the more capable your gut gets at absorbing without distress.
Is that all the science to it?
Yes but the science is actually achieving that and finding the limits. It used to be thought that 60g carbs/hour was the limit, then 100g, now it’s thought to be 120g.
It’s also about the methods of achieving that under stress without spewing it all back up. Ironman athletes would stuff their faces on the bike under the assumption that this volume of carb absorption wasn’t possible while running.
Some of the challenge in research will come from competitors not wanting to publish results to maintain an edge. It is mitigated by the visual of the race by (you can see athletes pounding carbs), as well as the nutrition companies wanting to sell more product. This will cause them to publish some information to convince us amateurs to quadruple our purchase volume ;-)
Wow so he was absorbing 400 calories per hour with this gel, but he was likely burning 3-4x that amount (or even more) while running 13.1 miles per hour!
In a two hour race that’s still 800 bonus calories, that’s something.
The race to tolerate lots of carbs is usually something you think of in 8 hour Ironmans. The good part is you can do most of it on the bike, which is much easier to eat as you go. As far as I know, many elite runners were doing like 50% water, 50% sports drink and consuming way under 100g.
> As far as I know, many elite runners were doing like 50% water, 50% sports drink and consuming way under 100g.
This used to be true, and is still true for many athletes up the marathon distance. Above that, however, the momentum has swung heavily to very high carb intake. Most (though not all) of the world's best ultra runners (we're talking 7:00 min/mile pace through mountainous terrain) are picking this up, with many getting to and beyond 100g/hr of carb consumption.
Your body stores roughly 2000 calories in glycogen. They are burning calories but nowhere near the amount a middle pack would be at this pace.
So ~2800 calories of carbs with some fat being burned.
> The Maurten research team was embedded with Sawe’s team in Kenya for 32 days across six trips between last and this April. They were training his gut to absorb that load by mimicking race-day protocol in training. The hydrogel technology they have developed over the past 10 years now allows athletes to absorb 90–120 grams of carbs per hour without GI distress.
That common knowledge, nothing revolutionary here.
There are 2 types of sugar, fructose and glucose, you can max out on glucose around 60g/hour and train you guts to max out also on fucose.
Personally I reached 90g/hour without training, no diarrhea or vomiting.
And you know the best ? White sugar in everyone kitchen is almost perfectly 50% glucose, 50% fructose.
You don't need 'advanced' gel to do that, a bottle of water with 120g of white sugar an hour.
And the shoes, yeah they're light but guess what. Other competitors also have sponsors and excellent shoes, some even run bare feet and yet they don't go faster.
No the real reason why he is able to run so fast is first excellent genetic, that's the common base.
Secondly, excellent training, coaching.
Third, his steroid/peds program is on point and his body is responding well to it.
Typically for endurance runner you want profiles with low natural hematocrit so you can max out on the EPO, but there are also other considerations. For instance, are his tendons responding well to GH and other peptides ?
> That common knowledge, nothing revolutionary here.
I've never read about that. So it's not "common knowledge" - except maybe in the running community.
I like your comment for putting some facts into place (how far you can go with common options). But as I never heard of this before, I have no idea how common it actually is and the effects and the science around it, what research does say to this, how and why this is used in other sports - or why not.
> Third, his steroid/peds program is on point and his body is responding well to it.
Do you have any evidence of this?
> You don't need 'advanced' gel to do that, a bottle of water with 120g of white sugar an hour.
Did you carry all of these bottles on a marathon? Did you have to stop to get them out of your bag? How did you find drinking whilst running?
I find gels much more compact and for the amount of time I need to run one - over 4 hours there's a lot of weight I need to carry. I can store a lot of them up front in my running vest and keep going.
I'm not the expert on the bio but the gel has the advantage of being consumable while running. Try drinking while running. Even at a slower pace it's hard not to spill. If you want the dosage correct you can't spill.
One gram of carbs is 4 calories., so more like 400 calories per hour.
It was confusing when the running industry switched from calories to grams of carbs, but that's all anyone talks about now.
Because calories simply do not matter. At high intensities of working out, it's the amount of carbohydrates you can consume that allow more fuel to be burnt.
"In the aerobic exercise domain up to ~100% of maximal oxygen uptake (VO2max), CHO is the dominant fuel, as CHO-based oxidative metabolism can be activated quickly, provide all of the fuel at high aerobic power outputs (> 85-90% VO2max) and is a more efficient fuel (kcal/L O2 used) when compared to fat."
https://www.gssiweb.org/sports-science-exchange/article/regu...
Calories do matter (obviously, as energy intake is the entire point) but as you note the specific form that the fuel takes matters. However "carbs" is a catch all that includes plenty of things that (I assume) would be of similarly minimal use in this scenario. The calories need to take a very specific chemical form for this to work.
The wording is certainly confusing here, but yes the calories don’t matter as much as the form. Eating protein and fats simply give you minimal useful calories during the race. Even most carbs won’t be useful if they are more complex.
Then why replace one imprecise term with another? Fiber is a carbohydrate. Humans use close to nothing from its energy. (Though it plays another important role in the digesive system.)
Try eating 100g of grass per hour during a marathon and you will see. That's the metabolic edge horses have over humans.
They're equivalent modulo some multiple. It doesn't matter which one we talk about, as long as we're consistent.
It’s also confusing that most nutritional labels say “calories” (Cal) when they really mean kilocalories (kcal). And those are different from regular (‘small’) calories (a measure of energy needed to heat 1g water 1c).
1 food calorie as listed on a food label is enough to heat 1kg of water by 1c
This was the explanation for why the scotch and soda diet doesn't work:
https://www.futilitycloset.com/2008/11/16/the-mensa-diet/
(If the nutritional calories in the drink had been only the same number of thermodynamic calories, the drink would have been energetically negative for the body because of its low temperature.)
Yeah, I assume this dumbification is spearheaded by the Americans.
It's deliberate, because you generally do not want calories from fat or protein during a marathon or other running race.
I normally consume 90g of carbs per hour when long distance biking, so do a few other riders I know. No GI issues. I use Skratch some other guys like Precision.
Yeah, I just literally use table sugar, which is 1:1 glucose:fructose. Maurten et al using 1:0.8, close enough! And I don't believe the hydrogel thing is any magic, just marketing.
But yeah, this is a thing. There is some gut distress for sure at higher levels of intake. See guy finishing second -- still under 2 hrs! immediately puking, which is fairly common at the high intakes. I've heard of Blumenfeld (the triathlete) taking like 200g/hr or more. Insane. Though he's had some epic GI disasters too, lol.
The hydrogel textures (not maurten but naak, but close enough), for me, allow while racing to swallow a full 40g gel in half a second without feeling the sugary taste a lot, which is nice. Compared to thick syrup-like gels, it’s a way better experience in a marathon.
But I only buy for actual races, rest of the time, I do my own 1:0.8 mix with a bit of thickener, in soft flasks. Much more cost effective.
it is a lot more challenging when running than when biking. The jostling is not your friend.
It's much easier when cycling and there is much more freedom with your breakfast choice and timing. You are stable on the bike. When running there are constant vibrations and up and down movement that can easily upset your stomach/intestines.
Re [0] how do they measure this reliably during a race, especially the C-isotopes in the breath?
From the picture it looks like he is only wearing a watch and there is perhaps a little bulge on his left side.
They collected samples every 5k in the 30k long run before the marathon, see Substrate section in http://athlete.maurten.com/
The leaders were burning a lot more than 100kcal per hour. I think you mean 100g of carbohydrates per hour.
Not burning, eating. They are eating 100g of carb per hour. Burning 1000+ calories.
Race day super shoes certainly help a lot but another difference is that super shoes allow them to train a lot more. Running training is limited by tendons. This is the reason even elite runners often train only 9-11 hours a week while many dedicated amateurs can easily spend 20+ hours per week cycling. This is also the main reason runners "double" that is they run 2 times a day. The body absorbs 2x45 minute session much better than one 1x90 minutes session.
Super shoes are changing the game here allowing for more volume for months without injuries. When you look at Sawe's training his volume is insane. His easy/endurance days are 20km in the morning and 10km in the evening. This is some 100-110 minutes of running on "easy" days. His total time on feet must be around 14-15 hours per week - approaching cycling volume territory (especially when you consider that cyclists do significant % of their volume cruising/descending without putting almost any power at all which inflates the time).
100 g of carbs is 400 calories, not 100.
Pro cycling has been on the high fueling strategy for a while, with huge results for record times. Its a game changer for endurance sports.
Can someone explain this in more details? Like will you run out of energy, your result will suffer drastically, anything else?
The reason I am asking - I hike a lot, and for shorter hikes (<35km) I don't even bother with food. Just last Saturday I did 28km hike with 550m elevation gain - last meal I had was 5pm on Friday. No breakfast. No problem. I walk at a brisk (for layman) pace, ~7±2 km/h. Am I missing something by not caring about food there, or for my level of "performance" it does not matter anyway? The original question still stands.
Your muscles need energy to work. You have a variety of energy stores in your body, which range from small amounts of quickly available energy (ATP) to large amounts of slowly available energy (fat). Most relevant to this discussion is glycogen, which is is a carbohydrate. You have about 500g in your body, which is about 2000kcal. It is more readily accessible than fat, and 2000kcal is enough for an hour, or maybe two, of high intensity exercise.
These gels and drinks are trying to replenish glycogen stores. The idea is to keep the runner using glycogen for the entire race, as it provides more energy per unit time than fat metabolism.
In your hikes your energy demands probably aren't exceeding the rate that your fat metabolism can provide.
I'm not an expert, so do some research, but it's probably a bit of a) you've trained yourself to burn fat more (a good thing) b) you're not exercising as strenously c) yes, if you ate you'd probably "perform better".
I'd recommend you to do your own research though.
But to add - yes, if you don't eat you will "bonk" on a long bike ride.
Correction: 100g of carbohydrate/hr. That's approximately 400 calories/hr.
Which is why this feels so artificial and why it’s the 3rd most read article on the front page of the FT. Running as a sport has been very sadly and irremediably gentrified, gone are the days of Zatopek and of Abebe Bikila winning an Olympic marathon barefooted. Fuck Ineos and its owner, too, while I’m at it.
> Maurten spent months working with Sawe and other runners getting their gut capacity trained so they could absorb and burn 100 carbs per hour[0][1]
In trail running especially it's not uncommon to exceed the recommendation of 1g/Kg bodyweight/hour, up to 120g of carbs per hour, for those that can take it.
Do we know of any adverse effects on such long term consumption of that amount of simplest carbs? While good source of immediate energy, simple carbs are basically a slow acting poison to various internal organs and over time bring stuff like diabetes.
Its great they don't sit idly around in the body and get transformed into fat but rather they are burned in muscles, but still flooding body again and again with this may have long term negative effects that far outweigh any health gains gained from doing these sports, even at such intensity.
Definitely not a diet one could recommend for regular sporty guys, unless they are uber-competitive freaks who have to win at all costs.
I don’t think there is any elite level sport that doesn’t trade long term health for performance in competitions.
Adidas all over this one https://news.adidas.com/running/two-adidas-athletes-sabastia...
The Adidas Adios Pro Evo 3 - https://news.adidas.com/running/adidas-unveils-its-first-sub...
For other marathon racing shoes, Google says:You can buy them in the UK soon, just £450 and I suspect they'll disintegrate quickly... https://www.adidas.co.uk/adizero-adios-pro-evo-3-shoes/KH767...
If anyone's interested, the shoe being purchasable by the general public is a condition of them being deemed legal for pros, after a crackdown on Supershoes a few years ago.
The other conditions as I recall are there is only allowed to be one carbon plate in them and a maximum stack height of 40mm.
It really is incredible that Nike kicked off this Supershoe arms race ten years ago and spent (presumably) an incredible amount on R&D, marketing and hype to try and complete the mission of being the first shoe to go Sub-2, and Adidas has pipped them at the last minute... twice in one race. Oh to be a fly on the wall at HQ today...
Though I assume they made a lot of that cash back in the interim selling these things to weekend warrior suckers like myself!
Most superfoam shoes actually last longer than older EVA-based foams:
> Improved durability: Supercritical foaming produces a more consistent cell structure in a midsole. This should translate to pressure and weight being more evenly distributed, which should lead to greater durability of the midsole. “We’ve done a lot of testing of what foams look like on a dynamic impactor fresh versus 300 or 500 miles later, and we see less degradation in those materials longer-term,” FitzPatrick says.
> At least in terms of the midsole’s life span, super foams may have done away with the conventional benchmark that running shoes last about 300 miles. “I think it’s a dated standard,” Caprara of Brooks says. “It’s an easy go-to to help simplify. But every foam is different, and it’s not just the foam—it’s how it’s constructed, the shoe’s geometry, the rubber underneath it. There are so many factors. If I were to tell you the Glycerin Max lasts 300 miles, that’s probably less accurate than it is accurate. It’s probably closer to 500.”
https://www.runnersworld.com/gear/a64969945/secret-to-super-...
Much like the road bikes that cost as much as a sedan, unless you are competing on a world stage, these aren’t meant for you.
I’m sure someone will happily sell them to you if you enjoy wasting money.
You don't need to be competing on the world stage to enjoy some of the benefits of Alpha flys or those pumas. 500 for the new Adidas does seem a little silly though.
While the foam may last longer than older EVA foam shoes, the outsoles of the shoes have gotten ridiculously thin these days.
The continental rubber outsole on these Adidas Adios Pro EVO 3 shoes are so thin (less than two sheets of paper, I think), that they don't even appear in side/profile views of the shoes. The outsole doesn't even extend the length of the entire shoe, it stops around the middle of the shoe. So heel strikers aren't welcome and will have loads of fun in wet weather. see https://www.adidas.com/us/adizero-adios-pro-evo-3/KH7678.htm...
In general, these high stack, forward-leaning shoes are meant for going straight ahead - imagine ladies' high heel shoes with an inch and a half of foam on the bottom - any sharp turns will force the runner to slow down or they'll twist their ankles. Looking at the London Marathon course, https://www.londonmarathonevents.co.uk/london-marathon/cours..., there's about twenty ninety-degree or sharper turns.
> unless you are competing on a world stage, these aren’t meant for you.
There’s a lot of people trying to get a 3 hour marathon or some other goal where chasing the marginal gains is worth the cost to them.
But if you could only achieve it by adding the shoe isn't that a bit hollow?
If you are a 3:02 marathoner in normal shoes then run a 3:00 in a super shoe, you are still a 3:02 marathoner in normal shoes.
What sort of gain would that be for a non-world class runner? I'm unfamiliar with high level running, but I'm curious as in most sports these sort of things provide a small benefit at the top level (seems to be about a ~3% reduction in times over the past decade since the shoe wars began), and that quickly becomes statistical noise outside of the top due to diminishing returns.
But if you really want to reduce your marathon time by 15 minutes, then gaining a few minutes from better shoes, a few minutes from a high altitude training camp/holiday in Flagstaff/Dolomites, and a few minutes from a day at a gait analysis centre, may be worthwhile - or atleast a fun way to spend money on your hobby.
10% improvement on a 5 hour marathon time is more absolute seconds than on a 2.1hr marathon time.
Don’t forget Yomif Kejelcha who finished in 1:59:41, a world record up until 11 seconds prior. Amazing.
> Don’t forget Yomif Kejelcha who finished in 1:59:41, a world record up until 11 seconds prior. Amazing.
In his marathon debut too.
I read that as well... how could it be his first marathon? Or is it his first "big" marathon?
It's his first marathon ever, but he's a very experienced runner. It would be hard to find a better prospect for a good first marathon. He's a multiple (former) world record holder and medalist at shorter distances from the mile up to half marathon. His half marathon is still 2nd all time.
I wouldn't have predicted this out of nowhere, but if you told me a marathon debut went this well and asked me to guess whose it was, I like to think I'd have come up with Kejelcha in my top few picks.
That said, great 5000/10000 athletes don't always have great marathon careers. An example from this race is the world record holder at both those distances, Joshua Cheptegei. He's run several marathons but none spectacular by his standards. He was in this race too but 7 minutes back.
> His half marathon is still 2nd all time.
Rough that his Marathon time is also 2nd!
Imagine having the second fastest marathon time ever yet not winning the marathon you ran it in
Apparently 3 people broke the record in the same race!
Nobody ever remembers who was in 2nd. sigh.
I think Kejelcha will be back.
Posted to my in-laws, who asked how:
Super shoes. Most shoes have carbon plates in them now, they act as a spring, storing energy and propelling athletes forwards.
Better understanding of fuelling. Most athletes are taking between 100-120g carbs (sugar) per hour. Bicarbonate of soda has also been effective.
Better planning tools. Athletes look at elevation, headwind, tailwind and will plan a strategy around going harder into the hard stuff and knowing when they can back off and rest.
And to be honest, probably a metric tonne of PEDs (performance enhancing drugs) - unfortunately this is very common across all sports at the top level.
> probably a metric tonne of PEDs (performance enhancing drugs)
Note that Sawe funded extra testing drug testing for himself for the 2 months before winning the Berlin marathon. The testing followed Athletics Integrity Unit protocols (so surprise testing etc):
https://www.letsrun.com/news/2026/04/how-sabastian-sawe-conv...
This is news to me and genuinely impressive. Putting extra work into ensuring your attempt at one of the few records that will last the duration of humanity is damn smart.
> Most shoes have carbon plates in them now, they act as a spring, storing energy and propelling athletes forwards.
This seems unlikely to be true, although it is repeated in every article I read about carbon plated shoes. The people that study them in a lab environment seem to disagree. See some of the papers here:
https://www.wouterhoogkamer.com/science2
However, I agree wholeheartedly with the overall points in your post!
Ooooh, interesting- I’ll take a read, thanks!
I’m guessing like most things of this nature, you’re likely to have super-responders, responders and non-responders?
Yes, most of the studies show there is a very large individual variation. The original 4% figure and similar studies were an average of something like 1-7% across runners.
Also interestingly, the shoe in this record uses much less carbon than past shoes, both saving weight and allowing even more super foam where much of the energy return comes from. Though there so much variance in shoe design and materials there are only theories on how much comes from the plate vs foam vs stack height vs weight vs other factors.
I read somewhere that the carbon plate is more to stabilize the shoe, that with only the foam the shoe would be very unstable.
Maybe even placebo effect?
Quite possible there's a psychological benefit from super shoes, they certainly feel fast. Though there are enough plausible mechanisms it's unlikely to be the major factor.
So you think the Vaporfly prototypes Kipchoge wore in 2018 placebo'd him into crushing the world record by 78 seconds?
There's an almost inhuman amount of mind over matter psychology when it comes to endurance running. Unless you can duplicate reality multiple times and swap out the shoes without anyone knowing to do properly scientific testing, we can't know for sure what did it. (The shoes probably helped.)
Well at least on the PED front, saw has been doing an extreme amount of testing to try to eliminate those doubts.
> Better understanding of fuelling. … Better planning tools.
When I was young everyone acted like running was all about who could endure misery the longest. I think if I had known about these aspects it would’ve seemed more strategic and interesting (especially with smart phones to help). Alas, these days all my effort is in making sure my run doesn’t kill my knees :\
> Super shoes. Most shoes have carbon plates in them now, they act as a spring, storing energy and propelling athletes forwards.
I wonder where that leaves the barefoot movement. Hype dust?
As a 16 year wearer of mostly barefoot shoes, "barefoot" for me is about comfort in general day to day activity. It isn't a specialized tool and certainly isn't the obvious choice for extreme environments.
If I'm going bouldering I absolutely cram my toes into a tiny rock climbing shoe, because it allows me to stand on ledges I couldn't without the extra support from the shoe.
That being said, if barefoot generally feels good to you and you're not chasing the pinacle of performance it's probably a perfectly fine choice for your recreational runs.
No competitive distance runner since like Zola Budd ran barefoot or minimal shoes.
The carbon plate revolution is the main driver for drop in times over the last 5+ years
Was the barefoot movement ever about running faster? I always thought they sold injury prevention by strengthening tissues that running shoes tend to over support.
Yes, that was the claim but it was never really backed by evidence. Vibram settled a lawsuit over false claims that their minimalist shoes reduced the risk of injuries. (I still like those shoes myself and use them on some slow recovery runs.)
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-27335251
This topic deserves so much more nuance, but it's always reduced to "barefoot running doesn't work" in internet forums. In every articles about the harm caused by barefoot running I've read, those reported injuries all end up being overuse injuries. The article you linked is specifically about bone marrow edema, which is basically bone bruise. Other possible injuries include muscle and tendon soreness.
If this were a bodybuilding discussion, you would get advice on how to manage DOMS symptoms and how to plan your loading schedule, nobody would say that weightlifting "doesn't work" because a beginner got sore after lifting a 80kg barbell for the first time. But people has been conditioned to think that running is a purely cardio activity, so we don't talk about how the muscles and tendons in the foot need to be loaded up gradually just like your bicep.
Barefoot running is a weightlifting activity. Your calf muscle has to lift your entire bodyweight for the forefoot stride. "No pain no gain" applies. Proper posture and techniques are important. Proper workout schedule and loading plan with rest days are important. Sufficient protein intake are important.
Also letting chlidren run and play barefoot actaully helps develop the foot properly which I presonally think is benificial in the long run.
no no, in the long run carbon plates are beneficial ;)
When Vibrams were first popular, I took to training with them on my runs. People told me to "take it easy" or you might get injured. I thought what's the worst that can happen? Well let me tell you. About a month into wearing them, I was doing a hard run and the trail had a section of concrete. My foot felt a sudden sharp pain and "snap!" I broke my 3rd metatarsal bone in my foot. Took a month or so to heal, and I decided to stop using the Vibrams.
I only manage to do barefoot runs on soft forest ground. Anything concrete just instantly messes up my feet.
the consensus seems to be that the foam itself is the spring (hence the successful adidas evo sl and dynafish xiaonian), and the carbon plate/rod/whatever is more to control/manage that "spring".
> going harder into the hard stuff and knowing when they can back off and rest.
Why is going harder in the hard stuff and easier in the easy stuff more efficient or faster than vice versa? I imagine arguments either way:
Going harder when it's easy gives you higher ROI. Or maybe going easier when it's hard is just too slow. And maybe that is too simplistic: Maybe it depends on how hard; that is, maybe there is a threshold.
Completely uninformed speculation:
Wind drag goes up with v squared, so power required goes up with v cubed.
If you run at 105% speed downhill,that requires almost 16% more power to overcome wind drag. You might be better off running at 100% speed downhill (and "saving" that 16% power), and pushing harder to run as close as you can to 100% speed on the uphill stretches that would otherwise have you running slower than 100%. The power used to increase your potential energy going uphill is "zero sum" because you get it back when you go back downhill -n there no pesky v squared or v cubed non linearity there (assuming the race starts and finishes at the same elevation).
A fun little effect is that average speed is time-averaged not distance-averaged. So when you go slower, you lose doubly - lower speed to average and over a longer time (higher weight). Hence one of the reasons why putting more energy into the harder bits is actually optimal.
I thought those carbon plate shoes were barred from competition???
Posted elsewhere, they have tightened regulations to clamp down on the "franken-shoes".
40mm stack height maximum One carbon plate only (some shoes were including a second). Must be on sale to the public for < 4 mths before the race in question
Puma makes a shoe that's non-compliant with the above (two plates, not sure about the stack height), for what it's worth.
nope, nike vaporflys are super popular. There are usually limits on stack height for many marathons though.
Can you not accuse people of cheating unless you have proof?
There's something about the London course today that made for very good running.
Three athletes broke the men's world record. One athlete broke the women's world record, and three were in the all time top 5. An Irish record was also broken, likely other countries too that I'm not familiar with.
Not to take anything away from the achievements. Incredible running.
> One athlete broke the women's world record
Not so. She broke a record for a female-only-pacer marathon time. The women's world record was much, much faster.
To add some color here: It is very helpful to have someone pace you so that you can run an ideal pace without worrying about whether you are running the right speed. However, the rules require that pacers start with you [0], which means that by definition if you are running faster than anyone has ever gone before you have to run some of the race alone.
However, because marathon are often mixed gender and the best male runners are significantly faster than the best female runners, it is possible for a woman to be paced from the gun to the tape by a male runner. For this reason, there are separate records for the women's marathon for women's only events.
[0] This is one of the things that made Kipchoge's original sub 2 result not record-eligible.
I stand corrected, but I don't think this changes my point at all.
She broke the thing that the IAAF have gone back and forth on calling "the world record". It's the relevant record for this event - there was no more chance of her beating the man-paced record than of beating the men's record or the Le Mans lap record.
what does female-only-pacer even mean?
It was good weather for London. Clear skies and cool.
Wow, that’s ~13 mph, basically a full-on sprint for a mere mortal. Absolutely insane.
The fastest marathoners are moving at 4m30sec per mile or faster.
Very few mere mortals could run that fast for even 100m.
> Very few mere mortals could run that fast for even 100m.
That works out to roughly a 16.7-second 100m. While certainly not crawling, that would be a fairly average pace for a fairly fit middle- to early-high-schooler with a bit of practice.
Yes that’s insane to maintain for a marathon, but it’s not even remotely out of reach for 100m for most relatively-fit people at some point in their lives.
I think it's even slow for high schoolers. I didn't practice that much and ran 100m in 12.5s from rest at my peak. 4s slower is snail pace. I think most in my class could run that fast (or slow).
I think height matters for speed as a fit 6ft+ would easily run way faster than a 4" 8' fit person.
I agree. I ran mid 16s in 8th grade, and was in the 14s in high school, with the only training being whatever we did in gym class. But I do also look at the sheer number of overweight kids these days and figured, well maybe mid-16s is actually a reasonable average point.
Oh it is. At a typical large high school making the team puts you in the top 1% or better of athletic ability compared to the population at large.
At my peak, I finished the NYC Marathon in the top 2%. I still finished 45 minutes behind the winner.
It feels like elite athletes aren’t even competing in the same sport.
It's the "at some point in their lives" that matters here. For most folks, the period where a 16.7 100m is feasible is pretty short.
[citation needed]
There's an interesting video by Mark Lewis on this.
https://youtu.be/xkBmYQucyMs
Here's a random high school in Northern California. Everyone on the team is beating 16.7 seconds in the 100m. For the 1600m there are six kids with times under 4m30s and another seven with times under 4m40s, all in the last month.
https://www.athletic.net/team/770/track-and-field-outdoor/20...
* of course one mile is hardly comparable to the marathon that pros are able to sustain such speeds over...
Not sure that disproves the point :) Most people have never been anywhere close to competing with the top 6 athletes at a high school with ~2k students.
There are thousands of these high schools all across the USA. The top high schoolers in California so far this year are doing 1600m in 4m7s.
https://www.athletic.net/TrackAndField/rankings/list/168546/...
OK, so let's do the math. There's about 25k high schools in the USA. Let's suppose they all have a track team, and let's assume that they all have 5 team members who can break 04:30 for 1600m. Sure, at some schools that's too few, but at others it is too many.
That gives us 125k high schoolers in the USA who can break 04:30 for 1600m. There are about 18M high school students. So of just the high school population alone, about 0.7% of them can do this.
Assuming there are the 4x as many adults that can do this as there are high school students, that gives us slightly less than 0.2% of the total US population capable of this.
I rest my case.
We just have different ideas of what constitutes "mere mortals." 1 in 150 high school students or even 1 in 500 from the general population doesn't sound super human to me at all. Talented, yes but not god like.
What do you want most to mean here?
Unless kids have gotten a lot faster in the past 25 years, I think that's a lot better than a typical 2000 person high school.
How many kids at the school?
The fastest 1km I ever ran was around 3m20s, I felt like I was sprinting, and was fully cooked at the finish line.
Afterwards I did some quick numbers and realised the average marathon runner was not only going a lot quicker than I was, but they were doing it for a further 41km
Sometimes they have big running machines with a crash mat around them running at 2h marathon pace at running shows. I’ve o ly seen them on video - no one can keep up with it for more than 30 odd seconds. It’s INSANE they are running this fast.
Also bear in mind running a single mile under 4 mins was considered impossible for a long time.
We used to be amazed when I ran cross country in high school that these pro marathoners would best all of us in our approx 5K(3ish mile) races and then go on to repeat that distance multiple times.
It’s totally remarkable.
Yeah I can barely even ride my bike that fast much less keep that pace for two hours.
You must be crawling on your bike I'd love to see that
That's just a mean comment
He did his _last_ mile in 4.17. Insane.
21.19km/h on average, or 17 seconds per hundred metres on average.
No, it's slower than most people's sprints. It's 17 seconds per 100 metres which is slow. Most teenagers can do this starting from rest.
I'm not a runner at all, but people say that they can do that for like a minute, maybe two at best... and these guys did it for two hours straight.
And the only place this appears on ESPN is if you click on "Olympics," which has nothing to do with this race. Where coverage should be: on the home page.
It’s certainly noteworthy and interesting but I could see how Running as sport isn’t popular enough for front page. Especially during NBA and NHL playoffs, NFL draft, and whatever else might be going on.
If this happened at Chicago, it would be front page news. Boston and NY aren’t WR eligible. Since it happened in London, place it behind soccer in the priority list.
Wait two runners beat it in the same race?
Was there perfect conditions.or something?
Insane you could run 1:59:41 and not win!
Three of them, actually:
Sabastian Sawe 1:59:30
Yomif Kejelcha 1:59:41
Jacob Kiplimo 2:00:28
The previous official record was Kelvin Kiptum's time of 2:00:35 in 2023. Eliud Kipchoge did 1:59:40 in 2019, but that wasn't record-eligible as it was held under controlled conditions. Source: The article.
Two beat two hours is what they meant.
Weather and course conditions were good but not perfect. There is potential to take a few more seconds off the world record in slightly colder conditions and on a course with fewer turns. I wouldn't be surprised to see someone run 1:58 in the next few years.
This is probably right. We’ll also see at least five unique sub-2s before the end of 2027.
Pacing is a big part of endurance sport. If you're in the lead you know intellectually you want to pace for sub-2 hours, but if you're watching someone beat you maybe it gives you the extra edge?
It does sound like the course and the weather made it more likely to happen. And technical advances in shoe composition.
That's not a description of how the pacing for this race actually happened.
> The leading men went through halfway in 60 minutes and 29 seconds: fast but not exceptionally so. But it turned out that Sawe was merely warming up.
Between 30 and 35 kilometres, Sawe and Kejelcha ran a stunning 13:54 for 5km to see off Kiplimo. Yet, staggeringly, more was to come as the pair covered kilometres 35 to 40 in 13:42. To put this into context, that time is two seconds faster than the 5km parkrun world record, set by the Irish international Nick Griggs.
It was only after a 24th mile, run in 4:12, that Kejelcha wilted. But still Sawe kept going. Astonishingly, he crossed the line having run the second half in just over 59 minutes.
“Before 41 kilometres, I’m enjoying, I’m relaxed,” said Kejelcha, who had won silver over 10,000m at last year’s world championships.
“My body is all great. At exactly 41 kilometres, my body stopped. I tried to push, but my legs were done.
Sawe, though, powered on to set the fastest official marathon time in history. For good measure, it was also 10 seconds faster than Eliud Kipchoge’s unofficial 26.2 mile best, set in Vienna in 2019.
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2026/apr/26/sabastian-sawe...
Elite marathon runners aim for a one minute negative split (Second half faster than the first). These guys pretty much nailed it.
These were Sabastian Sawe's splits
5km - 14:14 10km - 28:35 15km - 43:10 20km - 57:21 Half - 60:29 25km - 71:41 30km - 1:26:03 35km - 1:39:57 40km - 1:53:39 Finish - 1:59:30
Yomif Kejelcha also ran sub-two, clocking 1:59:41 on his debut marathon
You have to feel for Kejelcha - breaking 2h marathon and not even winning the race!
2:50m/km. most people couldn't sustain that pace for even 2 minutes. id go as far as saying most people couldn't close their eyes and imagine consistently how fast that is.
Thats my sprinting speed - which I can sustain for around 30 seconds.
3 people beat the previous world record in this race! This is some combination of improved tech and extraordinarily good weather.
London is a fast course. Let’s see what happens in Chicago and Berlin. If it was primarily tech that did it, we should see the record fall again.
Incredible result! (on the day I did my own 5K pb)
This is a nice video of the last 10 mins of the historic marathon race finish
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1voTDQQQf5g
Amazing to me that I'll never get my *half* marathon time close to his full marathon time.
A 1:59 half marathon time is achievable for pretty much anyone who doesn't have a serious physical disability and is willing to put in the necessary training. I've done it a few times and have no particular talent for running.
That's a 9m10sec per mile for 2 hours. While I'd agree that there are millions or even billions of people who could train to do that, I think it's wrong to suggest that "pretty much anyone" could do that.
My predicted half time is under 2 hours and I was sedentary for years before starting to run 9 months ago, and I'm 40 years old.
Endurance sports are quite accessible and don't require that much time, effort, or talent to get way better than the vast majority of people, it's just consistency.
I've been an endurance athlete most of my life, running 100 miles at 17, a 5:30 mile at 50, and lots of other stuff in between. I know that a 9min/mile pace is "easily achievable" by many folks, which is why I noted that millions or billions of people could do this. Nevertheless, I think it is really important to not overstate how achievable this is - there are many more people who could not do this than could, I think.
FWIW, that now includes me, as a 62 year old. I can hit 6:30 pace for 400m, but find it almost impossible to get under 10:0x for a mile. And that's even after 6 months of training for a 50 mile trail race.
Pretty much anyone can do that with at least 9-12 months of training.
Great achievement. Worth remembering also the previous world record holder, Kelvin Kiptum who sadly died at 24 in a car accident a couple of years ago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelvin_Kiptum
Insane; and second place was sub-2:00 as well. Relegated to trivia questions for the next decade.
It would be interesting to adjust this speed to account for the insane advancements in shoe technology over the last decade. Could it be as simple as measuring the delta in median marathon performance? Then look backwards to, say, 1996 and see what the technology-adjusted 2:00 mark is.
Second place male runner was running his first marathon race as well.
Sub-2hr marathon, beat the previous world record before Sunday, on your first try, and you don't win! Bad timing...
Prize money for London Marathon 2026 - https://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/38880592/london-marathon-2026...
Looks like first place male gets US$330K. Second place will get US$180K.
Divide by 2 to get the approximate hourly rate. :)
I suspect there would be larger deltas due to improvements in nutrition and fueling. As another poster has mentioned, today's runners are ingesting so many more carbs per hour than 20 or 30 years ago. And if doping trends have changed over time, that's another factor. (No clue either way, but it's a potential factor.)
There's been lots of research into shoes though, so you might be able to work something out. For instance Jack Daniels (the running coach, not the beverage!) found that adding 100 grams to a running shoe increased aerobic effort by around 1%.
> Could it be as simple as measuring the delta in median marathon performance?
The popularity of running waxes and wanes - and the performance of the median runner varies with popularity.
Back in the 1980s the average half marathon finishing time was 1 hour 40 minutes - whereas today it's a little above 2 hours because there are a lot more people particpating.
The confounding variable is higher carbohydrate intake based on optimizing the glucose/fructose ratio and improved techniques for gut training. That happened at about the same time as the new carbon fiber shoes so it's hard to isolate how much impact the shoes had alone.
He is the Armstrong of running, popularity wise and other things...
Very cool, amazing!
What effects does marathon running have on the body long term?
Kipchoge broke 2h a few years ago, but it was on a closed, low altitude track, with a fleet of rotating runners in front of him, providing wind blocking/drafting as well as pacing
Amazing these guys did it in a real race with no one in front of them (at the end at least)
That's literally running a 4:30 mile, 26 times in a row. Jesus.
While consuming about 800 calories.
4:33
It's always interesting to see East Africans doing so well. Even with technology like advances in shoes and diet/training, genetics is still a huge factor.
Also it must be an crazy feeling to be Kejelcha, the guy who came in 2nd place. It would have been a world record, except for Sawe!
Is it actually allowed to suggest that some races are better than others in some areas?
Not necessarily genetic. They run a lot, at altitude, from childhood
i feel like over a time, it becomes encoded
It was his first marathon, so he is probably thinking next time he will be the one to break the record.
This is historic. To put this into perspective for people how to not follow running: This is about about as big as "derGrobe" beating the one-minute-mark in 4b2c.
WHAT???? NO. WAY.
That's not me being sarcastic. I never, ever thought this would happen
Why not? People were not far from it and have been getting closer and closer to it for years. To me it seemed almost certain that it would happen this decade or next.
I hope there was a runner dressed as the finish line
too soon
~~A car going as fast as him would have gotten a speeding ticket in the residential areas of Wales. Crazy.~~
Edit: I was thinking in km/h and mixed it up. Sorry.
Speed limit is 20mph right? He ran 26.1 miles in 2 hours so average speed is 13 mph
Looking this up, fastest human is still Usain Bolt at 27.78mph (at one point in a 100 meter dash)
Damn was thinking km/h. Thanks for the correction.
You actually can get a ticket for driving 13 in a 25, at least in the US, so you're not entirely incorrect.
Fair enough. My kids are learning to drive and “how fast should I go” is a constant topic in my family right now.
Just yesterday I saw a learner driving at what seemed 10 mph in a 40 mph road, creating a massive queue.