Nike sub 2 Hour Marathon attempt in 2017 & Nike ruins dream Bekele vs. Kipchoge London matchup

Following up my thoughts, it would be great if Letsrun messes with Nike and beat them to a sub-2:00 marathon by holding a flash-mob free marathon on a downhill like Haleakala.

Slim Fast Dietician wrote:

didn't realize how tiny these runners are.

Look at how much the weigh.

​Eliud Kipchoge

Height: 5’6”

Weight: 115 pounds

Zersenay Tadese

Height: 5’3”

Weight: 119 pounds

Lelisa Desisa

Height: 5’9”

Weight: 125 pounds

Dathan Ritzenhein 5'8" 117

If you want to set up a course to have the best chance, the elevation loss cannot be much more than 1%. If you get too much loss, you have two problems. The first is hammering your quads too much causing muscle fatigue. The second is the effect of altitude that would slow you too much the first half of the race.

An optimal course would be one that starts near 1,500 ft and ends near sea-level.

Just a reminder that Boston is not a record-eligible course... and do we know for sure that Kipchoge was definitely racing London before the creation of this attempt?

Amerikano wrote:

Geb ran a 2:06 as his opening marathon, then ran sub-27 with a sub13 in there in 2003. I don't think he has much more than a 2:02:30 in his legs at best.

When Geb ran his debut in 2:06, he was not prepared. Because of this, Tergat and Khannouchi beat him easily. Tergat had gapped him by almost one minute. Tergat and Geb are very close in ability, so a one minute gap means something was wrong with Geb. It took Geb 5 years to figure out the marathon so ue obviously did not know how to prepare for it. That is a lot of wasted time. What he did was not his true potential.

Further, I'm not sure that Geb was in 26:00-26:20 shape when he ran in 2003 with that sub13 half (26:30ish ability might allow you to run a sub13 2nd half).

I just looked at the splits for Geb's 10k PR of 26:22 and they were dead even (13:11 and 13:11) so I may have to remove his name from the list of possible 2:00 marathoner runners. So now I'd say it is only prime Bekele that could have run close to 2:00.

Slim Fast Dietician wrote:

didn't realize how tiny these runners are.

Are you serious?

You can't teach small.

don't get greedy........ wrote:

If you want to set up a course to have the best chance, the elevation loss cannot be much more than 1%. If you get too much loss, you have two problems. The first is hammering your quads too much causing muscle fatigue. The second is the effect of altitude that would slow you too much the first half of the race.

An optimal course would be one that starts near 1,500 ft and ends near sea-level.

I disagree. This would be true for someone who is not a good downhill runner. But not true for a good downhiller. A good downhiller, on a downgrade of about something like 8-12% grade on a road or non-technical trail, could have almost no quad damage. Source - my own experience blasting long downhills, and not getting sore or any noticeable damage at all even when I haven't done the downhill training usually necessary. This is my experience on smooth downgrades where I can sustain 5-flat or faster pace. On slower downhills - either because they are so steep that you have to brake in order to avoid cratering, or technical trails, I get can quad damage, so I'm not saying that quad damage doesn't occur. Maybe there's something about my form that works well on downhills, but I'm certainly no unique in downhill ability.

The altitude would not have an effect because the gradient adjusted pace (GAP) would translate to a flat ground pace that is pretty slow. I've done a 4:46 mile that strava said was only a 6:50 GAP, and it definitely felt that easy, since I did that during an ultra race. So a 4:34 mile average on the right hill might only be a 6:30 pace effort.

Eleven wrote:

Just drop a guy from 26.2 miles high.

Thought of that, but it's hard to survive at that altitude. Probably would work for about up to 10K or so, maybe 20K for an extremist. (And the plane would have to come to a virtual stop to rule out horizontal movement, so that only "natural" forces would be operating.)

Here's the route I was thinking of, without any effort choosing the perfect roads. The elevation profile would be about ideal for a good downhill runner:

http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=6995683

Equipment: Shoes and apparel, of course, are Nike’s bread and butter. Plans in this area remain very much in progress, and aren’t yet public.

Tell that to Kipchoge, and his fall-aparts in Berlin 2015. Very "in progress" indeed.

Re: Red Bull StratosI would say that the pressure suit disqualifies this on the grounds of "no non-natural forces.

Not sure what the parameters were, but if he went at an angle large enough to land ~15km away from the point directly under him at the top of the jump, then the hypotenuse would be greater than a marathon.

But then the original force would be from the airplane. To qualify, you have to only use gravity and your own forces.

rojo wrote:

For those of you that can't read the WSJ article as you don't subsribe, type in "germano nike" into google news and you should be able to bypass the paywall.

One part of her struck me. Nike has admitted the whole thing is a joke:

Germano wrote:

The company says that while the run won’t be world record-eligible on a sanctioned course, the attempt will “show the potential to break it and enable future times to fall.”

So there you have it. It won't be on a WR. I mean I could do it already right now. All I need is a truck with a 40mph wind machine and I can get someone to do it before Nike.

Why don't you go ahead and do it then?

It'll be great publicity for LetsRun.

Do you think you can find a 2:15 guy who will run 1:59 with a windmachine?

Slim Fast Dietician wrote:

didn't realize how tiny these runners are.

Look at how much the weigh.

​Eliud Kipchoge

Height: 5’6”

Weight: 115 pounds

Zersenay Tadese

Height: 5’3”

Weight: 119 pounds

Lelisa Desisa

Height: 5’9”

Weight: 125 pounds

Tadese is a clydesdale @ 21.1 BMI

Ron Tabb and Alan Culpepper have faster marathon PR's than Tadese does.

Ross Tucker, the Dr. Oz of Sports Science.

runners4donald wrote:

http://sportsscientists.com/2014/12/2-hour-marathon-4-min-mile/

zzzz wrote:

Here's the route I was thinking of, without any effort choosing the perfect roads. The elevation profile would be about ideal for a good downhill runner:

http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=6995683

Is that a dirt road? Trail? Or paved road? What type of surface?

Utah Girl Chronicles wrote:

Ron Tabb and Alan Culpepper have faster marathon PR's than Tadese does.

Both ran wind-aided.

I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with gimmicks - Gatlin's 9.45 was kind of a fun thing. However it in no way indicates that humans are ready to run 9.45 wind-legal. My real problem with this is that it could ruin possibly the greatest matchup of all time!

70s marathon records wrote:

There's no possible way to do this at this point in history, with these runners, on any course that isn't a crazy downhill, or without a truck following them with a propeller fan blasting, or a sequence of track stars jumping in every mile or so, or a 4 mile loop with gentle corners prepared with the best track surface ever and a wind breaker treatment surrounding it.

Then again, it is Nike going for this, before an Adidas race pushed the record closer to 2:01.

They'll back out the day before, though, claiming weather or something.

And also, it IS Nike:

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/03457/Eliud_Kipchoge__3457027b.jpg

Thanks for posting this.

After being reminded of this, I wrote the author back and that quote about the shoes has made it into the WSJ - so thank you.

“The same geniuses that had [the shoe malfunction] happening last year in Berlin are suddenly going to figure out how to get someone to run 3 minutes faster in a marathon in the span of 6 months?” said Robert Johnson, co-founder of the running website Letsrun.com.