Another thing to consider is that Nike has a small window of opportunity for this to have a chance at working. Once Faith is past her prime, who knows when the next woman with a shot at this will come around.
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A woman ran a 2:09 marathon last year a time only 4 American men bettered all year. There are no limits as to what a woman can do and I believe the 4 minute barrier goes down. Faith is amazing and I doubt she would o for something she isn't confident will happen!
Professor Andy Jones who was the physiologist for the Nike Breaking2 project has revealed that he's involved. Sounds like they've been planning this for 18 months.
BREAKING 4!
It’s been hell keeping this a secret for the last 18 months - so I’m really excited to share that I’ll be working with Nike to help elite Kenyan middle-distance runner, Faith Kipyegon, in her attempt to become the first ever female sub-4-min miler! pic.twitter.com/iTyhzFP9cQ
Professor Andy Jones who was the physiologist for the Nike Breaking2 project has revealed that he's involved. Sounds like they've been planning this for 18 months.
This is all very exciting, but I still do not think we see sub4 before 2040.
But if this experiment yields 4:05/4:04, than yay!
I wrote a 75 page research paper analyzing Faith's biomechanics. Applying stochastic proceeses, Differential equations and linear approximations, my calculations showed that she can run from 3:59.4 to 3:56.3.
I’m a huge fan of Faith’s but there is absolutely no way this works. Perfect pacing and drafting don’t let you drop over 7 seconds from your world record PR. I’m predicting 4:03.9.
Why not get the best docs involved to administer EPO to Faith? It's not like she's not on it anyways. Anyone thinking she's clean is incomparably naive.
A 4:00 mile is worth 1347 points, equivalent to a 2:22.21 for 1000m. We'll see what she can run for 1K on Saturday in the Xiamen DL.
So actually worth less than both of Bolt's WRs
Yes, and in the same range of Karsten Warholm 400m hurdles and Jakob Ingebrigtsen 3000m. However, comparing Scoring Tables for the various events is already debatable, if we mix genders I don't think the comparison has much validity.
Professor Andy Jones who was the physiologist for the Nike Breaking2 project has revealed that he's involved. Sounds like they've been planning this for 18 months.
No kidding it's been worked on for a long time and obviously they'll use male pacers. This wouldn't even be a consideration without numerous male pacers.
Nike is not going to spill the specifics because it wants as much discussion and guesswork as possible, which equates to more eyeballs on race day.
I don't think she's fast enough to break 4 minutes. But there's plenty of room below the recent 4:07. Kipyegon has essentially been on her own the final two laps of every major 1500 for years.
It's just too bad the event evolved into a time trial later in her career. Dibaba was doing this 10 years ago. But since the global finals didn't evolve that way Kipyegon didn't care about her upper limit speed until Hassan pushed the envelope in Doha 2019. This attempt would be a heck of a lot more interesting if Kipyegon were Jakob's age instead of 31. There would be experimentation and multiple attempts. Instead it's likely a one off.
Next up will be a Breaking10 for female 100M. They will get progressively more ridiculous and wackier techniques until Jakob is base jumping from the Burj Khalifa to get a sub 30 second 800 meter time
Nike doesn't usually miss when they do stuff like this. We're going to need some more details. Male pacers or female pacers? I honestly don't think it should matter but that'll dictate if it's record eligible or not. New track surface? New shoes? Would they be willing to let a neutral third party tear the spike apart post race or will it have a little extra bounce? Her 3:49 was run a bit unevenly. She opened in a poorly split 62, going 29.7 (14.4/15.3)/32.7. She closed in 59-low. She probably had a 3:46-3:47 in her but still needs to take a couple seconds off of that & run another 109m. It's not impossible but it feels a bit unbelievable without some enhancements. Here for it tho. There's definitely room to get a lot closer.
The legendary runner Faith Kipyegon is aiming to do something that sports scientists once considered impossible. We went inside her Kenyan training camp to understand how she’s pushing the limits of human performance.
The authors of the scientific Viewpoint were some of the physiologists involved in Breaking 2 and Andy Jones is rightly a very well-respected exercise physiologist and Editor in Chief of the journal - Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise.
They clearly have Kipyegon specific physiological data to work with. Our group did not, we had to work backwards from her splits, her drafting and other previous aero studies. I’d like to clarify that although I did work for/with the Nike Sport Research Lab for a long period, I have not consulted with Nike for more than a year. We remain collegial and friendly (though I am of course jealous). I was not involved at all in their plans for Breaking 4.
Dan Vernon is one of the best track and field photographers. He announced yesterday that he's part of the crew assigned to document this project. He has some Instagram stories on Kipyegon right now and I'm sure there will be more. It's danvernonphoto
