Throwback Thursday #14: Re-Experience the Greatest Marathon In History - The 2002 London Marathon

What a great race! And what a great collection of all-time legends! It may have seemed at the time that the ultimate limits were approaching at this time just like they were in shorter distances. (Keep in mind how much change there has been in 1500-10k records since those days.) Tergat would get under 2:05 then Haile would get it down about another minute.

Some would say this was the EPO era (look at Armstrong's career timeline) and that could explain why the track records I referred to have stopped coming down quite a while ago now. The longest of the popular events HAS actually gotten faster in spite of possible EPO use at the 2:04-2:05 level. To be sure, the men's marathon was the softest of records during this time period when compared to women's records. The same % between Dibaba and KB's 10k applied to Paula's eventual PR would get you a time faster than Geb ultimately ran. One could also extrapolate from 3k - 10k and draw a curve that would indicate faster ultimate records than during the time period in question.

So one would expect the men's times to come down and they ultimately did get a minute below Geb even though Radciffe's times remained untouchable for longer than I imagine many would have thought (although that is consistent with an extrapolation of women's records or a comparison against men's.) But what happened recently? Many (especially Nike fans) would argue shoes made a minute and a half difference for the best of the best and Kipchoge's history would not contradict this. He was stalled at times close to Kimetto and Bekele then one day hit it out of the park.

The thing is, he had used what I will refer to as 'THE SHOES' prior and not really gotten faster. Sure, the first of his exhibitions was a significant jump from around 2:03, where he and a parade of superstars had been able to run, but I suspect any number of guys over the years could have taken SOME time off their official PBs with similar tactics (though that may or may be in the neighborhood of 3 minutes). So, that's why I suggest the advent of the Vaporfly may not have sped him up much - the outcome of the Monza event is likely due to the tactics employed and likely even improved training which simply made him better than he had been for the previous couple years. His official marathons did get about a minute faster with the new tech but I suspect he was still early in the marathon learning curve at the time.

Nate Jenkins (giving him a plug here in an attempt to steer potential readers his way but also because his insight could be deadly accurate on this topic) suggests the widespread use of certain training techniques drove down marathon times since the era that Gault was looking at. Perhaps I should have written (especially men's) marathon times as many studies claim more efficient fat use compared to men, perhaps the reason women's WRs seemed to be approaching ultimate limits sooner than men's. The PBs of the big-3 in that London men's race would be great today my any metric other than the very cream of the crop. Those WRs are simply the new world class now. Under 2:03 currently gets you on the short list.

Training which targets extension of the goal marathon pace, but equally or more importantly, reducing the percentage of carbohydrate burned and increase fat burning could be what has made the biggest difference since the era in question. Keep in mind, again, that long-distance training may have been already perfected back then for events in which glycogen is not a limiting factor. Perhaps useful EPO testing has contributed to this, but records for events half an hour and less just aren't coming down any more. However, in spite of the current testing technology and the fact that the era in question was more of the 'wild west' for EPO, marathon records and common winning times have been dropping.

I'm not generally one to argue that any great from the past would be among the greats today due to advances that everyone has access to. Bannister would not be winning medals today. Zatopec did not win against the Rift Valley's greatest. However, when I read someone like NJ (and apply the tactics he promotes to an athlete much slower the best and Nate himself) I believe there is something to the notion that although many were training nearly perfectly for 10k at the turn of the century, few - including those track record holders themselves - may have been for something lasting more than 2 hours.

How fast could those 3 guys have run using whatever training regime KB and EK are, given they were doing it at their athletic primes? Were they potentially capable of a time perhaps minutes faster than they did, in fact, run? I guess we'll never know, and maybe shoes do bring down time - if they are specifically designed for you. Kipchoge was literally the guy on the treadmill just like Jared Ward was for the Saucony Endorphin Pro. Not saying Ward is exactly Eliud's peer or that any one brand is better than another, just that if you are literally the runner it's designed for it very well could give you SOME time. I wonder how much, since Rupp and Hall have very similar half and full PRs, which suggest one of 3 things:

The shoes help - a lot - and Galen is nowhere near the runner at longer events Ryan was;

Or,

THE SHOES aren't significantly different than any other shoes;

Or.

Rupp is far (or even a little) beyond Hall physiologically and the shoes have a derogatory effect to some (or most) runners for whom they are not specifically designed.

Again, we don't have a time machine to see if the guys who still are on the very short list at 10k could run similar to the guy at the very top of it given different training, but I suspect Geb would be closer to EK than their actual marathon PRs suggest. That statement would seem to say that he trained less than perfectly for the event, which I suspect was true. We know he is one of the most perfectly designed runners ever, physiologically. I hate to put him into the Frank Shorter/Lasse Viren/etc, etc. category, which is to say:

Well, he was good then, but come on, compared to the best today......