Official NN Mission Marathon Discussion Thread - Will Kipchoge return to form or is he on the decline?

Pacer X - that's a GPS watch isn't it

Predicting 02:03:33

Kipchoge now 16 seconds clear at 35k. Should be able to cruise it in, only question is whether he breaks 2:04 (I think he will).

Talk about product placement! The Lufthansa planes parked next to the runway really spice up a fairly drab atmosphere. They must have booked this when the race was going to be in Hamburg, otherwise you would expect KLM planes on the tarmac.

kipchoge returns to form

Spainflyer wrote:

Talk about product placement! The Lufthansa planes parked next to the runway really spice up a fairly drab atmosphere. They must have booked this when the race was going to be in Hamburg, otherwise you would expect KLM planes on the tarmac.

Wikipedia says:

In June and July 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic economic downturn, six Lufthansa Boeing 747-400 aircraft arrived at Enschede for storage and possible dismantling

Sell to UPS or Amazon. They're using lots of 747s around here.

1:57.58 40K. Kipchoge alone.

Commentators were discussing Steinruck's warm clothes, could she be heat training for Sapporo ?

Does it look like Kipchoge is running hard?

Surprised to see kipchoge in Vaporflys and not Alphas

2.04 29. impressive

Job Done!

Nice shake out for Tokyo, he'll get the gold there.

I think so.

Ethiopians will be strong and dictate a little of how fast he has to run, but definitely favorite

Gladys finding it so hard to finish

Colombian NR in the men’s

The lack of real competition in this race had its positives and negatives. Positives in that Kipchoge didn't have to worry too much about winning, he could do a decent buildup and not have to give everything in a random race 3 months before the olympics.

Downside is that we're still not sure of his current shape - mid 2:04 certainly isn't spectacular for him. The course was perfect and conditions good, and he had pacing for good part of it (remember he could run a WR mostly solo). And it wasn't a negative split either which would have at least shown that he had much more left, and what he could do in a tactical race like the olympics. He didn't seem to try too hard though, no smiling/grimacing for one thing. So who knows, we'll see in Sapporo how it turns out.

no farah wrote:

Surprised to see kipchoge in Vaporflys and not Alphas

Product placement by Nike. They were the Vaporfly 2 which aren't selling very well atm. Not because they are bad, mainly because Nike released three colours of the Next % late last year to early this year and saturated the market. I'm even seeing adverts for the Vaporfly 2 on my Twitter feed which never happened for any of the previous versions.

Shoes aside, great run out for Kipchoge today. 2.04 in a glorified time trial on a crappy course is a brilliant result. In a race, I think that's worth a 2:02-high to 2:03-low. I'm planning mining the gold on him now, the GOAT is back