Interesting article by RW on how the sub-2 marathon is possible

Physics Prof wrote:

I am assuming weight and running technique to be equal. A 3:02 marathoner probably weighs more and is probably pretty inefficient. But I'm not sure I would agree that two runners of equal size and gait, but different speeds, would use different amounts of fat. They both hit the glycogen wall around the same time. Good runners can burn a lot of fat running at a high speed.

Yes, if they weighed the same. But then they would have a very different gait. The slower, less efficient runner would be much compromised in stride rate/stride length.

Look at the video of Kimetto running 2.02.57, such a long stride, but it doesn't look like he is running at the limit of human exertion.

Faster runners are not more efficient fat burners. That is a silly concept. They are just more efficient with the same amount of energy.

So many silly myths around running that need to be debunked. Impossible really, because new myths will come along all the time. Seemingly educated people make so many mental obstacles for themselves with regard to phsycial effort. What is required to run faster is more basic animal instinct.

boomtown rascals wrote:

know-it-all joe wrote:

Therefore, you can't just imagine "combining the highest known running economy with the highest known VO2max," as the article suggests.

Not to make it too complicated debating the specific semantics of what the terms define for the purposes of argument, we can look at this from a very common-sense approach. It is basic science that oxygen is a prime element required to burn the fuel required by the body's musculature. It follows then that more volume of oxygen being consumed per time period, entails more fuel is being burned. If this fuel is being burned quite efficiently and primarily by the musculature to propel the body forward running fast. Then burning even more oxygen per time period, even more efficiently, for the same purposes, entails even running faster.

Only by a very small margin.

If you improve your marathon time from 3.45 to 2.30 you will be able to run at a slightly higher VO2 because the intensity is higher. It is unrealistic to expect your absolute VO2 max to improve.

sospiri wrote:

If you improve your marathon time from 3.45 to 2.30 you will be able to run at a slightly higher VO2 because the intensity is higher. It is unrealistic to expect your absolute VO2 max to improve.

But, we would expect such an athlete to show dramatic improvement in their VELOCITY at V02max, which is what VDOT, entails.

(sorry for the extra commas, shhhh)

Why wouldn't you expect your absolute VO2max to improve? According to the Heritage Family Study (famous study quoted in the Sports Gene and others), VO2max is very trainable. After a one-size-fits-all exercise bike program for a short time (12 weeks I think) some improved it as much as 50%. From 3:45 to 2:30 you're probably going to shed some extra fat, and that alone will improve VO2max even without any improvement to your internal "engine."

boomtown rascals wrote:

sospiri wrote:

If you improve your marathon time from 3.45 to 2.30 you will be able to run at a slightly higher VO2 because the intensity is higher. It is unrealistic to expect your absolute VO2 max to improve.

But, we would expect such an athlete to show dramatic improvement in their VELOCITY at V02max, which is what VDOT, entails.

Yes, most certainly.

know-it-all joe wrote:

Why wouldn't you expect your absolute VO2max to improve? According to the Heritage Family Study (famous study quoted in the Sports Gene and others), VO2max is very trainable. After a one-size-fits-all exercise bike program for a short time (12 weeks I think) some improved it as much as 50%. From 3:45 to 2:30 you're probably going to shed some extra fat, and that alone will improve VO2max even without any improvement to your internal "engine."

Absolute VO2 max is measured independent of weight.

A problem with VO2 max measurements is that the person being tested has to be able to reach the figure without lots of heat stress which will cause blood to be diverted to the skin and reduce the oxygen uptake. This is very likely on a treadmill.

I actually enjoyed reading it and learned some things I didn't know, for example, "the surprisingly cold optimal temperature for elite marathoners, or the relative change in heat dissipation versus generation as marathoners have gotten smaller." But I would still challenge people like the OP to explain why they now believe a sub-2:00:00 is possible whereas they presumably didn't before. Something, in their minds, must be different as a result of the article (and if it is you've done your job). And I agree that not everyone, particularly every RW reader, is aware of things that I think seem obvious to most longtime serious runners who follow marathoning.

Probably because the subhed "Nine factors must converge for this mythic barrier to be broken" implies, to me anyway, that I'm about to read about, say, some physiological revelation, and instead I go on to read basically that the weather needs to be good, there needs to be prize money, the runner must be efficient and youngish and can't be a candy-ass, etc. I understand, though, that the "hooks" and headlines RW produces arise from editorial decisions and are probably well out of your hands.

Again, I don't ncessarily think that unusual or conteestable claims even exist. I just think that people are going to speculate about the possibility of a sub-2:00:00 for the same reasons they speculate about other awe-inspiring possibilities that coincide with nice round numbers -- why not? And obviously when dealing with future events there's no right answer. I happen to believe that a three-minute improvement on the current record won't be something any living person will live to see, but I don't have any better tools at my disposal to support this than you or anyone else. And admittedly, no one saw Usain Bolt coming, right?

That's a caricature of what I actually wrote. I explained in some detail why I think it's not possible to rely to a great extent on trend lines when trying to establish if and when the record will be broken (and to your credit 2075 doesn't match the graph at all). I think that cultural and (one hops not, but come on) pharmacological factors have played more of a role in the acceleration of the record drop than anything related to different training, etc.

Anyway, thanks for the reply and for what was clearly exhaustive work with this article. As you can see, the thread has now reached its predictable boiling point thanks to factors completely unrelated to the original topic and questions.

Thanks for the reasonable reply. The reason I bothered to respond to your post is that you of all people should understand why it's not particularly helpful or fair to judge an article by its headline or subheds. And I think if you reread your initial post, you'll understand why it seemed to me that you were taking shots at the article itself, not just at the OP's interpretation of it. (On that note, the entire article, from the headline on down, is set up as a question, not an answer: what would it take to run a sub-2 marathon? Only in the very final paragraph, in a clearly hypothetical dream scenario, do I offer an actual prediction of whether it will happen.)

As for the distinction between physiological or sociological factors, of course I agree that both are important (though I don't necessarily agree that the subhed implies that some physiological breakthrough will be revealed). I tried to address some of the sociological elements by looking at trends in track vs. road prize money, the average age of top marathoners, and changes in pacing strategy. The challenge in a "data-driven" feature is that sociological factors aren't always easily measurable and don't produce convenient data sets to analyze. It's true that the emphasis of the piece would have been different if the methodology had been to interview a bunch of the sport's "longtime informed voices" -- but that piece has already been written a dozen times this year alone, so I don't think it needed to be written again.

Anyway, I don't mean to be thin-skinned about the article -- I mean, I HOPE that the article spurs some debate, discussion, and disagreement. But in a perfect world, I'd love if the debate could focus on the ideas in the article, rather than whether your pet hamster could have written the article with one paw behind his back.

NUFCrichard wrote:

They should also have a red dot on the ground show the runners the 2h pace, then the pace will be as steady as possible.

They should do the thing they do in the swimming events with the white bar that moves at the WR speed. That would be very helpful, at least, if you plan to even split the record.

Alex Hutchinson wrote:

The reason I bothered to respond to your post is that you of all people should understand why it's not particularly helpful or fair to judge an article by its headline or subheds.

You are correct, and this is, unfortunately, almost exactly what I did. With another day or so to consider things -- and I am not just putting this here to placate you or backpedal for the sake of avoiding conflict with someone whose work I genuinely respect -- I acknowledge that I brought a lot of bias and knee-kerk "reasoning" into my initial post here, stuff that has nothing to do with you, the marathon, or running in general. Or life on planet Earth. When I look over the article without these biases, I see a lot of new information that, while not necessarily convincing in terms of the likelihood of a < 2:00:00 (and I understand that we're basically in agreement here), is compelling in a stand-alone way and intriguing to a guy with a strong lay interest in ex phys.

I *hope* we are both around to see a 1:59 and change, so that we can get together in the nursing home over porridge and decide whether you were right ;o)

*stipe wrote:

If the goal is a sub 2 hour marathon, why not create a specific 1k track and special marathon spikes. Run it like a track 10k with capable pacers.

That would totally work, because the pacers could get lapped but then rest a lap or two and rabbit the winner.

MarathonMind wrote:

asfad wrote: What we are looking for is the male Paula Radcliff (30 min 10k/ 2:15 marathon) who can run a 26:30 10k. Who knows if that person can exist.

OK, but Paula was definitely an extreme outlier in this regard. It's also possible (in fact very likely) that she could have run the 10k a bit faster since it came at the start of her marathon career. A 29: high would put her more towards a ratio of 4.6 which is what the women tend to run.

Impossible to say. It is always easy to take the outliers and say they just didn't run a fast 5/10k. The alternative of course is that they are just better at the marathon or had their day of days during it.

typical runner or sockpuppet wrote:

*stipe wrote:

If the goal is a sub 2 hour marathon, why not create a specific 1k track and special marathon spikes. Run it like a track 10k with capable pacers.

That would totally work, because the pacers could get lapped but then rest a lap or two and rabbit the winner.

Except that's not allowed.

And I think a 1k loop would be slower because of all the turning.

KMB wrote:

I *hope* we are both around to see a 1:59 and change, so that we can get together in the nursing home over porridge and decide whether you were right ;o)

Sounds like a plan. (And, if I have to admit to some cognitive bias creeping into the piece, it would be that 2075 happens to be when I'll turn 100 -- so yeah, I'm definitely hoping to be there!)

Perhaps you have not to wait until 2075. Great Geb thinks sub 2 might happen in 10 years and I just have read an interview with Thomas Wessinghage, a very intelligent former world class runner, who also points out that the Berlin marathon was not well paced, so a better time is possible right now. Many, many runners are fired up for a 1:59. It´s by far the most prestigious project in athletics.

It's not going to happen any time soon.

Doctor Wessinghage is a smart guy and was a brilliant runner (3:49 mile), and I actually read his book (Laufen), but he's way off here. I will grant that Kimetto's splits indicate he may have been able to run a bit faster (14:09 split 30-35k on a 14:34 average) but 10 to 12 seconds faster than 2:02:57 still leaves you quite a but short of 2 hours.

I mean WTF? The sub 2 hr runner does not yet exist, just as the sub 58 half marathoner does not.