Obviously if a marathon was run point to point downhill with a huge tailwind, sub 2 hours could be reached quicker.
The Armory sent us some quotes in regards to their indoor marathon this past winter where a) some of the top people (including 2015 50k World Champ Tony Migliozzi ) said they recovered faster after the indoor marathon than from a road marathon and b) where the women's winner said she thought the track marathon was faster than a road marathon.
It got us thinking, how much faster (if at all) do you think a marathon run on a track would be? I think we should qualify this a) the theoretical scenario where a track surface were laid out on say the streets of Berlin b) a marathon run on a traditional 400m outdoor track c) a marathon run on an indoor track.
Our assumption is A is faster than B and than C but the real question is how much faster than a road marathon would A),B) or C) possibly be?
Track marathons would have a more forgiving surface than the roads. The downside is the more turns and conceivably spikes wouldn't be run like they would on most track races, but we assume the spikes aren't the sole reason a track 10,000m is considered faster than a road 10,000m.
The quotes from the Armory that prompted us to think about this are here http://www.letsrun.com/news/2016/11/marathon-track-faster-marathon-roads/
