Nike's sub-2 attempt will be run on F1 course in Milan - Kipchoge tests it out and runs 59:17

I hate Nike and love this. Check my Twitter.

steve magness wrote:

I hate Nike and love this. Check my Twitter.

Lol that's worth a read. What a joke Magness has become.

steve magness wrote:

I hate Nike and love this. Check my Twitter.

Troll. Here's an actual Magness tweet: "This is mostly about marketing, and sad that we lose opportunity to see Kipchoge in his prime actually race."

So 5 pacers then it seems ?

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C6VO2GVXQAA__3k.jpg:large

rojo wrote:

Here's how the pacing went.

https://twitter.com/sweatscience/status/839147360269778944

I assume they'll just have two groups of rabbits??

Good move putting a Tesla out front. No exhaust in the face.

It's not WR eligible to honor the practice of racing with/vs. competition and not against the clock....

OR

it's so they don't have to worry about drug tests catching whatever jet fuel they are injecting into Kipchoge

You idiots haven't figured out why it is on an F1 track yet?

They are going to line a bunch of cars up and have them speed around the track in single file creating a substantial tail wind that will push the marathoners to a 1:58!!!!

Research wrote:

My guess is they will need pacers for the entire run, and that will end up being the "illegal" part.

Thanks. Why don't they just tell us that? I guess the like the drama/free pub of us thinking about it for months on end.

its gotta be the shoes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkY7W6kCRY4

HoHo wrote:

59'18" @EliudKipchoge, 59'41" Zersenay Tadesse

Wouldn't a 57-minute half marathon be a much better indication that they are ready to go under two hours for the marathon? Out of three runners, one fails to run at the required pace, another barely makes it and only Eliud Kipchoge does it easily. Not so reassuring, is it?

So stupid. 306' of climb and drop is the best they can come up with? That's 24 seconds tacked on to the marathon right there. Additionally, even that minimal altitude is worth about 40 seconds. Thus, running 1:59:59 here would be about as hard as running 1:58:55 under otherwise similar conditions at exactly sea level on a perfectly flat course. There is literally not a chance that this will happen unless they put fans along the entire course to push the runners with a constant tailwind.

Was an easy tuneup "race" at MP. Sub-2:00 'thon coming soon.

HardLoper wrote:

Not a real "hill" at all. Looks like a great course to me. I would have considered an even higher altitude to reduce air resistance but this would only be worth 15-20 seconds by my rough calculations.

Yeah, but you're wrong.

You really think a clapping audience would be able to make that much difference?

Seriously, nike???? wrote:

There is literally not a chance that this will happen unless they put fans along the entire course to push the runners with a constant tailwind.

Star wrote:

lolz at nike wrote:

[

Why do they keep leaking out small amounts of information like this?

To keep you talking about it.

Yup. Nike marketers are smarter than the above average Letsrun poster.

My predictions (keep in mind that a perfectly optimal course should still be ~30 seconds faster than Berlin): with pacers the whole way to shield from wind, Kipchoge can dip into the 2:02s here with even pacing.

If they go out faster than 60:30, nobody finishes under 2:04. If they go out faster than 60:15, nobody finishes under 2:05.

If there is another form of aid (fans for providing a tailwind ala Gatlin, etc), all predictions are off.

Kipchoge's 59:18 is impressive (and indicative that he could run at least 58:40s right now), but it's incredibly unsurprising. I haven't read enough yet to know what kind of effort it was. That said, I don't think anyone was ever doubting that he should be able to easily go sub 59 on a perfect course with the level he's been at over 26.2 recently. His 2:03:05 was not paced very optimally and is still equivalent to somewhere in the ballpark of 58:40s. Thus, unless this 59:18 was legitimately a fairly easy effort, I don't see any indication that Kipchoge will do something insane here. I'd like to see him go out in 61:15-61:30 here and hang on as best as he can. He probably has the capacity to go sub-2:02:30 on a Berlin-type course already, which would be about sub-2:03 here. However, I'm sure Nike will be stupid and push for a start that nobody can possibly handle, and Kipchoge will be the only finisher, with something like 2:08 (or everyone will drop out, including kipchoge when even 2:03-2:04 is well outside the realm of possibility)

I've always thought it'd be kind of cool to have some wireless earbuds having a coach feed you info during a race, kind of like in race cars. With all the data they are collecting, I wonder if they can find things like optimal breathing cadence, oxygen intake, fuel/exertion, and all sorts of analytics, that could/would be relayed to them in real time.

I too am part of the 2017 Wear Test Program. I thought the shoe seemed unusually bouncy.

At the end of the article Kipchoge says he only gave 60% effort today. Shows again that Nike's biggest asset here is the man himself.