Thank you, Nike, for the sub2h Attempt

ROJO, many of your replies to posters are not very kind. Why are you not friendly? A gentleman took the time to write a well thought out post, on your message board, and you don't reply with kindness.

I don't like it, it makes me not want to visit letsrun.com

Rojo also doesn't have correct numbers regarding how much time kipchoge gained running downhill. It wasn't 18 seconds.

All the negative buzz against the sub 2-hr marathon attempt reminds me of the negative buzz against Donald trump running for president.

It's exciting. It's different. It involves risk. It's bringing new fans/new attention into the world of running. There's enough people against it to make people want to know why people are against it so they can make their own opinion about it. Love it or hate it, it's winning over people to the sport.

Donald trump did the same thing. He's exciting, different, risky, brings new attention to politics. And so many people are against him to the point where others want to get involved and make their own opinion.

I'm personally not a fan of Donald trump (let's not debate about this), but I am a fan of a sub-2 attempt. if it becomes a success, running will get better, but if it doesn't work out, theres no harm in that. We'll see how close we can get until we try and try again until we finally do it. If Donald fails, well you get the picture.

If it takes a while for somebody to break 2, then let's ride it out! So what if big marathons don't have their main source of talent showing up? Let the top tier guys ignore regular marathons for a bit and focus on the sub-2. It's OK, that won't hurt running. Yeah, maybe people like us will be less interested if races like NY, Boston, London, Berlin, etc. are won by less important guys who are running slower times. But that won't hurt the sport of running.

The growth of the sport of running relies on the moderately interested people who don't know the difference between a 2:20 marathon and a 2:10 marathon. Because those people aren't going to decide to become fans of running if they see somebody win a race in a time that doesn't have meaning. 2:20 , 2:15 and 2:10 have meaning to us, but not to the moderately interested people. On the other hand, 2 hours could have meaning to mostly anybody. It's easy to explain why it's an insane barrier. Most people can understand why it's incredible. And now people are saying it's impossible. That's like when people say it's impossible to walk on water. If some dude says he can do it, and companies start backing this dude and supporting him to walk on water, people are gonna be like "holy moly, I want to become a fan and see if/when this guy actually does it!"

Moderately interested people don't care about the same old dudes winning the races that their auntie Carla trained to do after running her first 5k two years ago. Moderately interested people will start caring more about running when they hear that the same old dudes can walk on water, given the right circumstances.

You know what the difference is between this and when Bannister broke the 4 min mile?

When Bannister broke 4 minutes, it was all about Bannister. It was all about the human effort, the training, the guts, the determination. The sub-2 marathon isn't about Kipchoge, it's all about Nike.

The only thing this event has got people talking about are the shoes, the track, how Nike can make conditions just right. No one's talking about the runners, their lives, their training, the sacrifices they make. It's like they're just machines for Nike to tinker with. If Kipchoge breaks 2 hours, do you think anyone will remember his name? All they'll know is one of those fast African guys ran a 2 hour marathon thanks to a pair of Nike shoes and Nike's masterful engineering to get conditions just right.

If you ask me, there is nothing inspiring in this over-commercialized effort. Because in the end it's not a human story about what a human being can achieve, it's about what a shoe company with lots of money and technology can achieve.

rojo wrote:

I stopped reading right there.

Next time read the whole thing. Maybe then you can come across as less ignorant.