Breaking2's sporadic pacing

IDontEven wrote:

So Kipchoge's splits were 14:14 14:07 14:13 14:15 14:14 14:17 14:17 14:27

How did they mess up that second split so considerably. With all the preparation and research gone into this, you'd have thought they'd have come up with a perfect pacing system (rather than two guys in car bumbling along doing their best).

It's not like they were short on cash for this... some kind of electronic rabbit wouldn't have seemed out of the question and in an event so finely tuned it just seems crazy they didn't nail this.

The fun police have arrived! Welcome!

Bienvenidos! wrote:

The fun police have arrived! Welcome!

Haha. Don't kid yourself that this was about fun. At least in terms of the preparation. Nike spent a lot of time micro-optimising various areas. It just seems odd that the pace car wasn't perfect. I'm quite convinced that perfectly even pacing was worth more to the attempt than those silly air-blade stickers on their legs for example.

It is strange that the led line - which was really cool - wasn't done in a better way. 7 seconds difference in a 5k at this pace is pretty huge. Could they not have just had a light on an overhead pole running around? Though I guess the car big board was about blocking some air resistance. Still, the car could have followed THAT!

IDontEven wrote:

So Kipchoge's splits were 14:14 14:07 14:13 14:15 14:14 14:17 14:17 14:27

How did they mess up that second split so considerably. With all the preparation and research gone into this, you'd have thought they'd have come up with a perfect pacing system (rather than two guys in car bumbling along doing their best).

It's not like they were short on cash for this... some kind of electronic rabbit wouldn't have seemed out of the question and in an event so finely tuned it just seems crazy they didn't nail this.

I wonder if I didn't read somewhere that one of the rules they didn't want to break was automated pacing. Still they could have done better.

It would have been nice for Nike to provide an HM split too !

The average pace at 20k was 2'50.45"/km and at 25km it was 2'50.52"/km so using the 20k pace we get 59'56" and 59'57.4" using the 25k pace so let's assume it's between the two. So about 1h00'29" for the second HM, pretty even splits !

I was thinking the same thing that second 5k. You put all that effort in to pace well and they were that far off. Pushing the body even a little further into deficit that early on has to have exponential results at the finish.

Oh my goodness... wrote:

I was thinking the same thing that second 5k. You put all that effort in to pace well and they were that far off. Pushing the body even a little further into deficit that early on has to have exponential results at the finish.

Source?

Suure wrote:

Oh my goodness... wrote:

I was thinking the same thing that second 5k. You put all that effort in to pace well and they were that far off. Pushing the body even a little further into deficit that early on has to have exponential results at the finish.

Source?

Yes good point. Modest variations in pace could almost make it slightly easier. 3sec / mile is hardly a massive surge. Funny thing is, last time I looked at this, there was research that showed that maintaining a perfectly uniform pace is actually harder. And no I'm not motivated enough to prove someone who misuses the word "exponential" wrong to dig it up ...

Is 7 seconds really that huge? It's not even 1% +/-

IDontEven wrote:

So Kipchoge's splits were 14:14 14:07 14:13 14:15 14:14 14:17 14:17 14:27

How did they mess up that second split so considerably. With all the preparation and research gone into this, you'd have thought they'd have come up with a perfect pacing system (rather than two guys in car bumbling along doing their best).

It's not like they were short on cash for this... some kind of electronic rabbit wouldn't have seemed out of the question and in an event so finely tuned it just seems crazy they didn't nail this.

remember that the course had a light hill- and didn't they start the race about 1400m *before* the start/finish line? thus, perhaps that first 5K had a little extra uphill, the second had more downhill, and every subsequent one was equal. disclaimer is that I barely looked into the whole race setup but it's one possibility.

MarathonMind wrote:

Is 7 seconds really that huge? It's not even 1% +/-

Would've been nice if it was more consistent with the other splits, but still, it's only about 1.5 seconds per km different than the first 5K. Or 2 seconds per mile different than the first 3 miles. Or on a 400m track, a half second per lap different than the opening 12.5 laps.

That's quite minimal.

I asked on another thread and don't know the answer, has there ever been a sub-2:05 marathon run with more even splits (for either 5K or even 1K) than what Kipchoge ran for the first 35K yesterday? I doubt there has been.

Disregarding the last 7k when Kipchoge strained to not fade, if you find the difference between his slowest and fastest 5K splits and 1k splits, I doubt there has ever been a sub-2:05 marathon run with a smaller difference between the fastest and slowest splits.

sayer of 3 factors wrote:

I asked on another thread and don't know the answer, has there ever been a sub-2:05 marathon run with more even splits (for either 5K or even 1K) than what Kipchoge ran for the first 35K yesterday? I doubt there has been.

Disregarding the last 7k when Kipchoge strained to not fade, if you find the difference between his slowest and fastest 5K splits and 1k splits, I doubt there has ever been a sub-2:05 marathon run with a smaller difference between the fastest and slowest splits.

I would wager that this was probably one of the best paced marathons for any sub-3:05 marathon much less 2:05. there are probably some people who have lap pace on their GPS watches and can hit exactly 6:43 miles or something, but given that most courses are hillier than this and that GPS watches are much less accurate than Nike's 200m splits, I still think the pacing was very good.

They talked about it during the broadcast during the 2nd 5k. The first seemed a bit slower than they wanted (was it?) and Kipchoge pushed the guys to go faster on the 2nd 5k. I'm not sure it was the car's fault.

Huh, you figure by 5k you're dialed into the right pace and won't deviate too much. But considering the potential cost at the end, as ever so slight an effect it may have had, this might have been a 10-15 sec. loss, maybe even more if there appeared to be a better chance to get under 2:00 in the final kick.

And no I'm not motivated enough to prove someone who misuses the word "exponential" wrong to dig it up ...

:D

OK, subtract 7 seconds from his final time.

MarathonMind wrote:

Huh, you figure by 5k you're dialed into the right pace and won't deviate too much. But considering the potential cost at the end, as ever so slight an effect it may have had, this might have been a 10-15 sec. loss, maybe even more if there appeared to be a better chance to get under 2:00 in the final kick.

There was no final kick though, and even if they ran 14:14 for the 2nd 5k there probably still wouldn't have been one. Kipchoge totally fell apart in the last 5k relative to the ones before it, and I doubt that running the 2nd 5k 5-7 seconds slower would have really changed that part, especially not in regards to the actual 2 hour barrier. Maybe he could have run 10 seconds faster if the 2nd 5k was a 14:15, but who knows...it could have evened out to him not dying as bad in the last 5k and still running about the same time. Either way these were the most consistent splits ever run and the fact that he ran a 14:07 2nd 5k and still managed to run most of the rest of the race at the same pace is astonishing. I just don't think he would have broken 2 hours regardless of a less aggressive 2nd 5k.

Is it possible that the 2nd 5k was run intentionally slow so that Nike could bag some time in case Kipchoge was oh-so-close?