Detailed Drafting Analysis of Kipchoge's 2:00:25- He Gained Between 1 to 4.5 Minutes from Drafting

How much difference do you suppose it made that it wasn't an actual competition and was never going to be ratified as a world record? I can't imagine that helped him run faster.

As for all these people with fancy pictures doing analysis: it is neither difficult nor expensive to go to a low speed wind tunnel, such as the one in San Diego. Why don't they get actual data?

Wow that's a great article by Alex Hutchinson.

So I was right and wrong. He got way more drafting benefit than anyone in history (which is exactly what I thought) but mainly seems to have gotten it from be surrounded by pacers whom he ran right behind instead of off to the side like in normal marathons (I hadn't really tought of that and assumed it was the car).

So in future marathons, someone might be able to come closer to 2 than 2:02:57 if they draft right behind the rabbit(s). The problem is in a normal marathon there aren't 6 rabbits normally to begin with and certainly even making it 30k, and there will be more than one racer that (now if they are smart) wants to be right behind the pacer. It will be interesting to see if racers now start jostling to get the right behind the pacer and battling for position side to side. If they do, that will use energy.

Is this a joke? The range of 1 to 4.5 minutes is huge. Anybody could randomly come up with that figure. It is common sense when you know previous world records for distances and consider all of the variables that contributed to Kipchoge's run.

Basically, it's what every cyclist in the history of forever could have told you.

is this time "gained" over the course of the entire race?

pacers can usually go about 30K so you can basically take 60-75% of the "gained" time off this number

I think you're being generous giving yourself credit. Letsrun consistently published that they had zero chance of breaking 2. If I had told you prior to the race that the pacing would save 4:30 I think you would have had different predictions.

This isn't rocket science.

2:02.57 from DK, with six rabbits pacing the whole way somehow, with very little wind, would have been 2 flat. Like someone said above, welcome to what every cyclist everywhere knows, and know you know why the Tour de France looks like a big group ride with big guys in the front all day.

Problem is, that Nike 'race' was boring as mowing the lawn. Give me a battle at NYC or Boston, or somewhere with a real course. I was thinking current World XC was the dumbest thing ever, then this sub-2 thing came around. High school meets keep my interest. You know, racing.

Of course, I'm the local mental case person here, but whatever.

I told you so, MORONS!

Crooked Nike wrote:

If you don't think that Tesla/clock shaved off quite a few seconds you're a moron.

This article has been posted on Letsrun many times in the last 4 days.

great analysis, exactly what we needed. the contribution of the car was not obvious at all, quantitatively. the comparison to cyclists is misplaced as the speed is not comparable (and the relationship drafting - speed is not linear).

the lasers also finally make sense. for those that didn't read the full article, the claim is that the point of the lasers was not to tell them how far behind the car to run to optimize drafting benefits, but rather to help the pacers maintain the optimal arrowhead formation.

My Take.

It proved Ross Tucker was full of it.

Besides the human wall of drafting that provided such a lowering of overall wind resistance, the lack of mental stress that was required to follow the pacer had to have been a huge help too. Knowing with at least 99.9% accuracy that the pace car and pacers in front of you are going to run at the exact pace you need would have allowed Kipchoge to almost go into auto-pilot for most of that race (until the fatigue really started to kick in). No racer in normal race circumstances gets to turn their brain off in quite that way either. It must have felt pretty amazing to run in that situation, almost like having a tailwind when compared to normal conditions.

So the Tesla contributed only 26 seconds, despite that ridiculous clock tower. That's cool.

Since they came in 25 seconds over their 2 hour goal, in their next attempt they will use a Tesla X with a clock tower twice as tall. Boom, problem solved.

different perspective wrote:

No racer in normal race circumstances gets to turn their brain off in quite that way either.

Bah. He didn't have any competitors to push him either.

If the car only benefited 26 seconds, then the rest is from the runners.

From .5 to 4 minutes gained.

In major marathons you have an army of pacers for the first half(?) of the race.

So, let's discredit those 2:03s and say they should have been 2 minutes slower.

This whole stunt was such a joke, in so many ways.

Just to discuss one of those ways, what constitutes permissible drafting is determined by rule and convention. It is okay to have pacers who run with you as long as they can - case in point Bannister behind Brasher and Chataway.

It is NOT okay to have tag-team pacers.

A marathon is an event, not a distance. This was not even a marathon attempt.

In one of the older threads on the effects of the Tesla, some Nike fans were using the example of the Berlin marathon pace car with a large Timex clock on top. It is now obvious from this picture that the clock car was actually behind the lead runners. I doubt the runners were deriving much aerodynamic benefit from a wind breaker riding behind them.

http://www.runnersworld.com/sites/runnersworld.com/files/styles/article_main_image_2200px/public/prclear-makau-gebrselassierabbits1b-berlin11.jpg?itok=5y3qUw7R

Why are they comparing to him running alone? World record marathons are run with some help from pacers. It only makes sense to compare with that. Perhaps that is where the huge error-bars are coming from?

3hr-marathoner wrote:

Why are they comparing to him running alone? World record marathons are run with some help from pacers. It only makes sense to compare with that. Perhaps that is where the huge error-bars are coming from?

The answer to your question is contained in the articles. But you'll have to actually read them.