Rendered at 23:48:01 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Cloudflare Workers.
nikcub 1 days ago [-]
Stunning results at the top of the field. Some interesting takeaways on both fuelling and shoes.
Maurten spent months working with Sawe and other runners getting their gut capacity trained so they could absorb and burn 100 carbs per hour[0][1]
> The Maurten research team was embedded with Sawe’s team in Kenya for 32 days across six trips between last and this April. They were training his gut to absorb that load by mimicking race-day protocol in training. The hydrogel technology they have developed over the past 10 years now allows athletes to absorb 90–120 grams of carbs per hour without GI distress.
Second is the shoes. Adidas Adizero weigh 96 grams[2] with new foam tech and new carbon plates
Nike and INEOS spent millions over years to get Kipchoge to a sub-2 in artificial conditions, and now the elite end of the field are knocking that barrier out in race conditions. Unreal.
Running tech and training have been revolutionized in the past few years.
burning a hundred calories an hour is trivial. Most people will burn 100 calories per mile when walking or running, and more if moving as fast as these athletes, and many, many humans can do this for far, far longer than 2 hours.
It's the absorbtion that's the challenge. Maurten is not somehow alone in the particular stuff they've developed - ultra runners are generally shifting up into the 90-120 gram/hr range (or beyond!), using a variety of different companies' products. The gut training protocols for this are widely discussed in the world of running for almost any distance above a half marathon.
loeg 1 days ago [-]
> burning a hundred calories
GP left out the units but is clearly talking about grams ("absorb ... 100 carbs per hour"), not calories (no one needs training to absorb 25g/hr). Carbs are 4 kcal/g. 100g of carb (400 kcal) an hour isn't replacement level for even casual athletic efforts, but it does mitigate the loss of glycogen in muscle somewhat.
andreareina 14 hours ago [-]
Exogenous carbohydrate doesn't spare muscle glycogen, only liver glycogen.
gield 18 hours ago [-]
The last few years, cycling and triathlon have been experimenting with upto 120g carbs intake per hour. Last year, Cameron Wurf ate 200g carbs per hour when he broke the world record for fastest bike split ever in a triathlon (which was broken again a few months later).
canucker2016 4 hours ago [-]
a 2025 look at elite triathletes fueling at https://www.triathlete.com/nutrition/race-fueling/ironman-wo... shows that norwegian athletes are ingesting higher amounts of carbs (~180g/hr bike, ~120g/hr run - 2 males, ~150g/hr both run & bike - 1 female) especially for the bike portion.
wging 23 hours ago [-]
I've read that even if you absorb it all, there's some question about whether it's useful. This Alex Hutchinson article suggests, among other things, that it may spare your fat stores rather than your muscle glycogen:
> Even if you can absorb 120 grams per hour, it might not make you faster. In Podlogar’s study, cyclists burned more exogenous carbs when they consumed 120 rather than 90 grams per hour, but that didn’t reduce their rate of endogenous carb-burning—that is, they were still depleting the glycogen stores in their muscles just as quickly.
That may still be worthwhile if fat is harder to recruit than exogenous carbs.
wging 4 hours ago [-]
What does 'harder to recruit' mean though?
Earw0rm 8 hours ago [-]
Kejelcha is 6'1" and under 130lb.
What fat stores?
loeg 7 hours ago [-]
It doesn't take much. If an elite burns 1500-2000 kcal running a marathon, even ignoring glycogen and exogenous carb, that's only ~195-260g of body fat (~7.7 kcal/g). Even at an extremely lean 4% body fat, Kejelcha would have 2360g of body fat available. (He's probably in the slightly higher 5-10% range.)
(And obviously, the majority of those 1500-2000 kcal are coming from stored glycogen rather than fat.)
If we're only talking about the marginal difference between 90 and 120 g/hr of exogenous carb, then that's 60g over two hours or 240 kcal -- equating to 31g of stored body fat. That's nothing.
bethekind 24 hours ago [-]
Where does discussion on gut training occur? All I know is you need a 5:4 ratio of glucose to fructose? Then when you train, you use the gels and the more you do it, the more capable your gut gets at absorbing without distress.
Is that all the science to it?
andreareina 13 hours ago [-]
AFAIK 5:4 is just the lowest ratio they've tested. Personally I use table sugar (1:1) and can sustain rates above 100g/h. Haven't hit the ceiling yet, don't really feel the need to explore where that is yet because exceeding the absorption rate comes with the risk of diarrhoea which is bad at any time but especially when you're in the middle of a training session and who knows where the nearest toilet is.
Gut training is consuming large amounts of carbohydrate (preferably in the same form you intend to use when racing), yes.
scott_w 15 hours ago [-]
Yes but the science is actually achieving that and finding the limits. It used to be thought that 60g carbs/hour was the limit, then 100g, now it’s thought to be 120g.
It’s also about the methods of achieving that under stress without spewing it all back up. Ironman athletes would stuff their faces on the bike under the assumption that this volume of carb absorption wasn’t possible while running.
Some of the challenge in research will come from competitors not wanting to publish results to maintain an edge. It is mitigated by the visual of the race by (you can see athletes pounding carbs), as well as the nutrition companies wanting to sell more product. This will cause them to publish some information to convince us amateurs to quadruple our purchase volume ;-)
chongli 1 days ago [-]
Wow so he was absorbing 400 calories per hour with this gel, but he was likely burning 3-4x that amount (or even more) while running 13.1 miles per hour!
brianwawok 24 hours ago [-]
In a two hour race that’s still 800 bonus calories, that’s something.
The race to tolerate lots of carbs is usually something you think of in 8 hour Ironmans. The good part is you can do most of it on the bike, which is much easier to eat as you go. As far as I know, many elite runners were doing like 50% water, 50% sports drink and consuming way under 100g.
PaulDavisThe1st 22 hours ago [-]
> As far as I know, many elite runners were doing like 50% water, 50% sports drink and consuming way under 100g.
This used to be true, and is still true for many athletes up the marathon distance. Above that, however, the momentum has swung heavily to very high carb intake. Most (though not all) of the world's best ultra runners (we're talking 7:00 min/mile pace through mountainous terrain) are picking this up, with many getting to and beyond 100g/hr of carb consumption.
almost_usual 23 hours ago [-]
Your body stores roughly 2000 calories in glycogen. They are burning calories but nowhere near the amount a middle pack would be at this pace.
So ~2800 calories of carbs with some fat being burned.
aitchnyu 8 hours ago [-]
What are the long term effects of a lot of processed carbs on the gut?
alfiedotwtf 12 hours ago [-]
Is there anything here a people who should be dieting could learn here? I’ve found when running, every 3-4km if I do t have sugars/gatorade my blood sugar gets so low I end up almost confused… running suburban streets is tough because I’ve got to cross the road when I’m midly delirious!
Earw0rm 8 hours ago [-]
How far are you running total, both per run and per week?
Running will absolutely help your health, but on its own it's unlikely to get you thin. It's hard to burn enough to make a big difference without it chewing your body up in other ways - especially if you're overweight and out of condition to begin with, and so a bit more susceptible to injury than skinny runner types.
Thinking of it as a calories in/out equation is counterproductive for most people, if it boosts your cardio health, gets you more active and maybe converts a bit of body fat to leg muscle, that on its own is a win.
Certainly no harm in having a swig of Gatorade every couple of km if it helps you go further, anyhow.
KeplerBoy 11 hours ago [-]
I guess it's the classic case of one not being able to outrun a bad diet.
If fueling during the activity stops you from overeating afterwards and possibly allows you to exercise a bit longer it is worth it, even though it seems counter productive.
alfiedotwtf 10 hours ago [-]
> not being able to outrun a bad diet
Dang… I was hoping for some cheat level wisdom :)
groggo 1 days ago [-]
One gram of carbs is 4 calories., so more like 400 calories per hour.
It was confusing when the running industry switched from calories to grams of carbs, but that's all anyone talks about now.
mbesto 1 days ago [-]
Because calories simply do not matter. At high intensities of working out, it's the amount of carbohydrates you can consume that allow more fuel to be burnt.
"In the aerobic exercise domain up to ~100% of maximal oxygen uptake (VO2max), CHO is the dominant fuel, as CHO-based oxidative metabolism can be activated quickly, provide all of the fuel at high aerobic power outputs (> 85-90% VO2max) and is a more efficient fuel (kcal/L O2 used) when compared to fat."
Calories do matter (obviously, as energy intake is the entire point) but as you note the specific form that the fuel takes matters. However "carbs" is a catch all that includes plenty of things that (I assume) would be of similarly minimal use in this scenario. The calories need to take a very specific chemical form for this to work.
mathgeek 24 hours ago [-]
The wording is certainly confusing here, but yes the calories don’t matter as much as the form. Eating protein and fats simply give you minimal useful calories during the race. Even most carbs won’t be useful if they are more complex.
teiferer 18 hours ago [-]
Then why replace one imprecise term with another? Fiber is a carbohydrate. Humans use close to nothing from its energy. (Though it plays another important role in the digesive system.)
Try eating 100g of grass per hour during a marathon and you will see. That's the metabolic edge horses have over humans.
IAmBroom 6 hours ago [-]
Horses don't eat during races (and aren't evolutionarily disposed to marathons, anyway). No edge there; it takes quite a while for their symbiotic gut flora to downconvert fodder to glucose.
teiferer 3 hours ago [-]
My gut flora won't do that, so they do have an edge. (Not during a marathon, but that wasn't my point anyway.)
loeg 1 days ago [-]
They're equivalent modulo some multiple. It doesn't matter which one we talk about, as long as we're consistent.
whycome 1 days ago [-]
It’s also confusing that most nutritional labels say “calories” (Cal) when they really mean kilocalories (kcal). And those are different from regular (‘small’) calories
(a measure of energy needed to heat 1g water 1c).
1 food calorie as listed on a food label is enough to heat 1kg of water by 1c
schoen 21 hours ago [-]
This was the explanation for why the scotch and soda diet doesn't work:
(If the nutritional calories in the drink had been only the same number of thermodynamic calories, the drink would have been energetically negative for the body because of its low temperature.)
estomagordo 17 hours ago [-]
Yeah, I assume this dumbification is spearheaded by the Americans.
justinwp 1 days ago [-]
It's deliberate, because you generally do not want calories from fat or protein during a marathon or other running race.
1 days ago [-]
aucisson_masque 17 hours ago [-]
> The Maurten research team was embedded with Sawe’s team in Kenya for 32 days across six trips between last and this April. They were training his gut to absorb that load by mimicking race-day protocol in training. The hydrogel technology they have developed over the past 10 years now allows athletes to absorb 90–120 grams of carbs per hour without GI distress.
That common knowledge, nothing revolutionary here.
There are 2 types of sugar, fructose and glucose, you can max out on glucose around 60g/hour and train you guts to max out also on fucose.
Personally I reached 90g/hour without training, no diarrhea or vomiting.
And you know the best ? White sugar in everyone kitchen is almost perfectly 50% glucose, 50% fructose.
You don't need 'advanced' gel to do that, a bottle of water with 120g of white sugar an hour.
And the shoes, yeah they're light but guess what. Other competitors also have sponsors and excellent shoes, some even run bare feet and yet they don't go faster.
No the real reason why he is able to run so fast is first excellent genetic, that's the common base.
Secondly, excellent training, coaching.
Third, his steroid/peds program is on point and his body is responding well to it.
Typically for endurance runner you want profiles with low natural hematocrit so you can max out on the EPO, but there are also other considerations. For instance, are his tendons responding well to GH and other peptides ?
pfix 15 hours ago [-]
> That common knowledge, nothing revolutionary here.
I've never read about that. So it's not "common knowledge" - except maybe in the running community.
I like your comment for putting some facts into place (how far you can go with common options). But as I never heard of this before, I have no idea how common it actually is and the effects and the science around it, what research does say to this, how and why this is used in other sports - or why not.
aembleton 15 hours ago [-]
> You don't need 'advanced' gel to do that, a bottle of water with 120g of white sugar an hour.
Did you carry all of these bottles on a marathon? Did you have to stop to get them out of your bag? How did you find drinking whilst running?
I find gels much more compact and for the amount of time I need to run one - over 4 hours there's a lot of weight I need to carry. I can store a lot of them up front in my running vest and keep going.
ragazzina 16 hours ago [-]
> Third, his steroid/peds program is on point and his body is responding well to it.
Do you have any evidence of this?
klooney 9 hours ago [-]
There are two kinds of athletes that win global track events:
- athletes from areas with bad doping enforcement (remote places in the mountains of Kenya, Jamaica)
- athletes from countries with tons of surplus biomedical expertise (USA and other western countries)
ap99 13 hours ago [-]
His comment is more of a general commentary that east African countries are notorious for doping.
Like, if we find out the top two finishers here doped very few would be surprised.
That said - it's still an amazing accomplishment.
darrenf 10 hours ago [-]
I’d be surprised, given how outspoken Sawe is about doping. He invited the AIU to test him before Berlin and Adidas also paid.
> Determined to prove he is competing clean, Adidas provided $50,000 (£36,900) to the Athletics Integrity Unit, the sport's anti-doping body, to frequently test Sawe over a 12-month period.
> That began with a reported 25 out-of-competition tests in the lead-up to Berlin in September, continuing at a similar rate as he prepared for London.
> Sawe said on Monday: "It's very important to me because it gets out the doubt in my career of athletics and yesterday's performance.
> "It shows Sabastian Sawe is clean. It shows running clean is good, and we can run clean and we can run faster.
IAmBroom 6 hours ago [-]
I find con men are the first to protest their innocence, and even suggest well-curated "proofs" of the same.
It's not evidence either way, in the arms-race of high-tech doping.
LanceH 10 hours ago [-]
It pains me that running, track, and cycling are "notorious" for doping, but the major sports don't test at any practical level compared to the "dirty" sports.
m348e912 10 hours ago [-]
I have no evidence of this at all. I did thing it was interesting the demeanor of Sebastian Sawe and second place finisher Yomif Kejelcha, both of whom finished under 2 hours.
If you watch Kelvin Kiptum break the world record at the 2023 Chicago Marathon and Eluid Kipchoge break the world record in the 2022 Berlin Marathon, you see the joy and exasperation of their achievement.
That joy was missing in the winners of the London marathon. It's not evidence, but it's an interesting data point. Another data point: Not only did the first two finishers break two hours, the third place finisher, Jacob Kiplimo, broke the world record.
sireat 6 hours ago [-]
People do have different emotional response to big achievements.
Still this seemingly detached "matter of a business" look by the winners was intriguing.
They are all high level athletes not Rosie Ruiz, but hopefully this record is clean.
gadders 13 hours ago [-]
We never had any for Lance Armstrong until he confessed.
whycome 6 hours ago [-]
> The hydrogel technology they have developed
At what point is this just a performance enhancing “drug” — what makes something a drug?
boringg 11 hours ago [-]
Pushing up to and over 100 is the challenge. If i remember right 90 is 60-30 (gluc and fruc) and the upper limit after that GI distress.
You a cyclist or have you been doing that from running?
From homemade concoctions… you can use maltodextrin for pure glucose.
zackify 11 hours ago [-]
I agree with you. I used maurten 160, 320, and the gels years ago.
Now I just throw honey into water on my runs.
It doesn't upset me even though maurten does feel a little better, its worth saving tons of money over buying maurten
_blk 16 hours ago [-]
I'm not the expert on the bio but the gel has the advantage of being consumable while running.
Try drinking while running. Even at a slower pace it's hard not to spill. If you want the dosage correct you can't spill.
tedggh 23 hours ago [-]
I normally consume 90g of carbs per hour when long distance biking, so do a few other riders I know. No GI issues. I use Skratch some other guys like Precision.
dogmatism 23 hours ago [-]
Yeah, I just literally use table sugar, which is 1:1 glucose:fructose. Maurten et al using 1:0.8, close enough! And I don't believe the hydrogel thing is any magic, just marketing.
But yeah, this is a thing. There is some gut distress for sure at higher levels of intake. See guy finishing second -- still under 2 hrs! immediately puking, which is fairly common at the high intakes. I've heard of Blumenfeld (the triathlete) taking like 200g/hr or more. Insane. Though he's had some epic GI disasters too, lol.
chantepierre 19 hours ago [-]
The hydrogel textures (not maurten but naak, but close enough), for me, allow while racing to swallow a full 40g gel in half a second without feeling the sugary taste a lot, which is nice. Compared to thick syrup-like gels, it’s a way better experience in a marathon.
But I only buy for actual races, rest of the time, I do my own 1:0.8 mix with a bit of thickener, in soft flasks. Much more cost effective.
rpearl 21 hours ago [-]
it is a lot more challenging when running than when biking. The jostling is not your friend.
18 hours ago [-]
bluecalm 15 hours ago [-]
It's much easier when cycling and there is much more freedom with your breakfast choice and timing. You are stable on the bike. When running there are constant vibrations and up and down movement that can easily upset your stomach/intestines.
boringg 11 hours ago [-]
In terms of getting to higher caloric loading due to gut system restraints. It sounds like running has finally caught on to what professional cycling has been doing over the last couple years. Bodies ability to handle high caloric loading is the rate limiting step.
nradov 1 days ago [-]
The leaders were burning a lot more than 100kcal per hour. I think you mean 100g of carbohydrates per hour.
brianwawok 24 hours ago [-]
Not burning, eating. They are eating 100g of carb per hour. Burning 1000+ calories.
ekr____ 1 days ago [-]
Correction: 100g of carbohydrate/hr. That's approximately 400 calories/hr.
bluecalm 16 hours ago [-]
Race day super shoes certainly help a lot but another difference is that super shoes allow them to train a lot more. Running training is limited by tendons. This is the reason even elite runners often train only 9-11 hours a week while many dedicated amateurs can easily spend 20+ hours per week cycling.
This is also the main reason runners "double" that is they run 2 times a day. The body absorbs 2x45 minute session much better than one 1x90 minutes session.
Super shoes are changing the game here allowing for more volume for months without injuries. When you look at Sawe's training his volume is insane. His easy/endurance days are 20km in the morning and 10km in the evening. This is some 100-110 minutes of running on "easy" days. His total time on feet must be around 14-15 hours per week - approaching cycling volume territory (especially when you consider that cyclists do significant % of their volume cruising/descending without putting almost any power at all which inflates the time).
amai 6 hours ago [-]
Not to forget the sodium bicarbonate loading 2h before the start.
ano-ther 15 hours ago [-]
Re [0] how do they measure this reliably during a race, especially the C-isotopes in the breath?
From the picture it looks like he is only wearing a watch and there is perhaps a little bulge on his left side.
entropiae 14 hours ago [-]
They collected samples every 5k in the 30k long run before the marathon, see Substrate section in http://athlete.maurten.com/
tokai 1 days ago [-]
Pro cycling has been on the high fueling strategy for a while, with huge results for record times. Its a game changer for endurance sports.
rimliu 16 hours ago [-]
Can someone explain this in more details? Like will you run out of energy, your result will suffer drastically, anything else?
The reason I am asking - I hike a lot, and for shorter hikes (<35km) I don't even bother with food. Just last Saturday I did 28km hike with 550m elevation gain - last meal I had was 5pm on Friday. No breakfast. No problem. I walk at a brisk (for layman) pace, ~7±2 km/h. Am I missing something by not caring about food there, or for my level of "performance" it does not matter anyway? The original question still stands.
noelwelsh 16 hours ago [-]
Your muscles need energy to work. You have a variety of energy stores in your body, which range from small amounts of quickly available energy (ATP) to large amounts of slowly available energy (fat). Most relevant to this discussion is glycogen, which is is a carbohydrate. You have about 500g in your body, which is about 2000kcal. It is more readily accessible than fat, and 2000kcal is enough for an hour, or maybe two, of high intensity exercise.
These gels and drinks are trying to replenish glycogen stores. The idea is to keep the runner using glycogen for the entire race, as it provides more energy per unit time than fat metabolism.
In your hikes your energy demands probably aren't exceeding the rate that your fat metabolism can provide.
qweiopqweiop 16 hours ago [-]
I'm not an expert, so do some research, but it's probably a bit of a) you've trained yourself to burn fat more (a good thing) b) you're not exercising as strenously c) yes, if you ate you'd probably "perform better".
I'd recommend you to do your own research though.
But to add - yes, if you don't eat you will "bonk" on a long bike ride.
sriacha 10 hours ago [-]
I think its important to state that "bonk point" is different based on if your metabolism is adapted for carb vs fat burning.
If always training with high carb loads, you will bonk rather quickly going on a long ride without any compared to if you train fasted or more fat adapted.
nonameiguess 7 hours ago [-]
It won't matter for your level of performance. A hike isn't a race. I'm assuming you don't care about finishing the hike faster and simply being out in the wilderness at all is the main point, the longer the better as long as you still get home by the time you have something else you need to do there.
Aside from that, this isn't a well-understood topic. Even extremely lean humans have more than enough fat to fuel crossing North American without technically neeeding to eat anything. Fat is less efficient to mobilize than glycogen, and glycogen is less efficient than free glucose already in the bloodstream, so there's some tiny bit of gain there possibly, but frankly, as fast as these guys are going, they're still far enough below lactate threshold that the energy efficiency gain is unlikely to be any real contributor to a faster finishing time. Beyond that, you can't deplete glycogen just from running a marathon, unless you were already depleted at the start of the race. You definitely can and will in longer races, but not a marathon.
Instead, what I'm pretty sure is happening here is you're just hacking the way fatigue works. Your body has more than enough fuel to do insane amounts of work without eating, but bodily systems for doing work are regulated by predictive models. There is no literal fuel gauge in your brain or muscles. They're guessing how much you have left and those guesses are conservative because selective pressures of all animals in the past pretty strongly leaned into leaving something in reserve just in case. If you suddenly find yourself in a struggle to the death, you need to be able to give it your absolute all, and that will require mostly if not entirely glycogen, which means your body's natural regulatory systems will work very hard to keep you from depleting it, so even if you have plenty left, if it's going quickly, you'll get more tired and sore than it was being depleted less quickly. Your autonomic systems don't know you're going to stop at 26.2 miles and eat a giant feast 20 minutes later and the chance of a tiger randomly popping up on the course is effectively 0. All it sees is you're depleting energy stores far more quickly than you can replenish them over the long term and it tries very hard to keep you from doing that.
In a sense, this is all endurance sport really is, training away and hacking away your body's inhibitory mechanisms to get as close as you possibly can to expressing your true physiological limits, but nobody will ever truly get there.
lostlogin 21 hours ago [-]
[dead]
addaon 1 days ago [-]
100 g of carbs is 400 calories, not 100.
1 days ago [-]
thefz 17 hours ago [-]
> Maurten spent months working with Sawe and other runners getting their gut capacity trained so they could absorb and burn 100 carbs per hour[0][1]
In trail running especially it's not uncommon to exceed the recommendation of 1g/Kg bodyweight/hour, up to 120g of carbs per hour, for those that can take it.
1 days ago [-]
kakacik 16 hours ago [-]
Do we know of any adverse effects on such long term consumption of that amount of simplest carbs? While good source of immediate energy, simple carbs are basically a slow acting poison to various internal organs and over time bring stuff like diabetes.
Its great they don't sit idly around in the body and get transformed into fat but rather they are burned in muscles, but still flooding body again and again with this may have long term negative effects that far outweigh any health gains gained from doing these sports, even at such intensity.
Definitely not a diet one could recommend for regular sporty guys, unless they are uber-competitive freaks who have to win at all costs.
adjejmxbdjdn 13 hours ago [-]
> simple carbs are basically a slow acting poison to various internal organs and over time bring stuff like diabetes.
Do you have any evidence for this? The problem with simple carbs (if you don’t already have insulin issues) is that they’re easy to digest and provide minimal satiety so you end up consuming significant calories.
But as far as I’m aware there is no evidence that they’re worse for you than the rapid calorie addition.
snowwrestler 11 hours ago [-]
These athletes are eating nutritionally complete diets overall. The simple carb intake is a strategy just for the run itself.
That said, pretty much everything about highest-end athletics is net negative for long-term health. It’s incredibly hard on the body to run a marathon in general, let alone at record breaking pace.
adrianN 14 hours ago [-]
I don’t think there is any elite level sport that doesn’t trade long term health for performance in competitions.
adidas introduces the Adizero Adios Pro Evo 3 – the lightest and fastest Adizero shoe ever, weighing an average 97* grams.
The race-day shoe represents the culmination of three years of cutting-edge research. It is 30% lighter, delivers 11% greater forefoot energy return, and improves running economy by 1.6% compared to its predecessor - making it a record breaker before it’s even laced up.
The shoe will launch with a highly limited release, with ambitious runners able to sign up for the chance to get their hands on a pair from April 23. This will be followed by a wider release in the fall marathon season. The Adizero adios Pro Evo 3 will cost $500/€500.
For other marathon racing shoes, Google says:
The Nike Alphafly 3 is the lightest in the series, weighing approximately 7.0–7.7 oz (198–218g) for a men's size 9, and 6.1 oz (174g) for women's sizes.
The PUMA Deviate NITRO™ Elite 3 is exceptionally lightweight, typically weighing 194g (6.8 oz) for a men's size 8 (UK)
If anyone's interested, the shoe being purchasable by the general public is a condition of them being deemed legal for pros, after a crackdown on Supershoes a few years ago.
The other conditions as I recall are there is only allowed to be one carbon plate in them and a maximum stack height of 40mm.
It really is incredible that Nike kicked off this Supershoe arms race ten years ago and spent (presumably) an incredible amount on R&D, marketing and hype to try and complete the mission of being the first shoe to go Sub-2, and Adidas has pipped them at the last minute... twice in one race. Oh to be a fly on the wall at HQ today...
Though I assume they made a lot of that cash back in the interim selling these things to weekend warrior suckers like myself!
nl 1 days ago [-]
Most superfoam shoes actually last longer than older EVA-based foams:
> Improved durability: Supercritical foaming produces a more consistent cell structure in a midsole. This should translate to pressure and weight being more evenly distributed, which should lead to greater durability of the midsole. “We’ve done a lot of testing of what foams look like on a dynamic impactor fresh versus 300 or 500 miles later, and we see less degradation in those materials longer-term,” FitzPatrick says.
> At least in terms of the midsole’s life span, super foams may have done away with the conventional benchmark that running shoes last about 300 miles. “I think it’s a dated standard,” Caprara of Brooks says. “It’s an easy go-to to help simplify. But every foam is different, and it’s not just the foam—it’s how it’s constructed, the shoe’s geometry, the rubber underneath it. There are so many factors. If I were to tell you the Glycerin Max lasts 300 miles, that’s probably less accurate than it is accurate. It’s probably closer to 500.”
Much like the road bikes that cost as much as a sedan, unless you are competing on a world stage, these aren’t meant for you.
I’m sure someone will happily sell them to you if you enjoy wasting money.
sampullman 23 hours ago [-]
You don't need to be competing on the world stage to enjoy some of the benefits of Alpha flys or those pumas. 500 for the new Adidas does seem a little silly though.
canucker2016 22 hours ago [-]
While the foam may last longer than older EVA foam shoes, the outsoles of the shoes have gotten ridiculously thin these days.
The continental rubber outsole on these Adidas Adios Pro EVO 3 shoes are so thin (less than two sheets of paper, I think), that they don't even appear in side/profile views of the shoes. The outsole doesn't even extend the length of the entire shoe, it stops around the middle of the shoe. So heel strikers aren't welcome and will have loads of fun in wet weather. see https://www.adidas.com/us/adizero-adios-pro-evo-3/KH7678.htm...
In general, these high stack, forward-leaning shoes are meant for going straight ahead - imagine ladies' high heel shoes with an inch and a half of foam on the bottom - any sharp turns will force the runner to slow down or they'll twist their ankles. Looking at the London Marathon course, https://www.londonmarathonevents.co.uk/london-marathon/cours..., there's about twenty ninety-degree or sharper turns.
helsinkiandrew 19 hours ago [-]
> unless you are competing on a world stage, these aren’t meant for you.
There’s a lot of people trying to get a 3 hour marathon or some other goal where chasing the marginal gains is worth the cost to them.
somenameforme 18 hours ago [-]
What sort of gain would that be for a non-world class runner? I'm unfamiliar with high level running, but I'm curious as in most sports these sort of things provide a small benefit at the top level (seems to be about a ~3% reduction in times over the past decade since the shoe wars began), and that quickly becomes statistical noise outside of the top due to diminishing returns.
helsinkiandrew 18 hours ago [-]
But if you really want to reduce your marathon time by 15 minutes, then gaining a few minutes from better shoes, a few minutes from a high altitude training camp/holiday in Flagstaff/Dolomites, and a few minutes from a day at a gait analysis centre, may be worthwhile - or atleast a fun way to spend money on your hobby.
Maxion 18 hours ago [-]
10% improvement on a 5 hour marathon time is more absolute seconds than on a 2.1hr marathon time.
let_rec 14 hours ago [-]
But if you could only achieve it by adding the shoe isn't that a bit hollow?
If you are a 3:02 marathoner in normal shoes then run a 3:00 in a super shoe, you are still a 3:02 marathoner in normal shoes.
paganel 17 hours ago [-]
Which is why this feels so artificial and why it’s the 3rd most read article on the front page of the FT. Running as a sport has been very sadly and irremediably gentrified, gone are the days of Zatopek and of Abebe Bikila winning an Olympic marathon barefooted. Fuck Ineos and its owner, too, while I’m at it.
signorovitch 1 days ago [-]
Feel a bit bad for Yomif Kejelcha who also broke the 2-hour mark, with this being his first competition marathon, but managed to neither break a record nor win.
glenngillen 20 hours ago [-]
But he has the best average time of any competitor in the history of the event! ;)
nerdsniper 23 hours ago [-]
3rd place runner also set a new world record, but just didn't break the 2-hour barrier.
darth_avocado 24 hours ago [-]
While I know competitors want to always strive to be the best, as a completely normal human who struggles to complete a half marathon under two hours, I do not feel bad for the guy. He’s still one of the only two people to do it (outside of the very controlled run from Kipchoge). Not a feat to feel bad about at all.
cflewis 23 hours ago [-]
The majority of people in the world cannot complete a half marathon, let alone under two hours. I was pleased to train enough that I managed under three. You're doing great!
BrandoElFollito 14 hours ago [-]
A majority of people won't run 1 km without needing a rest afterwards.
There were recent tests (in France I think) in schools where 50% or something could not run 1 km (sorry I don't have the details on mobile). These are children who have infinity energy (source: parent).
A typical adult won't make it to 1km (source: going back to sport and dying on a 2.5 km run)
rsynnott 10 hours ago [-]
> A typical adult won't make it to 1km (source: going back to sport and dying on a 2.5 km run)
I'm... dubious of this. At 39 I started running, for the first time in my life, ran 5km, didn't actually die, and went from there. I'd think most adults could manage 1km, anyway.
BrandoElFollito 10 hours ago [-]
This really depends on people and your surroundings (I mean the kind of environment you live in, including the country)
I used to play volleyball a lot at the university, and then at a business league (we were horrendous, but anyway :)). Then I travelled a lot and let myself go.
So I started to commute to the office by bike, about 15 km each way, 5 days a week for two years. I had a puncture and decided to run the remaining distance (about 2 km) because I was late. After 500 m my lungs were on fire.
55 now, I restarted this year sport to do the smallest existing triathlon. I was already biking a bit and "just" have to do the swimming and running. I am at my 10th or so run of 2.5 km (I try to do it 2 times a week) and I am dying several times on the way. The fact I make it back home is religiously miraculous.
I am not an athlete, far from this. I am not the extreme obese either. I am somewhere in between, like are most of the people I know (of different ages). I do not see them running 1 km strong (let's say right above trotting)
Ah - and I did the whole battery of medical tests to make sure that I will not literally die when training. I am in a very good shape, heart wise.
gregdeon 21 hours ago [-]
Sub 3 is incredible, congrats!
sayamqazi 18 hours ago [-]
half marathon is ~20 KM its pretty sad that a large percentage of people cant do that. One can simply walk that much distance wihtout any prior training.
estomagordo 17 hours ago [-]
I am sure the poster meant running. Of course people can walk. That's not much of an achievement, unless you're geriatric.
ordu 17 hours ago [-]
You can walk it in under 4 hours. I can do it, but I can't run that much, my calves are just not trained for aerobic workloads. I don't run normally, I walk or cycle, but do not run.
potamic 18 hours ago [-]
There is the silver medal syndrome.
Aurornis 23 hours ago [-]
I'll admit I'm not familiar with running, but in other sports it's not uncommon for amazing early career athletes to hold back a little bit on their first attempts.
It's easier to draw attention (and therefore sponsorships) if you leave some room to improve on successive attempts. It's riskier to give everything up front and then risk plateauing or regressing in your subsequent attempts.
parsimo2010 1 days ago [-]
While that seems like a bummer, as long as he doesn't quit he'll have many more chances to set the record himself.
Don’t forget Yomif Kejelcha who finished in 1:59:41, a world record up until 11 seconds prior. Amazing.
curt15 1 days ago [-]
> Don’t forget Yomif Kejelcha who finished in 1:59:41, a world record up until 11 seconds prior. Amazing.
In his marathon debut too.
giarc 23 hours ago [-]
I read that as well... how could it be his first marathon? Or is it his first "big" marathon?
wging 22 hours ago [-]
It's his first marathon ever, but he's a very experienced runner. It would be hard to find a better prospect for a good first marathon. He's a multiple (former) world record holder and medalist at shorter distances from the mile up to half marathon. His half marathon is still 2nd all time.
I wouldn't have predicted this out of nowhere, but if you told me a marathon debut went this well and asked me to guess whose it was, I like to think I'd have come up with Kejelcha in my top few picks.
That said, great 5000/10000 athletes don't always have great marathon careers. An example from this race is the world record holder at both those distances, Joshua Cheptegei. He's run several marathons but none spectacular by his standards. He was in this race too but 7 minutes back.
dwayne_dibley 16 hours ago [-]
> His half marathon is still 2nd all time.
Rough that his Marathon time is also 2nd!
giarc 10 hours ago [-]
Always a bridesmaid, never a bride!
wging 4 hours ago [-]
Truer than you'd think just from the information I provided. He has two world championship silver medals over 10,000m.
ronbenton 1 days ago [-]
Imagine having the second fastest marathon time ever yet not winning the marathon you ran it in
twobitshifter 1 days ago [-]
Apparently 3 people broke the record in the same race!
m463 1 days ago [-]
Nobody ever remembers who was in 2nd. sigh.
tim333 1 days ago [-]
I think Kejelcha will be back.
spenjovewkwhalo 1 days ago [-]
Posted to my in-laws, who asked how:
Super shoes. Most shoes have carbon plates in them now, they act as a spring, storing energy and propelling athletes forwards.
Better understanding of fuelling. Most athletes are taking between 100-120g carbs (sugar) per hour. Bicarbonate of soda has also been effective.
Better planning tools. Athletes look at elevation, headwind, tailwind and will plan a strategy around going harder into the hard stuff and knowing when they can back off and rest.
And to be honest, probably a metric tonne of PEDs (performance enhancing drugs) - unfortunately this is very common across all sports at the top level.
nl 24 hours ago [-]
> probably a metric tonne of PEDs (performance enhancing drugs)
Note that Sawe funded extra testing drug testing for himself for the 2 months before winning the Berlin marathon. The testing followed Athletics Integrity Unit protocols (so surprise testing etc):
This is news to me and genuinely impressive. Putting extra work into ensuring your attempt at one of the few records that will last the duration of humanity is damn smart.
Pretty hard to use the in-competition avoidance strategy like that in this out of competition case though.
k2enemy 1 days ago [-]
> Most shoes have carbon plates in them now, they act as a spring, storing energy and propelling athletes forwards.
This seems unlikely to be true, although it is repeated in every article I read about carbon plated shoes. The people that study them in a lab environment seem to disagree. See some of the papers here:
However, I agree wholeheartedly with the overall points in your post!
spenjovewkwhalo 1 days ago [-]
Ooooh, interesting- I’ll take a read, thanks!
I’m guessing like most things of this nature, you’re likely to have super-responders, responders and non-responders?
nickcoury 21 hours ago [-]
Yes, most of the studies show there is a very large individual variation. The original 4% figure and similar studies were an average of something like 1-7% across runners.
Also interestingly, the shoe in this record uses much less carbon than past shoes, both saving weight and allowing even more super foam where much of the energy return comes from. Though there so much variance in shoe design and materials there are only theories on how much comes from the plate vs foam vs stack height vs weight vs other factors.
Maxion 18 hours ago [-]
I read somewhere that the carbon plate is more to stabilize the shoe, that with only the foam the shoe would be very unstable.
nickcoury 6 hours ago [-]
Yes, that's correct. There's a mistaken belief that it's the major source of performance improvements. It plays a role, but the bigger gains come from the stack height (limb lengthening effect) and the energy return of the foam. But that leads to very unstable shoes. The carbon gives rigidity to balance this out.
giarc 23 hours ago [-]
Maybe even placebo effect?
nickcoury 21 hours ago [-]
Quite possible there's a psychological benefit from super shoes, they certainly feel fast. Though there are enough plausible mechanisms it's unlikely to be the major factor.
sampullman 23 hours ago [-]
So you think the Vaporfly prototypes Kipchoge wore in 2018 placebo'd him into crushing the world record by 78 seconds?
fragmede 20 hours ago [-]
There's an almost inhuman amount of mind over matter psychology when it comes to endurance running. Unless you can duplicate reality multiple times and swap out the shoes without anyone knowing to do properly scientific testing, we can't know for sure what did it. (The shoes probably helped.)
twobitshifter 1 days ago [-]
Well at least on the PED front, saw has been doing an extreme amount of testing to try to eliminate those doubts.
shusaku 19 hours ago [-]
> Better understanding of fuelling. … Better planning tools.
When I was young everyone acted like running was all about who could endure misery the longest. I think if I had known about these aspects it would’ve seemed more strategic and interesting (especially with smart phones to help). Alas, these days all my effort is in making sure my run doesn’t kill my knees :\
tejohnso 1 days ago [-]
> Super shoes. Most shoes have carbon plates in them now, they act as a spring, storing energy and propelling athletes forwards.
I wonder where that leaves the barefoot movement. Hype dust?
riknos314 23 hours ago [-]
As a 16 year wearer of mostly barefoot shoes, "barefoot" for me is about comfort in general day to day activity. It isn't a specialized tool and certainly isn't the obvious choice for extreme environments.
If I'm going bouldering I absolutely cram my toes into a tiny rock climbing shoe, because it allows me to stand on ledges I couldn't without the extra support from the shoe.
That being said, if barefoot generally feels good to you and you're not chasing the pinacle of performance it's probably a perfectly fine choice for your recreational runs.
ungreased0675 8 hours ago [-]
I still prefer to run in minimalist shoes because I like to feel the ground. The new breed of running shoes seem comically thick to me. I tried a pair for a few weeks, they still feel wrong. If a company would make a low stack height shoe with one of the new super foams, I’d probably buy three.
dogmatism 23 hours ago [-]
No competitive distance runner since like Zola Budd ran barefoot or minimal shoes.
The carbon plate revolution is the main driver for drop in times over the last 5+ years
ungreased0675 8 hours ago [-]
I’d consider the old models of Nike Waffle race flats pretty minimal, and those were ubiquitous 15-20 years ago.
benhurmarcel 4 hours ago [-]
They never claimed it was faster, but healthier
brewdad 1 days ago [-]
Was the barefoot movement ever about running faster? I always thought they sold injury prevention by strengthening tissues that running shoes tend to over support.
nradov 24 hours ago [-]
Yes, that was the claim but it was never really backed by evidence. Vibram settled a lawsuit over false claims that their minimalist shoes reduced the risk of injuries. (I still like those shoes myself and use them on some slow recovery runs.)
This topic deserves so much more nuance, but it's always reduced to "barefoot running doesn't work" in internet forums. In every articles about the harm caused by barefoot running I've read, those reported injuries all end up being overuse injuries. The article you linked is specifically about bone marrow edema, which is basically bone bruise. Other possible injuries include muscle and tendon soreness.
If this were a bodybuilding discussion, you would get advice on how to manage DOMS symptoms and how to plan your loading schedule, nobody would say that weightlifting "doesn't work" because a beginner got sore after lifting a 80kg barbell for the first time. But people has been conditioned to think that running is a purely cardio activity, so we don't talk about how the muscles and tendons in the foot need to be loaded up gradually just like your bicep.
Barefoot running is a weightlifting activity. Your calf muscle has to lift your entire bodyweight for the forefoot stride. "No pain no gain" applies. Proper posture and techniques are important. Proper workout schedule and loading plan with rest days are important. Sufficient protein intake are important.
sayamqazi 18 hours ago [-]
Also letting chlidren run and play barefoot actaully helps develop the foot properly which I presonally think is benificial in the long run.
rimliu 16 hours ago [-]
no no, in the long run carbon plates are beneficial ;)
proee 20 hours ago [-]
When Vibrams were first popular, I took to training with them on my runs. People told me to "take it easy" or you might get injured. I thought what's the worst that can happen? Well let me tell you. About a month into wearing them, I was doing a hard run and the trail had a section of concrete. My foot felt a sudden sharp pain and "snap!" I broke my 3rd metatarsal bone in my foot. Took a month or so to heal, and I decided to stop using the Vibrams.
bonesss 10 hours ago [-]
A month isn’t enough to adapt your ankles to high force hard running.
You have to take it easy.
Build low impact volume (walking and hiking), and then scale it (jogging then running), over time emphasizing recovery. Shoe adapted gaits are expecting materials to handle forces that simply aren’t there ‘barefoot’ (minimalist).
Flip side: adapt like you understand the intense forces generated in running and that the baseline level of chronic dysfunction is high, and proper foot function can help correct movement form and posture issues, both of which are major drivers of chronic pain.
Big thick shoes allow us to run like assholes. Shin splints, knee problems, chronic injuries, overuse injuries… Great for competition(!), great for sacrificing health to get speed (faster!). Unquestionably better for racing. But for people interested in longevity, evolution did one thing, Nike/Adidas another.
dreadnip 16 hours ago [-]
I only manage to do barefoot runs on soft forest ground. Anything concrete just instantly messes up my feet.
nunez 9 hours ago [-]
My understanding of the advantages from barefoot running is that it was more about helping you lock in stride and form while preventing injuries outside of race days.
xutopia 10 hours ago [-]
Heat training does much of what EPO used to do. It's amazing how much science has caught up in this field.
xarope 17 hours ago [-]
the consensus seems to be that the foam itself is the spring (hence the successful adidas evo sl and dynafish xiaonian), and the carbon plate/rod/whatever is more to control/manage that "spring".
mmooss 23 hours ago [-]
> going harder into the hard stuff and knowing when they can back off and rest.
Why is going harder in the hard stuff and easier in the easy stuff more efficient or faster than vice versa? I imagine arguments either way:
Going harder when it's easy gives you higher ROI. Or maybe going easier when it's hard is just too slow. And maybe that is too simplistic: Maybe it depends on how hard; that is, maybe there is a threshold.
bigiain 20 hours ago [-]
Completely uninformed speculation:
Wind drag goes up with v squared, so power required goes up with v cubed.
If you run at 105% speed downhill,that requires almost 16% more power to overcome wind drag. You might be better off running at 100% speed downhill (and "saving" that 16% power), and pushing harder to run as close as you can to 100% speed on the uphill stretches that would otherwise have you running slower than 100%. The power used to increase your potential energy going uphill is "zero sum" because you get it back when you go back downhill -n there no pesky v squared or v cubed non linearity there (assuming the race starts and finishes at the same elevation).
rich_sasha 18 hours ago [-]
A fun little effect is that average speed is time-averaged not distance-averaged. So when you go slower, you lose doubly - lower speed to average and over a longer time (higher weight). Hence one of the reasons why putting more energy into the harder bits is actually optimal.
jimt1234 1 days ago [-]
I thought those carbon plate shoes were barred from competition???
pcchristie 19 hours ago [-]
Posted elsewhere, they have tightened regulations to clamp down on the "franken-shoes".
40mm stack height maximum
One carbon plate only (some shoes were including a second).
Must be on sale to the public for < 4 mths before the race in question
Puma makes a shoe that's non-compliant with the above (two plates, not sure about the stack height), for what it's worth.
nunez 9 hours ago [-]
As someone whose tallest shoes have a 10mm stack heigh, 40mm is crazy high!
lukeinator42 1 days ago [-]
nope, nike vaporflys are super popular. There are usually limits on stack height for many marathons though.
thinkingtoilet 23 hours ago [-]
Can you not accuse people of cheating unless you have proof?
spenjovewkwhalo 10 hours ago [-]
Yes, apologies.
bbcc90 24 hours ago [-]
I'm a runner, and it's a bit sad that distance running is not longer purely about the runner.
Based on the quote below, next thing we will see is a "constructors championship" similar to F1 for winning shoe constructor in the 'major' marathons :-(.
" This dominance continued in 2024, with adidas athletes wearing Adizero models winning six out of 12 World Major Marathons – more than any other brand."
and yes, of course i race in super shoes :-).
jfengel 21 hours ago [-]
The winner is doing a completely different sport from me. I never even see the winners at a marathon. They are long gone by the time I get to the start line, and they've gone home by the time I finish.
There are age group leaders as well. That's perhaps a hundred people, of the tens of thousands running next to me.
Marathons are about running my own pace. The fact that there exists a world record is a piece of trivia.
aembleton 11 hours ago [-]
> Marathons are about running my own pace. The fact that there exists a world record is a piece of trivia.
I do find the record fascinating. If I take the 5k, 10k and half-marathon world records and double them then I can run faster than that. But for the marathon I'm a long way off. There's something uniquely difficult about it because it's not just going for a run, but fuelling and training your gut and pacing. I've only done 2 marathons, but I do find them uniquely difficult so for me its extra special to see how fast a human can do it in.
nerder92 23 hours ago [-]
It was never about the runner, it has always been about technology and innovation. Shoes tech is just one of them. Better nutrition, novel training techniques, better air quality etc.
Of course innovation in shoes will have a bigger marginal impact (because physics).
jampekka 15 hours ago [-]
Can't help but think that the wins and records done barefoot and without refreshments in the 1960s are still a bit more about the runner than running with essentially spring loaded shoes, lab-optimized nutrition gels, computer optimized pacing strategies and multisensor real-time measurement devices.
It's also somewhat ironic for a race supposedly modeling a messenger running the distance in an emergency situation.
Ekaros 13 hours ago [-]
Also makes wonder question did the messenger participate in hard cardio training before. Meaning the fighting. Or do some messengering before.
bbcc90 21 hours ago [-]
For sure but most of that innovation pre-super shoes was optimizing the runner, not the shoes
foxglacier 17 hours ago [-]
Of course it's also about the runner, that's why the Kenyan models dominate with their biological innovation.
dmurray 1 days ago [-]
There's something about the London course today that made for very good running.
Three athletes broke the men's world record. One athlete broke the women's world record, and three were in the all time top 5. An Irish record was also broken, likely other countries too that I'm not familiar with.
Not to take anything away from the achievements. Incredible running.
PaulDavisThe1st 1 days ago [-]
> One athlete broke the women's world record
Not so. She broke a record for a female-only-pacer marathon time. The women's world record was much, much faster.
ekr____ 1 days ago [-]
To add some color here:
It is very helpful to have someone pace you so that you can run an ideal pace without worrying about whether you are running the right speed. However, the rules require that pacers start with you [0], which means that by definition if you are running faster than anyone has ever gone before you have to run some of the race alone.
However, because marathon are often mixed gender and the best male runners are significantly faster than the best female runners, it is possible for a woman to be paced from the gun to the tape by a male runner. For this reason, there are separate records for the women's marathon for women's only events.
[0] This is one of the things that made Kipchoge's original sub 2 result not record-eligible.
ungreased0675 8 hours ago [-]
Having a pacer start with you seems to defeat the purpose? I’d prefer someone fresh and full of energy to jump in halfway to carry me through the end.
dmurray 1 days ago [-]
I stand corrected, but I don't think this changes my point at all.
She broke the thing that the IAAF have gone back and forth on calling "the world record". It's the relevant record for this event - there was no more chance of her beating the man-paced record than of beating the men's record or the Le Mans lap record.
NooneAtAll3 14 hours ago [-]
what does female-only-pacer even mean?
PaulDavisThe1st 12 hours ago [-]
It is common in "big" marathons for the fastest runners to have pacers with them who help establish and keep a pace. They could be male or female, but the fastest marathon runners are generally male, so they tend to be male. "Female-only-pacer" means that only female pacers are used.
tim333 1 days ago [-]
It was good weather for London. Clear skies and cool.
tasuki 7 hours ago [-]
> It was good weather for London.
Unusual!
rhplus 1 days ago [-]
Is there also something beneficial about the shirt he wore? It has a unique embossed pattern on the chest. Is it just a nice design or does it also provide aerodynamic or heat wicking advantage?
I can sort of visualize an aero improvement. If wind hits you flat on it goes all around and right against you, and it can bump into itself and then back on you since it's almost directionless. However if you have 'needles' coming out it gives the wind a 'direction' other than straight at you, lessening the pressure against your front.
double0jimb0 23 hours ago [-]
Good eye! Almost like an inverted golf ball. If I remember correctly from undergrad aero, purpose of dimples on golf ball is to detach/disrupt more of any laminar flow earlier as air passes around the ball, which decreases drag. Golf balls travel way faster than a runner, but possibly still has some minor effect?
huflungdung 23 hours ago [-]
[dead]
cowthulhu 1 days ago [-]
Wow, that’s ~13 mph, basically a full-on sprint for a mere mortal. Absolutely insane.
PaulDavisThe1st 1 days ago [-]
The fastest marathoners are moving at 4m30sec per mile or faster.
Very few mere mortals could run that fast for even 100m.
jmb99 1 days ago [-]
> Very few mere mortals could run that fast for even 100m.
That works out to roughly a 16.7-second 100m. While certainly not crawling, that would be a fairly average pace for a fairly fit middle- to early-high-schooler with a bit of practice.
Yes that’s insane to maintain for a marathon, but it’s not even remotely out of reach for 100m for most relatively-fit people at some point in their lives.
PaulDavisThe1st 1 days ago [-]
It's the "at some point in their lives" that matters here. For most folks, the period where a 16.7 100m is feasible is pretty short.
rimliu 16 hours ago [-]
[citation needed]
ecshafer 8 hours ago [-]
I ran a 16s 100m in highschool.... as a thrower, and was very slow. The 100m dash with the fast people was like 12s.
croemer 1 days ago [-]
I think it's even slow for high schoolers. I didn't practice that much and ran 100m in 12.5s from rest at my peak. 4s slower is snail pace. I think most in my class could run that fast (or slow).
sayamqazi 18 hours ago [-]
I think height matters for speed as a fit 6ft+ would easily run way faster than a 4" 8' fit person.
jmb99 1 days ago [-]
I agree. I ran mid 16s in 8th grade, and was in the 14s in high school, with the only training being whatever we did in gym class. But I do also look at the sheer number of overweight kids these days and figured, well maybe mid-16s is actually a reasonable average point.
brewdad 1 days ago [-]
Oh it is. At a typical large high school making the team puts you in the top 1% or better of athletic ability compared to the population at large.
At my peak, I finished the NYC Marathon in the top 2%. I still finished 45 minutes behind the winner.
It feels like elite athletes aren’t even competing in the same sport.
24 hours ago [-]
petepete 1 days ago [-]
There's an interesting video by Mark Lewis on this.
Here's a random high school in Northern California. Everyone on the team is beating 16.7 seconds in the 100m. For the 1600m there are six kids with times under 4m30s and another seven with times under 4m40s, all in the last month.
* of course one mile is hardly comparable to the marathon that pros are able to sustain such speeds over...
sethev 1 days ago [-]
Not sure that disproves the point :) Most people have never been anywhere close to competing with the top 6 athletes at a high school with ~2k students.
hackingonempty 1 days ago [-]
There are thousands of these high schools all across the USA. The top high schoolers in California so far this year are doing 1600m in 4m7s.
OK, so let's do the math. There's about 25k high schools in the USA. Let's suppose they all have a track team, and let's assume that they all have 5 team members who can break 04:30 for 1600m. Sure, at some schools that's too few, but at others it is too many.
That gives us 125k high schoolers in the USA who can break 04:30 for 1600m. There are about 18M high school students. So of just the high school population alone, about 0.7% of them can do this.
Assuming there are the 4x as many adults that can do this as there are high school students, that gives us slightly less than 0.2% of the total US population capable of this.
I rest my case.
hackingonempty 16 hours ago [-]
We just have different ideas of what constitutes "mere mortals." 1 in 150 high school students or even 1 in 500 from the general population doesn't sound super human to me at all. Talented, yes but not god like.
maxerickson 22 hours ago [-]
What do you want most to mean here?
hyperpape 1 days ago [-]
Unless kids have gotten a lot faster in the past 25 years, I think that's a lot better than a typical 2000 person high school.
PaulDavisThe1st 1 days ago [-]
How many kids at the school?
malbs 17 hours ago [-]
The fastest 1km I ever ran was around 3m20s, I felt like I was sprinting, and was fully cooked at the finish line.
Afterwards I did some quick numbers and realised the average marathon runner was not only going a lot quicker than I was, but they were doing it for a further 41km
LanceH 9 hours ago [-]
You've proven you can run one kilometer. You just need to prove that if you run any km, you could run the next km, then you're done.
jonplackett 1 days ago [-]
Sometimes they have big running machines with a crash mat around them running at 2h marathon pace at running shows. I’ve o ly seen them on video - no one can keep up with it for more than 30 odd seconds. It’s INSANE they are running this fast.
Also bear in mind running a single mile under 4 mins was considered impossible for a long time.
acomjean 24 hours ago [-]
We used to be amazed when I ran cross country in high school that these pro marathoners would best all of us in our approx 5K(3ish mile) races and then go on to repeat that distance multiple times.
It’s totally remarkable.
soupfordummies 1 days ago [-]
Yeah I can barely even ride my bike that fast much less keep that pace for two hours.
willsmith72 1 days ago [-]
You must be crawling on your bike I'd love to see that
Maxion 18 hours ago [-]
That's just a mean comment
fredley 1 days ago [-]
He did his _last_ mile in 4.17. Insane.
mkl 1 days ago [-]
21.19km/h on average, or 17 seconds per hundred metres on average.
croemer 1 days ago [-]
No, it's slower than most people's sprints. It's 17 seconds per 100 metres which is slow. Most teenagers can do this starting from rest.
Cthulhu_ 1 days ago [-]
I'm not a runner at all, but people say that they can do that for like a minute, maybe two at best... and these guys did it for two hours straight.
ternaryoperator 1 days ago [-]
And the only place this appears on ESPN is if you click on "Olympics," which has nothing to do with this race. Where coverage should be: on the home page.
conductr 1 days ago [-]
It’s certainly noteworthy and interesting but I could see how Running as sport isn’t popular enough for front page. Especially during NBA and NHL playoffs, NFL draft, and whatever else might be going on.
timerol 10 hours ago [-]
This is the most significant record in running to fall since 1954 when a sub-4 minute mile was run. I think running can be front page news once a century
conductr 4 hours ago [-]
I get it and agree, but historical significance doesn’t factor into what they put on front page or what is popular at the moment. It’s not a slow news day for sports and they don’t think their viewers care enough. I’m sure if we had their data it would show us that they wouldn’t.
It’s not meant to be malicious they just don’t report on things that don’t get enough engagement. If you look at the long list of sports they cover, there’s nothing running related even mentioned. They do now have an article on it in their Olympics category as of 2 hours ago. But I feel like them not having a breaking news coverage on a Sunday in this sport is to be expected more so than your expectation of them covering it.
brewdad 1 days ago [-]
If this happened at Chicago, it would be front page news. Boston and NY aren’t WR eligible. Since it happened in London, place it behind soccer in the priority list.
adverbly 1 days ago [-]
Wait two runners beat it in the same race?
Was there perfect conditions.or something?
Insane you could run 1:59:41 and not win!
rkagerer 1 days ago [-]
Three of them, actually:
Sabastian Sawe 1:59:30
Yomif Kejelcha 1:59:41
Jacob Kiplimo 2:00:28
The previous official record was Kelvin Kiptum's time of 2:00:35 in 2023. Eliud Kipchoge did 1:59:40 in 2019, but that wasn't record-eligible as it was held under controlled conditions. Source: The article.
mkl 1 days ago [-]
Two beat two hours is what they meant.
nradov 1 days ago [-]
Weather and course conditions were good but not perfect. There is potential to take a few more seconds off the world record in slightly colder conditions and on a course with fewer turns. I wouldn't be surprised to see someone run 1:58 in the next few years.
ohyoutravel 1 days ago [-]
This is probably right. We’ll also see at least five unique sub-2s before the end of 2027.
hdndjsbbs 1 days ago [-]
Pacing is a big part of endurance sport. If you're in the lead you know intellectually you want to pace for sub-2 hours, but if you're watching someone beat you maybe it gives you the extra edge?
It does sound like the course and the weather made it more likely to happen. And technical advances in shoe composition.
PaulDavisThe1st 1 days ago [-]
That's not a description of how the pacing for this race actually happened.
> The leading men went through halfway in 60 minutes and 29 seconds: fast but not exceptionally so. But it turned out that Sawe was merely warming up.
Between 30 and 35 kilometres, Sawe and Kejelcha ran a stunning 13:54 for 5km to see off Kiplimo. Yet, staggeringly, more was to come as the pair covered kilometres 35 to 40 in 13:42. To put this into context, that time is two seconds faster than the 5km parkrun world record, set by the Irish international Nick Griggs.
It was only after a 24th mile, run in 4:12, that Kejelcha wilted. But still Sawe kept going. Astonishingly, he crossed the line having run the second half in just over 59 minutes.
“Before 41 kilometres, I’m enjoying, I’m relaxed,” said Kejelcha, who had won silver over 10,000m at last year’s world championships.
“My body is all great. At exactly 41 kilometres, my body stopped. I tried to push, but my legs were done.
Sawe, though, powered on to set the fastest official marathon time in history. For good measure, it was also 10 seconds faster than Eliud Kipchoge’s unofficial 26.2 mile best, set in Vienna in 2019.
Yomif Kejelcha also ran sub-two, clocking 1:59:41 on his debut marathon
You have to feel for Kejelcha - breaking 2h marathon and not even winning the race!
codezero 1 days ago [-]
Those shoes are gonna sell like crazy now but it would be hilarious if they were to be found to have been giving an unfair advantage because of some mechanical property of the shoe.
icegreentea2 1 days ago [-]
Reviews say that they have very very good, but not record breaking energy return and shock absorption. But what they are is insanely light at sub 100g.
For a while it was all about getting the lightest shoes, because picking up heavy shoes slowed you down. Then the energy return (pebax foam, carbon plates/rods) became the main focus because the weight didn't matter as much when the shoe was literally springy. Surely this is now going to spark a race for the optimal balance between weight and energy return.
tialaramex 8 hours ago [-]
I can absolutely imagine that the "correct" balance varies from one person to another, and yet that this is both measurable and also irrelevant for non-pro athletes.
Like the number one endurance runner in the world will get a minute off their marathon time because a shoe manufacturer spent $1M making custom shoes for that athlete which don't even have a size they're just "For this one specific person, now" but then some guy on Reddit wants better shoes because he's sure his four hour marathon would have been "more like three" if he had those elite shoes instead of the $100 Nikes he wore...
The big improvement then was a carbon plate. Adidas (and others) followed suit. The subsequent improvements since then have been marginal but the margins are thin at that level. In this case the big advancement has been the weight of the shoe.
EDIT: Also it's worth noting these shoes are $500 retail. Adidas will for sure get a boost in sales from this, but there's definitely competition in the $200~$300 marathon running shoe space that won't solely draw everyone to Adidas)
pclmulqdq 24 hours ago [-]
Do these new Adidas shoes have anything major over the Vaporfly shoes? Maybe they are a bit lighter?
I think the big story here may be the nutrition science to get these guys to absorb a lot of carbs during the run, more than the shoes.
loloquwowndueo 1 days ago [-]
Well if they’re sold in stores and next year everyone will have a pair, then it’s not going to be an unfair advantage, is it?
colechristensen 24 hours ago [-]
There is a whole class of running shoes banned from various competitions.
Essentially the argument given was too much advantage came from the shoes and they didn't want racing to be about shoe technology development.
sergiotapia 1 days ago [-]
what else could it possibly be if not that?
robot_jesus 1 days ago [-]
Well, the marathon record has been broken 53 times since the early 1900s. So, there are a lot of factors at play. Better training, better nutrition, better tactics, and, yes, better shoes.
The advancements in shoes have made a measurable impact, but there are lots of optimizations being worked on.
tialaramex 8 hours ago [-]
Also population and access. In the time since the early 1900s a lot more humans exist, and more of them have the opportunity to attempt this record. Population in Africa exploded in that time and access improved significantly.
If you're bloody quick and born in Birmingham (either of them) in 1900 you can probably find out about and get yourself a chance to attempt that world record, but if you're born in Kapsabet (in Kenya) in 1900 good luck, even in Nairobi I wouldn't bet on it.
jonplackett 1 days ago [-]
There’s info in one of the other threads about better carb intake too.
But yeah at this point, “it’s the shoes, stupid” should defo be the main part of the conversation.
1 days ago [-]
DwnVoteHoneyPot 1 days ago [-]
[flagged]
nearlyepic 1 days ago [-]
If I wanted to know what an LLM thought (I don't) I would go ask an LLM.
MattCruikshank 24 hours ago [-]
One person sharing what an LLM thinks is probably better for the environment than each person asking...
nearlyepic 24 hours ago [-]
I'll trade a little bit of damage to the environment in exchange for keeping meaningful communication between human beings alive and well.
kibibu 1 days ago [-]
AI told us we should add glue to pizza
ray_v 1 days ago [-]
In this economy, it may be sage advice.
_carbyau_ 24 hours ago [-]
Is that not what tomato paste and/or cheese is? Food glue?
The other ingredients would fall off too easily otherwise.
Or did the AI say we should be using PVA/cyanoacrylate/polyurethane glue or something?
dyauspitr 1 days ago [-]
You should stop using 3.5
readthenotes1 1 days ago [-]
I'm pretty sure that's an old trick based on some of the so-called cheese I've had on pizza
RobotCaleb 1 days ago [-]
[flagged]
dyauspitr 1 days ago [-]
Is what the AI told him incorrect?
kibwen 1 days ago [-]
It sure would be great if the LLM in question would cite its sources so that we could verify whatever source it ingested this text from.
dyauspitr 24 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
kibwen 23 hours ago [-]
Indeed, I've seen LLMs begin to cite their sources, which is a commendable advancement and something that I've been asking for since the beginning of this craze: LLMs as librarians, not as summarizers. But if the commenter had a reputable data source, they should have quoted it and linked it.
24 hours ago [-]
RobotCaleb 1 days ago [-]
I don't know, I didn't ask my AI
jonplackett 1 days ago [-]
This is not the point
dyauspitr 24 hours ago [-]
What is?
piker 1 days ago [-]
Insane; and second place was sub-2:00 as well. Relegated to trivia questions for the next decade.
It would be interesting to adjust this speed to account for the insane advancements in shoe technology over the last decade. Could it be as simple as measuring the delta in median marathon performance? Then look backwards to, say, 1996 and see what the technology-adjusted 2:00 mark is.
canucker2016 1 days ago [-]
Second place male runner was running his first marathon race as well.
Sub-2hr marathon, beat the previous world record before Sunday, on your first try, and you don't win! Bad timing...
Looks like first place male gets US$330K. Second place will get US$180K.
Divide by 2 to get the approximate hourly rate. :)
wry_durian 1 days ago [-]
I suspect there would be larger deltas due to improvements in nutrition and fueling. As another poster has mentioned, today's runners are ingesting so many more carbs per hour than 20 or 30 years ago. And if doping trends have changed over time, that's another factor. (No clue either way, but it's a potential factor.)
There's been lots of research into shoes though, so you might be able to work something out. For instance Jack Daniels (the running coach, not the beverage!) found that adding 100 grams to a running shoe increased aerobic effort by around 1%.
michaelt 1 days ago [-]
> Could it be as simple as measuring the delta in median marathon performance?
The popularity of running waxes and wanes - and the performance of the median runner varies with popularity.
Back in the 1980s the average half marathon finishing time was 1 hour 40 minutes - whereas today it's a little above 2 hours because there are a lot more people particpating.
nradov 1 days ago [-]
The confounding variable is higher carbohydrate intake based on optimizing the glucose/fructose ratio and improved techniques for gut training. That happened at about the same time as the new carbon fiber shoes so it's hard to isolate how much impact the shoes had alone.
stockresearcher 1 days ago [-]
3 people beat the previous world record in this race! This is some combination of improved tech and extraordinarily good weather.
London is a fast course. Let’s see what happens in Chicago and Berlin. If it was primarily tech that did it, we should see the record fall again.
freediver 1 days ago [-]
Incredible result! (on the day I did my own 5K pb)
This is a nice video of the last 10 mins of the historic marathon race finish
Amazing to me that I'll never get my *half* marathon time close to his full marathon time.
nradov 1 days ago [-]
A 1:59 half marathon time is achievable for pretty much anyone who doesn't have a serious physical disability and is willing to put in the necessary training. I've done it a few times and have no particular talent for running.
PaulDavisThe1st 1 days ago [-]
That's a 9m10sec per mile for 2 hours. While I'd agree that there are millions or even billions of people who could train to do that, I think it's wrong to suggest that "pretty much anyone" could do that.
nradov 23 minutes ago [-]
I stand by my claim that pretty much anyone could do that. In some cases this may require a significant lifestyle change. I've seen some real slobs reach that goal, it just takes a bit of sustained, consistent discipline.
Now hitting a 1:30 HM is something different and will be forever out of reach for many people.
pollymarket 1 days ago [-]
My predicted half time is under 2 hours and I was sedentary for years before starting to run 9 months ago, and I'm 40 years old.
Endurance sports are quite accessible and don't require that much time, effort, or talent to get way better than the vast majority of people, it's just consistency.
PaulDavisThe1st 1 days ago [-]
I've been an endurance athlete most of my life, running 100 miles at 17, a 5:30 mile at 50, and lots of other stuff in between. I know that a 9min/mile pace is "easily achievable" by many folks, which is why I noted that millions or billions of people could do this. Nevertheless, I think it is really important to not overstate how achievable this is - there are many more people who could not do this than could, I think.
FWIW, that now includes me, as a 62 year old. I can hit 6:30 pace for 400m, but find it almost impossible to get under 10:0x for a mile. And that's even after 6 months of training for a 50 mile trail race.
apelapan 13 hours ago [-]
That is a steep drop in mile pace between ages 50 and 62 you had. Is it just age/genes/luck or did you have some sort of injury in between?
Considering that you can still do a decent sprint over 400m and have the endurance for ultra marathon distances at lower pace, it sounds a bit odd.
PaulDavisThe1st 6 hours ago [-]
No injury, and yeah, it is a bit odd (and infuriating and irritating).
thefz 16 hours ago [-]
Pretty much anyone can do that with at least 9-12 months of training.
mellosouls 23 hours ago [-]
Great achievement. Worth remembering also the previous world record holder, Kelvin Kiptum who sadly died at 24 in a car accident a couple of years ago.
> Previous research indicates improvements of 2–4% in running economy (RE), which translates into an approximate 1–2% improvement in running performance when running in these shoes.
2:50m/km. most people couldn't sustain that pace for even 2 minutes. id go as far as saying most people couldn't close their eyes and imagine consistently how fast that is.
dwayne_dibley 16 hours ago [-]
Thats my sprinting speed - which I can sustain for around 30 seconds.
elchief 1 days ago [-]
Kipchoge broke 2h a few years ago, but it was on a closed, low altitude track, with a fleet of rotating runners in front of him, providing wind blocking/drafting as well as pacing
Amazing these guys did it in a real race with no one in front of them (at the end at least)
aucisson_masque 17 hours ago [-]
He is the Armstrong of running, popularity wise and other things...
geoffbp 17 hours ago [-]
Very cool, amazing!
What effects does marathon running have on the body long term?
wavemode 1 days ago [-]
That's literally running a 4:30 mile, 26 times in a row. Jesus.
almost_usual 23 hours ago [-]
While consuming about 800 calories.
ccheever 1 days ago [-]
4:33
Metacelsus 1 days ago [-]
It's always interesting to see East Africans doing so well. Even with technology like advances in shoes and diet/training, genetics is still a huge factor.
Also it must be an crazy feeling to be Kejelcha, the guy who came in 2nd place. It would have been a world record, except for Sawe!
tdiff 1 days ago [-]
Is it actually allowed to suggest that some races are better than others in some areas?
tialaramex 7 hours ago [-]
Kinda, sorta. There's a statistical effect here but it's crucial to remember these are outliers and so these people are extraordinary in how far from the median they are regardless of that statistical effect.
It's also worth remembering that "race" is a social construct and is only somewhat correlated to genetics, whereas almost certainly any effect we're talking about here is dominated by genetics, although fun fact, Sawe's uncle is apparently a moderately famous runner and hooked him up with a trainer, so it's not like "Knowing a guy who knows a guy" didn't help and that's way less to do with genetics.
The "scientific racism" of confusing "The world's fastest sprinters tend to be from this Haplogroup" with "Everybody in that Haplogroup is an Athlete and so can't do intellectual stuff" is completely insane, that's how you get "I bet this old white man from a Reality TV show will be a better executive leader than that black politician we had last time".
elchief 1 days ago [-]
Not necessarily genetic. They run a lot, at altitude, from childhood
kyawzazaw 20 hours ago [-]
i feel like over a time, it becomes encoded
geargrinder 1 days ago [-]
It was his first marathon, so he is probably thinking next time he will be the one to break the record.
UebVar 1 days ago [-]
This is historic. To put this into perspective for people how to not follow running: This is about about as big as "derGrobe" beating the one-minute-mark in 4b2c.
readthenotes1 1 days ago [-]
A purist might want the athletes to wear the same gear as Pheidippides
mayneack 24 hours ago [-]
Why stop there. Why not deny them modern medicine or nutrition?
SecretDreams 23 hours ago [-]
Let's save that for the second act. Need to draw these feats of strength out to sufficiently monetize the experience.
pclmulqdq 23 hours ago [-]
Such a purist should also note that Pheidippides was likely the runner who ran to Sparta and back, hundreds of miles, the preceding week to ask for their aid at Marathon.
jonplackett 1 days ago [-]
A purist just wants it to be about the runner not the shoe.
_carbyau_ 24 hours ago [-]
Purism is extremism about a thing. Pick a thing, be purely about that thing.
I used to love F1 for the tech that would filter down to my car in ten years time, but that is not a thing anymore.
I for one love the advances in technology in something as supposedly simple as a shoe. And maybe I'll get to use it on a hike in a few years.
teruakohatu 24 hours ago [-]
> I for one love the advances in technology in something as supposedly simple as a shoe. And maybe I'll get to use it on a hike in a few years.
These shoes are practically disposable. They trade longevity for noticeable gains in performance. Even the tier below don’t last very long. This is not tech that is going to filter down to your hiking boots.
mayneack 9 hours ago [-]
There's a whole industry of hiking gear that has been steadily trading weight for durability. I only hike in running shoes (altras) which only last me 400 or so miles. It's way less durable than my old boots.
I doubt this sort of thing will translate, but I wouldn't put it past hikers to opt for something less durable to shave a few grams.
_carbyau_ 23 hours ago [-]
Fair enough, I obviously haven't looked into it.
But the initial tech on an F1 car was not made for 200k miles either.
Even if the full tech stack to make it all work - material science, physical layout and construction - doesn't transfer, maybe some bit of it will.
My point being though, unlike some purists, I like the technology race. It is much better than having a brand war simply on the basis of brand loyalty.
alex1138 1 days ago [-]
WHAT???? NO. WAY.
That's not me being sarcastic. I never, ever thought this would happen
mkl 1 days ago [-]
Why not? People were not far from it and have been getting closer and closer to it for years. To me it seemed almost certain that it would happen this decade or next.
cindyllm 42 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
Daz912 23 hours ago [-]
Capitalism does it again
dnsb 14 hours ago [-]
[dead]
Noaidi 1 days ago [-]
[flagged]
clutter55561 1 days ago [-]
Two marathons will never be run in the same conditions, that is the nature of outdoor sports.
Besides weather, there are loads of factors in the performance: shoes, clothes, food, etc. So basically every record gets an asterisk?
nradov 1 days ago [-]
No asterisk needed. The criteria for record-eligible courses have been clearly defined. The weather was good, but not quite ideal. In slightly colder conditions I think Sawe could have gone a few seconds faster.
nl 1 days ago [-]
Unless there was a 2ms+ tailwind on a one-way course there is no asterisk needed. All outdoor running is done in variable conditions.
soupfordummies 1 days ago [-]
So if the weather was bad the accomplishment would mean more then? I don’t think this is how it works. Sports don’t happen in a vacuum.
jjmarr 1 days ago [-]
Sprinting/jump performances are invalidated for world record purposes if there's over 2.0 m/s of wind assistance.
There is no rule for marathons.
dmurray 1 days ago [-]
There is a rule for marathons to counter wind assistance, but it's basically that the finish of the race needs to be pretty close to the start.
aaronbrethorst 1 days ago [-]
Too bad, you could run a lot faster in a vacuum...except for that whole breathing thing.
Yes. If sports does not happen in a vacuum then comparisons are unfair. If I go to the moon and break the record for long jumping should I be applauded?
I thought there were scientists on here...
gbnwl 1 days ago [-]
Never thought I'd see the day ragebait made it to HN. Yes, let's pretend doing a long jump on the moon is comparable to running a marathon at its prescheduled time at its prescheduled location. Weather is always a factor in sports that take place outside. Might as well put asterisks on all accomplishments that took place on sunny days by your logic right?
Noaidi 1 days ago [-]
It’s either scientific or it’s not.
Don’t forget that two people actually ran under the two hour mark.
ternaryoperator 1 days ago [-]
Not sure I understand what you mean by "scientific." If you mean exactly reproducible, then almost nothing in athletics fits that definition. Every record in baseball, football, etc. would fail that definition.
Noaidi 13 hours ago [-]
Yes. That is what I meant. Sports records are nonsensical.
toast0 1 days ago [-]
A moon long jump would happen in a vacuum, so it should be fine, yes?
snayan 1 days ago [-]
I am impressed by your ability to delineate the weather effect on his run with such confidence! Particularly given advances in other variables that contribute.
PaulDavisThe1st 1 days ago [-]
Better weather has, to the best of my knowledge, never been part of marathon record keeping. People do note in accounts of (e.g.) the Boston marathon that the weather was particularly atrocious in some years (hence a general slow down across the field), but weather "aided" fast times are not considered illegitimate or even worthy of note.
Obviously, barring wind, which is why some marathon courses are not eligible for world records.
nradov 1 days ago [-]
Correct. Boston is a net downhill point-to-point course and not record eligible under World Athletics rules.
No point to point courses are eligible, because of the "risk" of a wind assist.
Noaidi 1 days ago [-]
> Better weather has, to the best of my knowledge, never been part of marathon record keeping.
It should be.
PaulDavisThe1st 1 days ago [-]
Human response to temperature shows significant variation. 50F/10C may be absolutely ideal for one runner, but a little too cold for another. That's why you can't unambiguously declare a given race to be "a good weather day".
By contrast, hail/rain and wind will negatively impact almost everyone, which is why talking about "a bad weather day" makes more sense.
Forgeties79 1 days ago [-]
That’s a wild reason to withhold a true record. People run marathons in all sorts of conditions since it became a thing. It is unlikely this is the best weather ever for a record set and even if it was, it’s never been a factor when deciding to qualify a record. That’s beyond unfair.
Noaidi 1 days ago [-]
I am surprised at the push back on this. It is just science and it mentioned it in the article.
I just said it needs an asterisk, not withholding anything. What if someone runs one second slower in higher humidity and temperature. Now that I would applaud.
ekr____ 1 days ago [-]
Why do you think the existing records weren't also set under good conditions?
lazyasciiart 1 days ago [-]
What was the temperature and humidity for the previous record? Or the rest of the top 10?
Forgeties79 23 hours ago [-]
> I just said it needs an asterisk, not withholding anything
It’s essentially the same as not setting the record. It would be qualified every single time it’s mentioned and be functionally saying “…so it doesn’t count.”
soopypoos 1 days ago [-]
I hope there was a runner dressed as the finish line
soopypoos 23 hours ago [-]
too soon
clutter55561 1 days ago [-]
~~A car going as fast as him would have gotten a speeding ticket in the residential areas of Wales. Crazy.~~
Edit: I was thinking in km/h and mixed it up. Sorry.
edo_cat 1 days ago [-]
Speed limit is 20mph right? He ran 26.1 miles in 2 hours so average speed is 13 mph
adzm 1 days ago [-]
Looking this up, fastest human is still Usain Bolt at 27.78mph (at one point in a 100 meter dash)
clutter55561 1 days ago [-]
Damn was thinking km/h. Thanks for the correction.
sowbug 1 days ago [-]
You actually can get a ticket for driving 13 in a 25, at least in the US, so you're not entirely incorrect.
clutter55561 15 hours ago [-]
Fair enough. My kids are learning to drive and “how fast should I go” is a constant topic in my family right now.
Just yesterday I saw a learner driving at what seemed 10 mph in a 40 mph road, creating a massive queue.
Maurten spent months working with Sawe and other runners getting their gut capacity trained so they could absorb and burn 100 carbs per hour[0][1]
> The Maurten research team was embedded with Sawe’s team in Kenya for 32 days across six trips between last and this April. They were training his gut to absorb that load by mimicking race-day protocol in training. The hydrogel technology they have developed over the past 10 years now allows athletes to absorb 90–120 grams of carbs per hour without GI distress.
Second is the shoes. Adidas Adizero weigh 96 grams[2] with new foam tech and new carbon plates
Nike and INEOS spent millions over years to get Kipchoge to a sub-2 in artificial conditions, and now the elite end of the field are knocking that barrier out in race conditions. Unreal.
Running tech and training have been revolutionized in the past few years.
[0] https://marathonhandbook.com/sebastian-sawe-arrives-in-londo...
[1] https://www.instagram.com/p/DXmvAUvkWaq/
[2] https://www.runnersworld.com/uk/gear/shoes/a71129333/sabasti...
edit: correct :s/calories/carbs thanks
burning a hundred calories an hour is trivial. Most people will burn 100 calories per mile when walking or running, and more if moving as fast as these athletes, and many, many humans can do this for far, far longer than 2 hours.
It's the absorbtion that's the challenge. Maurten is not somehow alone in the particular stuff they've developed - ultra runners are generally shifting up into the 90-120 gram/hr range (or beyond!), using a variety of different companies' products. The gut training protocols for this are widely discussed in the world of running for almost any distance above a half marathon.
GP left out the units but is clearly talking about grams ("absorb ... 100 carbs per hour"), not calories (no one needs training to absorb 25g/hr). Carbs are 4 kcal/g. 100g of carb (400 kcal) an hour isn't replacement level for even casual athletic efforts, but it does mitigate the loss of glycogen in muscle somewhat.
> Even if you can absorb 120 grams per hour, it might not make you faster. In Podlogar’s study, cyclists burned more exogenous carbs when they consumed 120 rather than 90 grams per hour, but that didn’t reduce their rate of endogenous carb-burning—that is, they were still depleting the glycogen stores in their muscles just as quickly.
https://www.outsideonline.com/health/training-performance/en...
https://archive.ph/Vpk0h
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9560939/
What fat stores?
(And obviously, the majority of those 1500-2000 kcal are coming from stored glycogen rather than fat.)
If we're only talking about the marginal difference between 90 and 120 g/hr of exogenous carb, then that's 60g over two hours or 240 kcal -- equating to 31g of stored body fat. That's nothing.
Is that all the science to it?
Gut training is consuming large amounts of carbohydrate (preferably in the same form you intend to use when racing), yes.
It’s also about the methods of achieving that under stress without spewing it all back up. Ironman athletes would stuff their faces on the bike under the assumption that this volume of carb absorption wasn’t possible while running.
Some of the challenge in research will come from competitors not wanting to publish results to maintain an edge. It is mitigated by the visual of the race by (you can see athletes pounding carbs), as well as the nutrition companies wanting to sell more product. This will cause them to publish some information to convince us amateurs to quadruple our purchase volume ;-)
The race to tolerate lots of carbs is usually something you think of in 8 hour Ironmans. The good part is you can do most of it on the bike, which is much easier to eat as you go. As far as I know, many elite runners were doing like 50% water, 50% sports drink and consuming way under 100g.
This used to be true, and is still true for many athletes up the marathon distance. Above that, however, the momentum has swung heavily to very high carb intake. Most (though not all) of the world's best ultra runners (we're talking 7:00 min/mile pace through mountainous terrain) are picking this up, with many getting to and beyond 100g/hr of carb consumption.
So ~2800 calories of carbs with some fat being burned.
Running will absolutely help your health, but on its own it's unlikely to get you thin. It's hard to burn enough to make a big difference without it chewing your body up in other ways - especially if you're overweight and out of condition to begin with, and so a bit more susceptible to injury than skinny runner types.
Thinking of it as a calories in/out equation is counterproductive for most people, if it boosts your cardio health, gets you more active and maybe converts a bit of body fat to leg muscle, that on its own is a win.
Certainly no harm in having a swig of Gatorade every couple of km if it helps you go further, anyhow.
If fueling during the activity stops you from overeating afterwards and possibly allows you to exercise a bit longer it is worth it, even though it seems counter productive.
Dang… I was hoping for some cheat level wisdom :)
It was confusing when the running industry switched from calories to grams of carbs, but that's all anyone talks about now.
"In the aerobic exercise domain up to ~100% of maximal oxygen uptake (VO2max), CHO is the dominant fuel, as CHO-based oxidative metabolism can be activated quickly, provide all of the fuel at high aerobic power outputs (> 85-90% VO2max) and is a more efficient fuel (kcal/L O2 used) when compared to fat."
https://www.gssiweb.org/sports-science-exchange/article/regu...
Try eating 100g of grass per hour during a marathon and you will see. That's the metabolic edge horses have over humans.
1 food calorie as listed on a food label is enough to heat 1kg of water by 1c
https://www.futilitycloset.com/2008/11/16/the-mensa-diet/
(If the nutritional calories in the drink had been only the same number of thermodynamic calories, the drink would have been energetically negative for the body because of its low temperature.)
That common knowledge, nothing revolutionary here.
There are 2 types of sugar, fructose and glucose, you can max out on glucose around 60g/hour and train you guts to max out also on fucose.
Personally I reached 90g/hour without training, no diarrhea or vomiting.
And you know the best ? White sugar in everyone kitchen is almost perfectly 50% glucose, 50% fructose.
You don't need 'advanced' gel to do that, a bottle of water with 120g of white sugar an hour.
And the shoes, yeah they're light but guess what. Other competitors also have sponsors and excellent shoes, some even run bare feet and yet they don't go faster.
No the real reason why he is able to run so fast is first excellent genetic, that's the common base.
Secondly, excellent training, coaching.
Third, his steroid/peds program is on point and his body is responding well to it.
Typically for endurance runner you want profiles with low natural hematocrit so you can max out on the EPO, but there are also other considerations. For instance, are his tendons responding well to GH and other peptides ?
I've never read about that. So it's not "common knowledge" - except maybe in the running community.
I like your comment for putting some facts into place (how far you can go with common options). But as I never heard of this before, I have no idea how common it actually is and the effects and the science around it, what research does say to this, how and why this is used in other sports - or why not.
Did you carry all of these bottles on a marathon? Did you have to stop to get them out of your bag? How did you find drinking whilst running?
I find gels much more compact and for the amount of time I need to run one - over 4 hours there's a lot of weight I need to carry. I can store a lot of them up front in my running vest and keep going.
Do you have any evidence of this?
Like, if we find out the top two finishers here doped very few would be surprised.
That said - it's still an amazing accomplishment.
> Determined to prove he is competing clean, Adidas provided $50,000 (£36,900) to the Athletics Integrity Unit, the sport's anti-doping body, to frequently test Sawe over a 12-month period.
> That began with a reported 25 out-of-competition tests in the lead-up to Berlin in September, continuing at a similar rate as he prepared for London.
> Sawe said on Monday: "It's very important to me because it gets out the doubt in my career of athletics and yesterday's performance.
> "It shows Sabastian Sawe is clean. It shows running clean is good, and we can run clean and we can run faster.
It's not evidence either way, in the arms-race of high-tech doping.
If you watch Kelvin Kiptum break the world record at the 2023 Chicago Marathon and Eluid Kipchoge break the world record in the 2022 Berlin Marathon, you see the joy and exasperation of their achievement.
That joy was missing in the winners of the London marathon. It's not evidence, but it's an interesting data point. Another data point: Not only did the first two finishers break two hours, the third place finisher, Jacob Kiplimo, broke the world record.
Still this seemingly detached "matter of a business" look by the winners was intriguing.
They are all high level athletes not Rosie Ruiz, but hopefully this record is clean.
At what point is this just a performance enhancing “drug” — what makes something a drug?
You a cyclist or have you been doing that from running?
From homemade concoctions… you can use maltodextrin for pure glucose.
Now I just throw honey into water on my runs.
It doesn't upset me even though maurten does feel a little better, its worth saving tons of money over buying maurten
But yeah, this is a thing. There is some gut distress for sure at higher levels of intake. See guy finishing second -- still under 2 hrs! immediately puking, which is fairly common at the high intakes. I've heard of Blumenfeld (the triathlete) taking like 200g/hr or more. Insane. Though he's had some epic GI disasters too, lol.
But I only buy for actual races, rest of the time, I do my own 1:0.8 mix with a bit of thickener, in soft flasks. Much more cost effective.
Super shoes are changing the game here allowing for more volume for months without injuries. When you look at Sawe's training his volume is insane. His easy/endurance days are 20km in the morning and 10km in the evening. This is some 100-110 minutes of running on "easy" days. His total time on feet must be around 14-15 hours per week - approaching cycling volume territory (especially when you consider that cyclists do significant % of their volume cruising/descending without putting almost any power at all which inflates the time).
From the picture it looks like he is only wearing a watch and there is perhaps a little bulge on his left side.
The reason I am asking - I hike a lot, and for shorter hikes (<35km) I don't even bother with food. Just last Saturday I did 28km hike with 550m elevation gain - last meal I had was 5pm on Friday. No breakfast. No problem. I walk at a brisk (for layman) pace, ~7±2 km/h. Am I missing something by not caring about food there, or for my level of "performance" it does not matter anyway? The original question still stands.
These gels and drinks are trying to replenish glycogen stores. The idea is to keep the runner using glycogen for the entire race, as it provides more energy per unit time than fat metabolism.
In your hikes your energy demands probably aren't exceeding the rate that your fat metabolism can provide.
I'd recommend you to do your own research though.
But to add - yes, if you don't eat you will "bonk" on a long bike ride.
If always training with high carb loads, you will bonk rather quickly going on a long ride without any compared to if you train fasted or more fat adapted.
Aside from that, this isn't a well-understood topic. Even extremely lean humans have more than enough fat to fuel crossing North American without technically neeeding to eat anything. Fat is less efficient to mobilize than glycogen, and glycogen is less efficient than free glucose already in the bloodstream, so there's some tiny bit of gain there possibly, but frankly, as fast as these guys are going, they're still far enough below lactate threshold that the energy efficiency gain is unlikely to be any real contributor to a faster finishing time. Beyond that, you can't deplete glycogen just from running a marathon, unless you were already depleted at the start of the race. You definitely can and will in longer races, but not a marathon.
Instead, what I'm pretty sure is happening here is you're just hacking the way fatigue works. Your body has more than enough fuel to do insane amounts of work without eating, but bodily systems for doing work are regulated by predictive models. There is no literal fuel gauge in your brain or muscles. They're guessing how much you have left and those guesses are conservative because selective pressures of all animals in the past pretty strongly leaned into leaving something in reserve just in case. If you suddenly find yourself in a struggle to the death, you need to be able to give it your absolute all, and that will require mostly if not entirely glycogen, which means your body's natural regulatory systems will work very hard to keep you from depleting it, so even if you have plenty left, if it's going quickly, you'll get more tired and sore than it was being depleted less quickly. Your autonomic systems don't know you're going to stop at 26.2 miles and eat a giant feast 20 minutes later and the chance of a tiger randomly popping up on the course is effectively 0. All it sees is you're depleting energy stores far more quickly than you can replenish them over the long term and it tries very hard to keep you from doing that.
In a sense, this is all endurance sport really is, training away and hacking away your body's inhibitory mechanisms to get as close as you possibly can to expressing your true physiological limits, but nobody will ever truly get there.
In trail running especially it's not uncommon to exceed the recommendation of 1g/Kg bodyweight/hour, up to 120g of carbs per hour, for those that can take it.
Its great they don't sit idly around in the body and get transformed into fat but rather they are burned in muscles, but still flooding body again and again with this may have long term negative effects that far outweigh any health gains gained from doing these sports, even at such intensity.
Definitely not a diet one could recommend for regular sporty guys, unless they are uber-competitive freaks who have to win at all costs.
Do you have any evidence for this? The problem with simple carbs (if you don’t already have insulin issues) is that they’re easy to digest and provide minimal satiety so you end up consuming significant calories.
But as far as I’m aware there is no evidence that they’re worse for you than the rapid calorie addition.
That said, pretty much everything about highest-end athletics is net negative for long-term health. It’s incredibly hard on the body to run a marathon in general, let alone at record breaking pace.
The other conditions as I recall are there is only allowed to be one carbon plate in them and a maximum stack height of 40mm.
It really is incredible that Nike kicked off this Supershoe arms race ten years ago and spent (presumably) an incredible amount on R&D, marketing and hype to try and complete the mission of being the first shoe to go Sub-2, and Adidas has pipped them at the last minute... twice in one race. Oh to be a fly on the wall at HQ today...
Though I assume they made a lot of that cash back in the interim selling these things to weekend warrior suckers like myself!
> Improved durability: Supercritical foaming produces a more consistent cell structure in a midsole. This should translate to pressure and weight being more evenly distributed, which should lead to greater durability of the midsole. “We’ve done a lot of testing of what foams look like on a dynamic impactor fresh versus 300 or 500 miles later, and we see less degradation in those materials longer-term,” FitzPatrick says.
> At least in terms of the midsole’s life span, super foams may have done away with the conventional benchmark that running shoes last about 300 miles. “I think it’s a dated standard,” Caprara of Brooks says. “It’s an easy go-to to help simplify. But every foam is different, and it’s not just the foam—it’s how it’s constructed, the shoe’s geometry, the rubber underneath it. There are so many factors. If I were to tell you the Glycerin Max lasts 300 miles, that’s probably less accurate than it is accurate. It’s probably closer to 500.”
https://www.runnersworld.com/gear/a64969945/secret-to-super-...
I’m sure someone will happily sell them to you if you enjoy wasting money.
The continental rubber outsole on these Adidas Adios Pro EVO 3 shoes are so thin (less than two sheets of paper, I think), that they don't even appear in side/profile views of the shoes. The outsole doesn't even extend the length of the entire shoe, it stops around the middle of the shoe. So heel strikers aren't welcome and will have loads of fun in wet weather. see https://www.adidas.com/us/adizero-adios-pro-evo-3/KH7678.htm...
In general, these high stack, forward-leaning shoes are meant for going straight ahead - imagine ladies' high heel shoes with an inch and a half of foam on the bottom - any sharp turns will force the runner to slow down or they'll twist their ankles. Looking at the London Marathon course, https://www.londonmarathonevents.co.uk/london-marathon/cours..., there's about twenty ninety-degree or sharper turns.
There’s a lot of people trying to get a 3 hour marathon or some other goal where chasing the marginal gains is worth the cost to them.
If you are a 3:02 marathoner in normal shoes then run a 3:00 in a super shoe, you are still a 3:02 marathoner in normal shoes.
There were recent tests (in France I think) in schools where 50% or something could not run 1 km (sorry I don't have the details on mobile). These are children who have infinity energy (source: parent).
A typical adult won't make it to 1km (source: going back to sport and dying on a 2.5 km run)
I'm... dubious of this. At 39 I started running, for the first time in my life, ran 5km, didn't actually die, and went from there. I'd think most adults could manage 1km, anyway.
I used to play volleyball a lot at the university, and then at a business league (we were horrendous, but anyway :)). Then I travelled a lot and let myself go.
So I started to commute to the office by bike, about 15 km each way, 5 days a week for two years. I had a puncture and decided to run the remaining distance (about 2 km) because I was late. After 500 m my lungs were on fire.
55 now, I restarted this year sport to do the smallest existing triathlon. I was already biking a bit and "just" have to do the swimming and running. I am at my 10th or so run of 2.5 km (I try to do it 2 times a week) and I am dying several times on the way. The fact I make it back home is religiously miraculous.
I am not an athlete, far from this. I am not the extreme obese either. I am somewhere in between, like are most of the people I know (of different ages). I do not see them running 1 km strong (let's say right above trotting)
Ah - and I did the whole battery of medical tests to make sure that I will not literally die when training. I am in a very good shape, heart wise.
It's easier to draw attention (and therefore sponsorships) if you leave some room to improve on successive attempts. It's riskier to give everything up front and then risk plateauing or regressing in your subsequent attempts.
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/bad-luck-brian
In his marathon debut too.
I wouldn't have predicted this out of nowhere, but if you told me a marathon debut went this well and asked me to guess whose it was, I like to think I'd have come up with Kejelcha in my top few picks.
That said, great 5000/10000 athletes don't always have great marathon careers. An example from this race is the world record holder at both those distances, Joshua Cheptegei. He's run several marathons but none spectacular by his standards. He was in this race too but 7 minutes back.
Rough that his Marathon time is also 2nd!
Super shoes. Most shoes have carbon plates in them now, they act as a spring, storing energy and propelling athletes forwards.
Better understanding of fuelling. Most athletes are taking between 100-120g carbs (sugar) per hour. Bicarbonate of soda has also been effective.
Better planning tools. Athletes look at elevation, headwind, tailwind and will plan a strategy around going harder into the hard stuff and knowing when they can back off and rest.
And to be honest, probably a metric tonne of PEDs (performance enhancing drugs) - unfortunately this is very common across all sports at the top level.
Note that Sawe funded extra testing drug testing for himself for the 2 months before winning the Berlin marathon. The testing followed Athletics Integrity Unit protocols (so surprise testing etc):
https://www.letsrun.com/news/2026/04/how-sabastian-sawe-conv...
Pretty hard to use the in-competition avoidance strategy like that in this out of competition case though.
This seems unlikely to be true, although it is repeated in every article I read about carbon plated shoes. The people that study them in a lab environment seem to disagree. See some of the papers here:
https://www.wouterhoogkamer.com/science2
However, I agree wholeheartedly with the overall points in your post!
I’m guessing like most things of this nature, you’re likely to have super-responders, responders and non-responders?
Also interestingly, the shoe in this record uses much less carbon than past shoes, both saving weight and allowing even more super foam where much of the energy return comes from. Though there so much variance in shoe design and materials there are only theories on how much comes from the plate vs foam vs stack height vs weight vs other factors.
When I was young everyone acted like running was all about who could endure misery the longest. I think if I had known about these aspects it would’ve seemed more strategic and interesting (especially with smart phones to help). Alas, these days all my effort is in making sure my run doesn’t kill my knees :\
I wonder where that leaves the barefoot movement. Hype dust?
If I'm going bouldering I absolutely cram my toes into a tiny rock climbing shoe, because it allows me to stand on ledges I couldn't without the extra support from the shoe.
That being said, if barefoot generally feels good to you and you're not chasing the pinacle of performance it's probably a perfectly fine choice for your recreational runs.
The carbon plate revolution is the main driver for drop in times over the last 5+ years
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-27335251
If this were a bodybuilding discussion, you would get advice on how to manage DOMS symptoms and how to plan your loading schedule, nobody would say that weightlifting "doesn't work" because a beginner got sore after lifting a 80kg barbell for the first time. But people has been conditioned to think that running is a purely cardio activity, so we don't talk about how the muscles and tendons in the foot need to be loaded up gradually just like your bicep.
Barefoot running is a weightlifting activity. Your calf muscle has to lift your entire bodyweight for the forefoot stride. "No pain no gain" applies. Proper posture and techniques are important. Proper workout schedule and loading plan with rest days are important. Sufficient protein intake are important.
You have to take it easy.
Build low impact volume (walking and hiking), and then scale it (jogging then running), over time emphasizing recovery. Shoe adapted gaits are expecting materials to handle forces that simply aren’t there ‘barefoot’ (minimalist).
Flip side: adapt like you understand the intense forces generated in running and that the baseline level of chronic dysfunction is high, and proper foot function can help correct movement form and posture issues, both of which are major drivers of chronic pain.
Big thick shoes allow us to run like assholes. Shin splints, knee problems, chronic injuries, overuse injuries… Great for competition(!), great for sacrificing health to get speed (faster!). Unquestionably better for racing. But for people interested in longevity, evolution did one thing, Nike/Adidas another.
Why is going harder in the hard stuff and easier in the easy stuff more efficient or faster than vice versa? I imagine arguments either way:
Going harder when it's easy gives you higher ROI. Or maybe going easier when it's hard is just too slow. And maybe that is too simplistic: Maybe it depends on how hard; that is, maybe there is a threshold.
Wind drag goes up with v squared, so power required goes up with v cubed.
If you run at 105% speed downhill,that requires almost 16% more power to overcome wind drag. You might be better off running at 100% speed downhill (and "saving" that 16% power), and pushing harder to run as close as you can to 100% speed on the uphill stretches that would otherwise have you running slower than 100%. The power used to increase your potential energy going uphill is "zero sum" because you get it back when you go back downhill -n there no pesky v squared or v cubed non linearity there (assuming the race starts and finishes at the same elevation).
40mm stack height maximum One carbon plate only (some shoes were including a second). Must be on sale to the public for < 4 mths before the race in question
Puma makes a shoe that's non-compliant with the above (two plates, not sure about the stack height), for what it's worth.
Based on the quote below, next thing we will see is a "constructors championship" similar to F1 for winning shoe constructor in the 'major' marathons :-(.
" This dominance continued in 2024, with adidas athletes wearing Adizero models winning six out of 12 World Major Marathons – more than any other brand."
and yes, of course i race in super shoes :-).
There are age group leaders as well. That's perhaps a hundred people, of the tens of thousands running next to me.
Marathons are about running my own pace. The fact that there exists a world record is a piece of trivia.
I do find the record fascinating. If I take the 5k, 10k and half-marathon world records and double them then I can run faster than that. But for the marathon I'm a long way off. There's something uniquely difficult about it because it's not just going for a run, but fuelling and training your gut and pacing. I've only done 2 marathons, but I do find them uniquely difficult so for me its extra special to see how fast a human can do it in.
Of course innovation in shoes will have a bigger marginal impact (because physics).
It's also somewhat ironic for a race supposedly modeling a messenger running the distance in an emergency situation.
Three athletes broke the men's world record. One athlete broke the women's world record, and three were in the all time top 5. An Irish record was also broken, likely other countries too that I'm not familiar with.
Not to take anything away from the achievements. Incredible running.
Not so. She broke a record for a female-only-pacer marathon time. The women's world record was much, much faster.
However, because marathon are often mixed gender and the best male runners are significantly faster than the best female runners, it is possible for a woman to be paced from the gun to the tape by a male runner. For this reason, there are separate records for the women's marathon for women's only events.
[0] This is one of the things that made Kipchoge's original sub 2 result not record-eligible.
She broke the thing that the IAAF have gone back and forth on calling "the world record". It's the relevant record for this event - there was no more chance of her beating the man-paced record than of beating the men's record or the Le Mans lap record.
Unusual!
https://news.adidas.com/sabastian-sawe---london-marathon/a/0...
Very few mere mortals could run that fast for even 100m.
That works out to roughly a 16.7-second 100m. While certainly not crawling, that would be a fairly average pace for a fairly fit middle- to early-high-schooler with a bit of practice.
Yes that’s insane to maintain for a marathon, but it’s not even remotely out of reach for 100m for most relatively-fit people at some point in their lives.
At my peak, I finished the NYC Marathon in the top 2%. I still finished 45 minutes behind the winner.
It feels like elite athletes aren’t even competing in the same sport.
https://youtu.be/xkBmYQucyMs
https://www.athletic.net/team/770/track-and-field-outdoor/20...
* of course one mile is hardly comparable to the marathon that pros are able to sustain such speeds over...
https://www.athletic.net/TrackAndField/rankings/list/168546/...
That gives us 125k high schoolers in the USA who can break 04:30 for 1600m. There are about 18M high school students. So of just the high school population alone, about 0.7% of them can do this.
Assuming there are the 4x as many adults that can do this as there are high school students, that gives us slightly less than 0.2% of the total US population capable of this.
I rest my case.
Afterwards I did some quick numbers and realised the average marathon runner was not only going a lot quicker than I was, but they were doing it for a further 41km
Also bear in mind running a single mile under 4 mins was considered impossible for a long time.
It’s totally remarkable.
It’s not meant to be malicious they just don’t report on things that don’t get enough engagement. If you look at the long list of sports they cover, there’s nothing running related even mentioned. They do now have an article on it in their Olympics category as of 2 hours ago. But I feel like them not having a breaking news coverage on a Sunday in this sport is to be expected more so than your expectation of them covering it.
Was there perfect conditions.or something?
Insane you could run 1:59:41 and not win!
Sabastian Sawe 1:59:30
Yomif Kejelcha 1:59:41
Jacob Kiplimo 2:00:28
The previous official record was Kelvin Kiptum's time of 2:00:35 in 2023. Eliud Kipchoge did 1:59:40 in 2019, but that wasn't record-eligible as it was held under controlled conditions. Source: The article.
It does sound like the course and the weather made it more likely to happen. And technical advances in shoe composition.
> The leading men went through halfway in 60 minutes and 29 seconds: fast but not exceptionally so. But it turned out that Sawe was merely warming up.
Between 30 and 35 kilometres, Sawe and Kejelcha ran a stunning 13:54 for 5km to see off Kiplimo. Yet, staggeringly, more was to come as the pair covered kilometres 35 to 40 in 13:42. To put this into context, that time is two seconds faster than the 5km parkrun world record, set by the Irish international Nick Griggs.
It was only after a 24th mile, run in 4:12, that Kejelcha wilted. But still Sawe kept going. Astonishingly, he crossed the line having run the second half in just over 59 minutes.
“Before 41 kilometres, I’m enjoying, I’m relaxed,” said Kejelcha, who had won silver over 10,000m at last year’s world championships.
“My body is all great. At exactly 41 kilometres, my body stopped. I tried to push, but my legs were done.
Sawe, though, powered on to set the fastest official marathon time in history. For good measure, it was also 10 seconds faster than Eliud Kipchoge’s unofficial 26.2 mile best, set in Vienna in 2019.
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2026/apr/26/sabastian-sawe...
5km - 14:14 10km - 28:35 15km - 43:10 20km - 57:21 Half - 60:29 25km - 71:41 30km - 1:26:03 35km - 1:39:57 40km - 1:53:39 Finish - 1:59:30
Yomif Kejelcha also ran sub-two, clocking 1:59:41 on his debut marathon
You have to feel for Kejelcha - breaking 2h marathon and not even winning the race!
https://runrepeat.com/adidas-adizero-adios-pro-evo-3
Like the number one endurance runner in the world will get a minute off their marathon time because a shoe manufacturer spent $1M making custom shoes for that athlete which don't even have a size they're just "For this one specific person, now" but then some guy on Reddit wants better shoes because he's sure his four hour marathon would have been "more like three" if he had those elite shoes instead of the $100 Nikes he wore...
The big improvement then was a carbon plate. Adidas (and others) followed suit. The subsequent improvements since then have been marginal but the margins are thin at that level. In this case the big advancement has been the weight of the shoe.
EDIT: Also it's worth noting these shoes are $500 retail. Adidas will for sure get a boost in sales from this, but there's definitely competition in the $200~$300 marathon running shoe space that won't solely draw everyone to Adidas)
I think the big story here may be the nutrition science to get these guys to absorb a lot of carbs during the run, more than the shoes.
Essentially the argument given was too much advantage came from the shoes and they didn't want racing to be about shoe technology development.
The advancements in shoes have made a measurable impact, but there are lots of optimizations being worked on.
If you're bloody quick and born in Birmingham (either of them) in 1900 you can probably find out about and get yourself a chance to attempt that world record, but if you're born in Kapsabet (in Kenya) in 1900 good luck, even in Nairobi I wouldn't bet on it.
But yeah at this point, “it’s the shoes, stupid” should defo be the main part of the conversation.
Or did the AI say we should be using PVA/cyanoacrylate/polyurethane glue or something?
It would be interesting to adjust this speed to account for the insane advancements in shoe technology over the last decade. Could it be as simple as measuring the delta in median marathon performance? Then look backwards to, say, 1996 and see what the technology-adjusted 2:00 mark is.
Sub-2hr marathon, beat the previous world record before Sunday, on your first try, and you don't win! Bad timing...
Prize money for London Marathon 2026 - https://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/38880592/london-marathon-2026...
Looks like first place male gets US$330K. Second place will get US$180K.
Divide by 2 to get the approximate hourly rate. :)
There's been lots of research into shoes though, so you might be able to work something out. For instance Jack Daniels (the running coach, not the beverage!) found that adding 100 grams to a running shoe increased aerobic effort by around 1%.
The popularity of running waxes and wanes - and the performance of the median runner varies with popularity.
Back in the 1980s the average half marathon finishing time was 1 hour 40 minutes - whereas today it's a little above 2 hours because there are a lot more people particpating.
London is a fast course. Let’s see what happens in Chicago and Berlin. If it was primarily tech that did it, we should see the record fall again.
This is a nice video of the last 10 mins of the historic marathon race finish
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1voTDQQQf5g
Now hitting a 1:30 HM is something different and will be forever out of reach for many people.
Endurance sports are quite accessible and don't require that much time, effort, or talent to get way better than the vast majority of people, it's just consistency.
FWIW, that now includes me, as a 62 year old. I can hit 6:30 pace for 400m, but find it almost impossible to get under 10:0x for a mile. And that's even after 6 months of training for a 50 mile trail race.
Considering that you can still do a decent sprint over 400m and have the endurance for ultra marathon distances at lower pace, it sounds a bit odd.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelvin_Kiptum
- https://www.mdpi.com/2813-0413/5/1/2
- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29143929/
- https://sportrxiv.org/index.php/server/preprint/view/297
Amazing these guys did it in a real race with no one in front of them (at the end at least)
What effects does marathon running have on the body long term?
Also it must be an crazy feeling to be Kejelcha, the guy who came in 2nd place. It would have been a world record, except for Sawe!
It's also worth remembering that "race" is a social construct and is only somewhat correlated to genetics, whereas almost certainly any effect we're talking about here is dominated by genetics, although fun fact, Sawe's uncle is apparently a moderately famous runner and hooked him up with a trainer, so it's not like "Knowing a guy who knows a guy" didn't help and that's way less to do with genetics.
The "scientific racism" of confusing "The world's fastest sprinters tend to be from this Haplogroup" with "Everybody in that Haplogroup is an Athlete and so can't do intellectual stuff" is completely insane, that's how you get "I bet this old white man from a Reality TV show will be a better executive leader than that black politician we had last time".
I used to love F1 for the tech that would filter down to my car in ten years time, but that is not a thing anymore.
I for one love the advances in technology in something as supposedly simple as a shoe. And maybe I'll get to use it on a hike in a few years.
These shoes are practically disposable. They trade longevity for noticeable gains in performance. Even the tier below don’t last very long. This is not tech that is going to filter down to your hiking boots.
I doubt this sort of thing will translate, but I wouldn't put it past hikers to opt for something less durable to shave a few grams.
But the initial tech on an F1 car was not made for 200k miles either.
Even if the full tech stack to make it all work - material science, physical layout and construction - doesn't transfer, maybe some bit of it will.
My point being though, unlike some purists, I like the technology race. It is much better than having a brand war simply on the basis of brand loyalty.
That's not me being sarcastic. I never, ever thought this would happen
Besides weather, there are loads of factors in the performance: shoes, clothes, food, etc. So basically every record gets an asterisk?
There is no rule for marathons.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00421-010-1410-1
I thought there were scientists on here...
Don’t forget that two people actually ran under the two hour mark.
Obviously, barring wind, which is why some marathon courses are not eligible for world records.
https://worldathletics.org/records/certified-roadevents
It should be.
By contrast, hail/rain and wind will negatively impact almost everyone, which is why talking about "a bad weather day" makes more sense.
https://marathonhandbook.com/large-scale-marathon-study-iden...
I just said it needs an asterisk, not withholding anything. What if someone runs one second slower in higher humidity and temperature. Now that I would applaud.
It’s essentially the same as not setting the record. It would be qualified every single time it’s mentioned and be functionally saying “…so it doesn’t count.”
Edit: I was thinking in km/h and mixed it up. Sorry.
Just yesterday I saw a learner driving at what seemed 10 mph in a 40 mph road, creating a massive queue.