AsianScientist (May 23, 2017) – Like many runners, I spent two hours on 6 May glued to my computer screen, hoping to see history being made. Sixty-three years to the day after Roger Bannister ran a four-minute mile, Nike staged its Breaking2 event, an all-out effort to run a marathon (42.195 kilometers) in under two hours.
That barrier remains standing; in fact, few experts expected it to fall. But Kenya’s Eliud Kipchoge came tantalizingly close, missing the target by a mere 25 seconds.
His brave, inspiring attempt shaved more than two minutes off the current world record of 2:02:57, set in 2014 by Dennis Kimetto, also of Kenya. That’s a roughly 2.5 percent improvement, considered huge for elite marathoners already performing near the top of their game.
But because Nike essentially used every tactic it could to engineer the race conditions to the runners’ advantage, Kipchoge’s time will not count as a new record. And so the jury is still out: Have we truly succeeded in pushing the limits of human physical ability, and are we really any closer to the two-hour promised land?
Your sole provider
Depending on how cynical you are, you might think that Breaking2 was launched not to push boundaries, but to sell shoes.
Athletic footwear is a billion-dollar industry, and Nike seems to be falling behind: a 2016 survey of 10,000 serious runners in the US found that only nine percent wore its shoes, putting it behind Brooks (23 percent), Asics (18 percent) and Saucony (14 percent). For a company founded on running shoes, this is, let’s admit it, a little embarrassing.
Enter the Nike Zoom Vaporfly Elite, a concept shoe with a lightweight carbon-fiber plate in the sole that is supposed to help propel the runner forward, hopefully into sub-two-hour glory. Kipchoge wore a version customized to his foot dimensions and stride; the company says that the shoe can confer a four percent improvement in running efficiency (consumer versions will go on sale in June, so brace yourself for an epidemic of efficient gearheads).
No one really knows how much this fancy footwear helped Kipchoge, but most sports scientists consider its effect to be marginal. It would also vary across different individuals—worth noting is that fact that two other elite runners, Zersenay Tadese and Lelisa Desisa, also in customised Nikes, started the race with Kipchoge, but dropped off the pace to finish in 2:06:51 and 2:14:10 respectively.
The path of least resistance
In addition to whatever effect the shoes had, Breaking2 was also run under optimum conditions: cool temperatures, mild winds, and a pancake-flat course (a Formula One track in Monza, Italy) with gradual bends in place of sharp turns. The runners had also had their sweat analyzed, and were supplied with hydration tailored to replenish what electrolytes they had lost.
But the factor that is likely to have had the biggest impact on finishing times was also the most obvious. If you watched the race, you’d have noticed Kipchoge running behind a pack of pacers—and a Tesla car with a giant clock mounted on its roof.
At least one commentator thinks that the wind shielding effect of this gratuitously large clock, together with the draft provided by the pacer pack, accounted for most of Kipchoge’s performance improvement. Add to that the green laser beam that was used to mark out the most efficient route to follow, and you’ve just given the skeptics a field day.
The quest continues
So, how optimistic you are about whether the two-hour barrier will fall depends on how much of a purist you happen to be.
In the days leading up to Breaking2, I’ll admit to being rather cynical about the hype (not that I had any right to be, as I would be beyond thrilled if I one day manage to run a sub-two-hour half marathon).
But the event itself temporarily shut my inner cynic up. Watching the three elite runners and the tremendous pacer pack give it their all was truly inspiring; those last fifteen minutes, with only Kipchoge left in the bid for glory, were absolutely nail-biting. For me, it showed that while you can throw enormous amounts of money and resources at optimizing the heck out of every detail, the quest in the end still boils down to raw human spirit, digging deep to see it through.
What next? Nike is not the only group attempting this feat—Sub2, a consortium of scientists and engineers, has been working on achieving this goal for years. Yannis Pitsiladis, the group’s founder, told Science magazine that when the barrier does fall, it will not be because of one single advance (miracle shoes, for instance), but numerous small advances across different aspects of physiological performance.
Whether the next attempt is staged by academics or by a for-profit company, you can bet I’ll be watching, heart in mouth—both as a scientist and as a runner.
This article is from a monthly column called The Bug Report. Click here to see the other articles in this series.
———
Copyright: Asian Scientist Magazine; Photo: Shutterstock.
Disclaimer: This article does not necessarily reflect the views of AsianScientist or its staff.
