on the morning of Saturday October 12th
Eliot Kipchoge a became the first person
in history to complete a marathon in
under two hours his time one hour 59
minutes and 40 seconds many people tell
people at Penn know you - limited you
can't do it I'm expecting more it is a
major milestone for athletics comparable
in significance to Roger Bannister
running the mile in under four minutes
the marathon was staged specifically for
hip show game and he was aided
throughout by coordinated groups of
Pacers he was also racing on a fast
course and wearing some very fancy and
very controversial shoes with us today
to talk about how all of those factors
came together in Kipp Chagas race on
Saturday is dr. Michael joiner dr.
joiner is a world-renowned expert in
human performance and also about 30
years ago you wrote a paper positing
that a sub two hour marathon was
possible what were the biggest factors
that came together to produce this
unprecedented nine right well you have
really a truly superior generational
athlete who's very good at distance
running for a long time who's typically
never had a bad day in the marathon but
also has excellent times at shorter
events he's run a mile and close to 3
minutes and 50 seconds so superior
athlete mr. Kip Jogi trains really
really hard he's been able to avoid
injury over many many years so he's been
able to be very consistent so I mean you
start with the athlete in the course of
a very flat course with minimal turns
was helpful and then the pacing scheme
that they used and also the shoes
it was Kipchoge a second attempt at
breaking the two-hour barrier the first
came in 2017 at the time we examined
what it would take for somebody to break
the two-hour barrier in our first
episode of almost impossible by inviting
wired staff members to try running on a
treadmill at two hour marathon pace and
it did not go as well as we'd hoped
he did manage to finish the marathon
faster than anyone had in history but he
still came short of his goal fast
forward two years and Kipchoge a has
pulled it off so I was just kind of
really in awe of the whole thing as I
watched him do this but it it really
frankly was not that surprising based on
what we'd seen a couple years ago after
what we saw in 2017 I was pretty
confident he would do it barring
misfortune getting tripped a cramp
something like that and if the weather
cooperated a lot of people including
myself felt he would have done it in
2017 if it had been five ten degrees
cooler so I was mostly focused on just
his tremendous sense of rhythm and tempo
I saw and the tremendous effort he was
putting forth and at the same time his
ability relaxed what are the major
takeaways from Kipchoge a breaking two
in Vienna well really standard stuff for
any athlete you need to be consistent
you need to learn how to manage your
effort and you need to learn how to put
forth great effort and relax at the same
time then there are larger logistical
lessons it could be adopted by other
marathons in terms of getting an optimal
course improving the field running the
course at the right time of day under
good weather conditions that could lead
other people to run very very fast
marathons in the near future
why isn't Kip Chagas performance in
Vienna eligible for world-record
consideration I think there are two main
reasons the first is the patient
strategy the Pacers did not start the
race with him and the fact that they
drifted in and out or came in and out in
shifts was was one real problem in terms
of a record the second is that water was
handed to him by people riding bikes
versus having to stop at the eight
stations and grab the fluids so those
would be the two of the main reasons
that it was not not record eligible on
top of being a tremendous athlete right
he was also running this at an
exhibition event correct on a fast
course with some Pacers and some shoes
right let's go through each of those one
by one and talk about sort of what kind
of impact they might have had on this
already phenomenal athlete right right
so let's start first with the course
this was an exhibition event right stage
specifically for Kip Cho gay and what
does that mean that just means no other
people were doing the race with them no
other people were doing the race they
actually had a window of
days so they could had time so they
could wait for good weather they had
good weather on the on the first day of
their window so that worked well then
they were running down one of the great
avenues in Vienna an old imperial road
from the Habsburg Empire which is
straight and then they had a lollipop
essentially on each end so they minimize
the number of turns it's known
especially that right angle turns cost
you about a second per turn so they
really only had six or eight turns the
whole whole course and they were
relatively gradual and the course was
completely flat close to sea level so
there was plenty of oxygen around and
there might have been a few bumps in the
course but actually that may be a little
bit better than a completely fat flat
course because it breaks up your
biomechanical pattern a little bit so
the course itself super fast right off
the bat a good sign things are gonna go
well correct he also had this pace group
right now what was unique about the pace
group well they essentially ran in
formation with mr. Capshaw he behind
several Pacers now they ran kind of an
inverted V in 2017 they tried more of
what looked like a flock of birds flying
where he was protected there's some data
going back to the about 1970 by a man
named Griffith Pugh who was a well-known
physiologist Pugh had done some very
interesting work on pacing and showed
that if people even ran single-fire file
it at about the speeds kept told he was
running that they could expect to reduce
her energy cost significantly and get an
edge so I think a lot of people might be
surprised to hear that drag would be
right have as big an impact and I think
there's sort of two things that are
important right one is that the faster
you go career more resistance you
experience and over two hours
it adds right right if you start getting
a percent here and a percent there
each percent is a little bit over a
minute because two hour marathon is 120
minutes so if you even just get one or
two percent from the drafting and Pacey
that's very helpful in a record eligible
marathon my understanding is the Pacers
are required to start right with the
front runners right and they can only
lead the group for as long as they are
able to run so what was unique about the
pacing wasn't just the configuration
that they occupied it was also the fact
that they
stuck with him the entire race right he
had people the whole way as you point
out and there were several yeah as
opposed to just one or two and besides
the drafting there's a psychological
price you pay when you're in front and I
think having people to take the pace and
you be able to kind of tap into their
rhythm can be very very helpful the
third and I think probably most
controversial elements of this race was
the shoes that kept show gay was wearing
right in 2017 at Monza he wore a special
elite version of a shoe Nike calls the
vapor fly for president that 4% refers
to how much more economical the shoe is
purported to make runners the shoe he
wore in Vienna
he'd never worn in a race right and is
faster even supposedly so this raises
this question of technological doping
right is that something that people
should be legitimately concerned about
how big of an impact do you think it had
in this race so what's novel about the
shoes is that they have a carbon plate
in the midsole and the carbon plate in
the midsole this thought to be able to
make the runners more efficient or more
economical as a result of capturing more
of the recoil from landing and then
pushing off there have been several
iterations of the shoes and he's running
several generations of them including
apparently a custom-built pair with with
more or different carbon plates right in
Vienna it certainly had an impact aero
bikes have made a huge difference in
cycling the tech suits in swimming which
were subsequently banned made a huge
difference and really maybe the best
analogy are so-called clap or slap
skates in speed skating where there's
actually a hinged skate that permitted
people to get a bit more push off and
transfer more force which revolutionized
speed skating and there's a big
controversy about it but you know golf
clubs have changed Paul ball polls have
changed tennis rackets have changed
bikes have changed in and so forth so it
seems to be kind of sports specific and
nobody's decided to regulate what I
think that the cat is out of the bag
with the shoes and when I talked to my
biomechanics colleagues they think it
would be trivial for people to engineer
the mid soles of shoes using any number
of techniques it seems to me that one of
the biggest issues surrounding the shoes
is that if it is a technology
proprietary to Nike right Nike athletes
have an unfair advantage over right
athletes not sponsored by Nike which in
that case is actually the swimsuit
analogy is very apt right because it was
speedo
it was speedo athletes just swept the
Olympics right here right so when you
say the cats out of the bag and that
people should be able to sort of write
engineer another version of it what I'm
hearing is that that should permeate
throughout the rest of the shoe market
and the right real 'evil the playing
field though we might hope you know a
lot of people place emphasis on fast
course right a a systematized pace group
fancy shoes but at the bottom of all of
those sort of the thing that all of
those things are orbiting is this
athlete right keep choking right and
like there are ten people on earth who
can run a marathon in under two hours
five minutes this year right and captial
gay is the fastest right and so it's yes
those three things matter but on anybody
else it's not a given that they'd be
able to run it under too well and that's
one of the things people think about
when you talk about technology or some
of these strategies is is you have to be
really a superior athlete to to leverage
them even though this is not an official
world record it's still significant why
well for somebody to go out and run 26
miles and change in just a little over
430 per mile a time which would win most
High School track meets or under 28 30
per 10,000 meters that's quite
remarkable yeah quite remarkable it's
incredible on what you sort of yeah
no matter what circumstances right it's
wrong right it's yes yeah it is quite
remarkable and the other thing that
always happens when you see somebody
break a barrier like this is people
begin to think about what's possible and
and maybe push themselves a little bit
harder I think we may see this in an
open race sooner than people think
thank you so much for for joining us it
was great fun to talk to you around man
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