Given that "[i]t will not be recognised as the official marathon world record because it was not in open competition and he used a team of rotating pacemakers," Mr. Kipchoge's attitude represents the best of sport:
"Now I've done it, I am expecting more people to do it after me... This shows the positivity of sport. I want to make it a clean and interesting sport. Together when we run, we can make it a beautiful world."
Besides, he already has the official world record anyway. This was an experiment to see if it was possible to shave a couple dozen seconds off the marathon time of the greatest marathon runner of all time. Doing it again in race conditions—whether it’s by Kipchoge or another runner—will be a historic milestone but there is greater confidence that it will happen now.
Besides, I know you can’t control for adrenaline and elation, but the fact that he picked up 10 seconds of pace at the end—when he was running only 10 seconds shy of 2 hours for the whole marathon—and then spent a good half hour running around and celebrating after he crossed the finish line might be a hint that we haven’t even found the real limits yet.
I'm not alone in thinking this, but it's not just his pace that makes him truly remarkable, it's his consistency. I can't remember accurate numbers, but I think it's like in ten consecutive marathons, he came first nine times.
Runners are prone to injury, and if you're not feeling 100% on the race you're likely to not win or run at your best.
I think the team did not fully grasp how huge of a difference laser guided pacemaker and fully covered wind guard makes. The difference could have been greater -- maybe we're even going to see a peloton effect in future marathons utilized to the fullest.
Back then people didn’t believe a four minute mile is possible, but after the barrier has been broken, dozens followed suit. In his eyes, his achievement is not the run, but breaking the barrier, and I appreciate him for that.
> after the barrier has been broken, dozens followed suit.
I read an interesting article about that explaining that this wasn't really down to any kind of barriers but more having pacers and a better track (which is coincidentally about the previous 2h marathon attempt.)
I just formed my own officiating world record certification body called WASI; We All Saw It. WASI rejects who-evers claim to a monopoly on declaring who ran what, when, and where. WASI officially recognizes Elluid Kipchoge as the most badass marathon distance runner alive.
he's also the 'normal' marathon world champion. He just didn't exceed his own previous record with this because it didn't qualify in this category.
You wouldn't allow a rocket propelled and self driving formel1 car into the same bracket as the normal league either.... Though the difference is significantly less here
It's a group of runners there to keep up the running pace, to block wind and generally add morale.
Over the duration of the attempt, runners will hop in and hop out of the run to keep the running pace alongside Kipchoge as well as block wind (a non-trivial factor) over 26.2 miles. Also, it is mentally boosting to have teammates and even competitors of his run along side him as he pushes his body and mind farther than he has ever had before.
nit-picking but of all the pacers (40-ish) only 10 or so are (or were in their past) "marathoners" and none would be considered Kipchoge's competitors. If I remember correctly they all have PRs in the 02:05-02:10 range.
Considering the required speed most pacers were 5000m and 1000m people
This is an extraordinary achievement. It was just last September that Kipchoge set the W.R. time of 2:01:39[1]. It’s only a matter of time (no pun intended) till sub-2 is broken in competition. Probably at Berlin. Just knowing it’s possible is a huge barrier to break through.
I’ve run over two dozen marathons and it took me more than a decade of running (I started running in my 30s) before I was able to qualify for Boston. But once I did so, I was able to easily do so many times thereafter. Much of that was finally getting into proper physical conditioning, but knowing something is possible cannot be discounted. (My next goal is sub-3.)
Kipchoge’s next goal is surely a second Olympic marathon gold at Tokyo 2020. At that point he’ll be 35. He’ll have a few more years of prime marathon running after that at best, so I’m not sure he can run a sub-2 in competition but only he knows how much is in him. He’s the most accomplished marathoner of our time, but still, in 2013 the W.R. was lowered at Berlin by Kipsang. We’ll see.
(Zane Robertson, one of two identical twin brothers from NZ who live & train in Kenya and ran 2:08:19 for the marathon):
"That’s when Robertson got involved, commenting that Kipchoge is over 40. When challenged on this, Robertson claims “There [sic] passport ages are all fake so they can cheat Jr’s and get contracts,” and claiming authority on the subject because he lives and trains in Kenya, along with his brother."
Jr's refers to races for men & women under 20 years old.
It's much easier to do well against non-African teenagers if you're several years older and have trained for that much longer.
Congratulations on qualifying for Boston. I found "Jack Daniel's Running Formula" an invaluable resource in learning how to obtain the best performance from your body. His V-Dot fitness estimator can predict your marathon time (with optimal training) from your 5k race performance. I also had a goal to run a 3 hour marathon, but my 5k race time was just a few seconds too slow to extrapolate a 3 hour marathon. I did hit my predicted marathon performance (3:06), so I was able to give up the 3 hour goal with no regret. I recognized that it might not be realistic to improve my leg speed and 5k times at age 40, having over 6 years of good training, coaching, and racing experience under my belt.
Thanks. Sorry to hear you've written off sub-3. I've got that book and many others. :-) I got myself from a first marathon of 4:22 to a 3:36 with Pfitzinger and stubbornness, to a 3:22 with Crossfit, improved running form, and more training, and to a 3:12 BQ and then 3:07 PR with better training. I respond well to mileage, but need the strength training so I can put in higher mileage without injury. Knocking off another 7 minutes, especially in my late 40s now, will probably take some coaching help.
I don't know how much credence to give to VDOT or any of the other calculators working from 5K or 10K estimates. I think they are okay for guidelines but wouldn't use one to say I can't unless it was way out of range. I much prefer a half-marathon and fast-finish long runs for predictors. I do like to run Yasso 800s for confidence though.
> but knowing something is possible cannot be discounted
This applies to other areas of life. On a few occasions, I didn't try things because I thought it was not possible based on my background/age (e.g. applying for some position, school, or switching careers), only to realize later that people with the exact same profile managed to do it....
Unfortunately the linked article seems to have disappeared.
I wonder if today's record was run with those special Nike shoes with the blades inside... The ones that supposedly give you a 1 percent boost or something similar... If you have shoes that give you such a boost, is it doping?
I remembered this article also, thanks for digging it up again.
Its predictions were pretty spot-on:
- Predicted in November, actual mid-October
- Predicted in Debno, actual in Vienna, but both are very flat courses (I can't find if Debno is flatter)
- "The pacemakers will form a human wall" - yes, pacemaker strategy seemed critical here.
- "Mindblowing pay-day" - No clue, no articles seem to mention it.
- "Kenyans who dominate world marathon lists generally do little, if any, weight training, which may represent an untapped source of improvement." - "To his normal preparations he added workouts focused on core strength" (though unclear if weights were a focus).
- "5' 6" and [120lb]" - Kipchoge is 5'5" and 125lb.
- "access to [technology] we can't imagine" - the shoes I guess - I don't know how big an advance these are - compared to his last attempt the pacemakers and location seem more relevant.
- "early 20s" - complete miss.
- "I’m saying the year is...2075" and two generations late.
Interestingly, it predicts very precisely the characteristics of the run and the runner, except for time - both the runner's age, and the time until it would happen.
Large parts of the track were re-paved specially for this event with fine-grained asphalt to avoid holes and unevenness. The re-pavement was paid by a project sponsor.
Motor doping is the term for hiding a small electric motor in race bikes. So doping could apply to situations outside of using drugs to enhance your body.
I mean rebound energy is great for a force to hit the ground with less Cush under foot. Newton’s law of physics bounce a ball off pavement and then on a pillow and see what has better rebound energy
So Kipchoge had rotating teams of pacemakers running _before_ him, throughout
the race. Each team was able to outrun Kipchoge for a short amount of time,
but of course Kipchoge himself had to keep the same pace throughout the race.
This reminded me of an episode from Terry Pratchett's Small Gods. This is
mostly from memory, but he describes an invasion of the country Ephebe where
the invasion force comes from the side of a desert considered impassable,
because no expeditionary force could carry enough provisions to make it
through the desert. The trick is that a number of expeditions have preceded
the invasion whose function was to leave caches of provisions for the actual
invasion force to use. Each expedition only has to carry enough provisions to
make it to a cache location and back and of course multiple expeditions can
deposit provisions to the same cache location, until it is sufficiently
stocked for the invading force.
It's a slow and costly process, but it gets the job done and it made me wonder
if there are algorithms like that, that can compute results otherwise
uncomputable. I'm pretty sure there are- in fact I'm pretty sure it's
something blindingly obvious that I'm missing because I'm thinking of it in
terms of runners and soldiers crossing deserts... Maybe divide and conquer
strategies, or dynamic programming?
There is an excellent book about XM607/ Operation black buck written by Rowland White. It’s not just about the actual mission it’s also about retiring the Vulcan then bringing them back and all the other bit that led up to the mission.
Yeah, OK, wow. That's ... complicated. And I think they didn't manage to get a very good return for all this effort, from a diagonal reading of the article.
Er. Sorry, I'm being thick, but your hint about the link to the relevant maths etc went way over my head. I might be missing a cultural reference? :0
Didn't the British do something similar in the Desert Campaign during WW2, burying supplies to be recovered later. The Long Range Desert Group perhaps?
I don't know about uncomputable but for intractable, I think, and as rco8786 has already pointed out, dynamic programming sorts of fit the bill. Similarly, this is what reinforcement learning does for search. Recursive or sequential monte carlo algorithms where states hold memory across transitions probably also fit this bill. And most generally, this is what humanity does with science, skills and knowledge.
No single human could discover general relativity, but generation after generation, from the first humans who worked out how to count symbolically to the definition of a Lorentzian manifold, we've been leaving caches of knowledge for each other so each next generation could reach ever farther.
Hierarchy, Vorbis said later. The Ephebians didn't think in terms of hierarchies.
No army could cross the desert. But maybe a small army could get a quarter of the way, and leave a cache of water. And do that several times. And another small army could use part of that cache to go further, maybe reach halfway, and leave a cache. And another small army . . .
It had taken months. A third of the men had died, of heat and dehydration and wild animals and worse things, the worse things that the desert held . . .
The benefit of the support runners wasn't just to help him keep pace (he could probably do this with music). They also provide a drafting help to limit any head-on air resistance.
That's how a good chunk of the arctic was discovered. Previous expeditions would go in for the sole purpose of leaving caches of foods and other useful goods.
> It's a slow and costly process, but it gets the job done and it made me wonder if there are algorithms like that, that can compute results otherwise uncomputable
The catch with certain classes (maybe/probably all? disclaimer: am not theoretical computer scientist/mathematician) of uncomputable problems is that they are such that there is no notion of "getting closer" to the solution that's analogous to traversing the desert to a known location. There is no way to verify whether the next incremental step is taking you closer to or farther from the solution because calculating such is essentially the same problem as the root problem. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undecidable_problem
No, you're right. I say "uncomputable" but that's not what's happening here. The problem is not "uncomputable" it's just that the result is negative (X men can't cross Y distance carrying Z provisions).
Thanks for pointing this out, my bad for using "uncomputable" wrong.
This is also why rockets have multiple stages. A single rocket can’t make orbital velocity with significant cargo, but a bigger rocket can get the small rocker part of the way there. It works because the second stage’s lower weight allows for smaller engines and fewer fuel tanks etc.
First thing that comes to mind is using an HP-12c calculator and only having 4 stacks available. You can go further than a regular calculator, but only a little bit at a time so you keep chipping away at a long equation and eventually your stack collapses down into the final answer across the desert ;-)
I don't play many video games, but when I do they tend to be military strategy games of various types. After reading your comment, it made me think if I ever deployed such a tactic in the video games that I've played and I couldn't think of a situation. I found this very interesting! Seems like an amazing dynamic to add to a video game if it were possible.
Some commenters responded saying rockets have this property... but I don't know. I'm having a hard time reconciling that mere stages model this concept. Since if so, you could argue that anything that introduces a progression satisfies this condition. Maybe there is some nuance here, for example, the caches can't be directly controlled by a player.
I've seen this problem several times expressed using camels and bananas [1]
I would also think it's related to the rocket equation - with each iteration of "grab bananas, turn around" you have fewer bananas to carry with you, but it forms a parabolic curve as you need many bananas at the start of the desert, fewer as you go onwards and don't need to make trips to retrieve the bananas you've already eaten.
Solution to the Byzantine General’s Problem using proof of work is possibly an example. The basic problem is: how do you make sure that multiple entities, which are separated by distance, are in absolute full agreement before an action is taken?
If one is not trying to solve it in the fastest time, then an agreed ‘truth’ can be reached after ‘some time’ without a central entity. By deciding to go ‘slow’, a solution can be found eventually.
Maybe some kind of opportunistic prefetching if you have regular deadlines and can expect a regular complex problem deadline. But maybe concurrent threads would be easier, so this could make sense only in a super limited embedded environment.
I can't sprint that fast nowadays. When I was in the Marines 20 years ago, my 3-mile pace was slower than that, and I still had a class "A" run time. This is amazing.
Back in the 1980's I lived next to a park that had a wonderful 5K loop that many people used. One morning I was out running my usual 5k, on track for close to a personal best when someone passed me so quickly and quietly that it startled me. There was a noticeable breeze from her passing. She lapped me twice in the course of my 5K (meaning she did close to 15K).
I found out later she was the current world record holder at 10K meters. And she wasn't pushing it that day.
It's still amazing to point out that the pace he runs over 26 miles is a pace that most people wouldn't be able to maintain for one lap around the track at their local high school.
What was the "Class A time" for the Marines 20 years ago? No offense but if you broke 18 minutes (6:00 mile) for the 3 mile I'd be surprised. Kipchoge just ran a 4:30 mile for 26 miles.
Hell, the best marathoner the US had in the 2000 Olympics ran a 2:30. Literally a half hour slower than Kipchoge.
> No offense but if you broke 18 minutes (6:00 mile) for the 3 mile I'd be surprised.
Ummm... why? Back then I ran 5 miles 3 times a week. They tend to nudge you out of infantry if you aren't getting a class A PFT; I would usually traipse in at 17:30 or so.
His pace was an incredibly consistent 2:50/km which to someone who casually runs with a workout tracker and runs far less distance than a marathon is absurd. I know his official race time is barely slower and this was about shaving a few seconds per km off that, but that pace is just insane.
Austin has a nice and popular trail where many runners train along town lake so back when I was jogging, I would occasionally gets passed by a really great runner (like our local Gilbert Tuhabonye[1]). It's really awe inspiring to be right there--like the difference between only watching Andy Roddick serve at 150+ mph and what I imagine its like trying to return it.
Exactly, I was a middle distance runner back in high school and nowadays focus on half and full marathons. I'm far from being an elite runner, but I do alright at local events.
Readit News
"Now I've done it, I am expecting more people to do it after me... This shows the positivity of sport. I want to make it a clean and interesting sport. Together when we run, we can make it a beautiful world."
An amazing boundary to breach.
Besides, I know you can’t control for adrenaline and elation, but the fact that he picked up 10 seconds of pace at the end—when he was running only 10 seconds shy of 2 hours for the whole marathon—and then spent a good half hour running around and celebrating after he crossed the finish line might be a hint that we haven’t even found the real limits yet.
Runners are prone to injury, and if you're not feeling 100% on the race you're likely to not win or run at your best.
I read an interesting article about that explaining that this wasn't really down to any kind of barriers but more having pacers and a better track (which is coincidentally about the previous 2h marathon attempt.)
https://sportsscientists.com/2014/12/2-hour-marathon-4-min-m...
To mix metaphor with reality, there was perhaps a pack speeding toward the finish line, and one crossed it first.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/04/obituaries/roger-banniste...
You wouldn't allow a rocket propelled and self driving formel1 car into the same bracket as the normal league either.... Though the difference is significantly less here
His achievements are listed on Wikipedia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliud_Kipchoge
Why are those pacemakers that important?
Over the duration of the attempt, runners will hop in and hop out of the run to keep the running pace alongside Kipchoge as well as block wind (a non-trivial factor) over 26.2 miles. Also, it is mentally boosting to have teammates and even competitors of his run along side him as he pushes his body and mind farther than he has ever had before.
”Drafting behind another runner can conserve energy, although the effect is less than in cycling due to the fact that speeds are lower.”
There also is a psychological effect. It is easier to keep a constant pace if there’s somebody in front of you that does it, too.
Deleted Comment
Many of whom might be considered his competitors, too
Considering the required speed most pacers were 5000m and 1000m people
https://youtu.be/k-XgKRJUEgQ
This is an extraordinary achievement. It was just last September that Kipchoge set the W.R. time of 2:01:39[1]. It’s only a matter of time (no pun intended) till sub-2 is broken in competition. Probably at Berlin. Just knowing it’s possible is a huge barrier to break through.
I’ve run over two dozen marathons and it took me more than a decade of running (I started running in my 30s) before I was able to qualify for Boston. But once I did so, I was able to easily do so many times thereafter. Much of that was finally getting into proper physical conditioning, but knowing something is possible cannot be discounted. (My next goal is sub-3.)
Kipchoge’s next goal is surely a second Olympic marathon gold at Tokyo 2020. At that point he’ll be 35. He’ll have a few more years of prime marathon running after that at best, so I’m not sure he can run a sub-2 in competition but only he knows how much is in him. He’s the most accomplished marathoner of our time, but still, in 2013 the W.R. was lowered at Berlin by Kipsang. We’ll see.
1. https://www.runnersworld.com/news/a23279362/eliud-kipchoge-m...
A well-known secret in running circles - many Ethiopian and Kenyan runners have dubious official birth years including Eliud Kipchoge.
from https://runningmagazine.ca/the-scene/zane-robertson-swears-k...
(Zane Robertson, one of two identical twin brothers from NZ who live & train in Kenya and ran 2:08:19 for the marathon):
"That’s when Robertson got involved, commenting that Kipchoge is over 40. When challenged on this, Robertson claims “There [sic] passport ages are all fake so they can cheat Jr’s and get contracts,” and claiming authority on the subject because he lives and trains in Kenya, along with his brother."
Jr's refers to races for men & women under 20 years old.
It's much easier to do well against non-African teenagers if you're several years older and have trained for that much longer.
I don't know how much credence to give to VDOT or any of the other calculators working from 5K or 10K estimates. I think they are okay for guidelines but wouldn't use one to say I can't unless it was way out of range. I much prefer a half-marathon and fast-finish long runs for predictors. I do like to run Yasso 800s for confidence though.
This applies to other areas of life. On a few occasions, I didn't try things because I thought it was not possible based on my background/age (e.g. applying for some position, school, or switching careers), only to realize later that people with the exact same profile managed to do it....
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8439408
Unfortunately the linked article seems to have disappeared.
I wonder if today's record was run with those special Nike shoes with the blades inside... The ones that supposedly give you a 1 percent boost or something similar... If you have shoes that give you such a boost, is it doping?
Edit: thank you web Archive: http://web.archive.org/web/20141010142108/http://rw.runnersw...
Its predictions were pretty spot-on:
- Predicted in November, actual mid-October
- Predicted in Debno, actual in Vienna, but both are very flat courses (I can't find if Debno is flatter)
- "The pacemakers will form a human wall" - yes, pacemaker strategy seemed critical here.
- "Mindblowing pay-day" - No clue, no articles seem to mention it.
- "Kenyans who dominate world marathon lists generally do little, if any, weight training, which may represent an untapped source of improvement." - "To his normal preparations he added workouts focused on core strength" (though unclear if weights were a focus).
- "5' 6" and [120lb]" - Kipchoge is 5'5" and 125lb.
- "access to [technology] we can't imagine" - the shoes I guess - I don't know how big an advance these are - compared to his last attempt the pacemakers and location seem more relevant.
- "early 20s" - complete miss.
- "I’m saying the year is...2075" and two generations late.
Interestingly, it predicts very precisely the characteristics of the run and the runner, except for time - both the runner's age, and the time until it would happen.
The pacers wore Vaporfly, Kipchoge wore a prototype. The Vaporfly have been shown to actually make a difference of around 4%.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/07/18/upshot/nike-v...
https://www.believeintherun.com/2019/10/09/a-breakdown-of-th...
Definitely not, as doping is about drugs. It may be cheating though.
This reminded me of an episode from Terry Pratchett's Small Gods. This is mostly from memory, but he describes an invasion of the country Ephebe where the invasion force comes from the side of a desert considered impassable, because no expeditionary force could carry enough provisions to make it through the desert. The trick is that a number of expeditions have preceded the invasion whose function was to leave caches of provisions for the actual invasion force to use. Each expedition only has to carry enough provisions to make it to a cache location and back and of course multiple expeditions can deposit provisions to the same cache location, until it is sufficiently stocked for the invading force.
It's a slow and costly process, but it gets the job done and it made me wonder if there are algorithms like that, that can compute results otherwise uncomputable. I'm pretty sure there are- in fact I'm pretty sure it's something blindingly obvious that I'm missing because I'm thinking of it in terms of runners and soldiers crossing deserts... Maybe divide and conquer strategies, or dynamic programming?
In particular, this diagram from that page makes the process clear: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Black_Buck#/media/Fi...
Hopefully the name of the original mission is enough to help you find a link to some relevant mathematics :-)
http://www.rowlandwhite.com/portfolio-view/vulcan-607/
Er. Sorry, I'm being thick, but your hint about the link to the relevant maths etc went way over my head. I might be missing a cultural reference? :0
No single human could discover general relativity, but generation after generation, from the first humans who worked out how to count symbolically to the definition of a Lorentzian manifold, we've been leaving caches of knowledge for each other so each next generation could reach ever farther.
Hierarchy, Vorbis said later. The Ephebians didn't think in terms of hierarchies.
No army could cross the desert. But maybe a small army could get a quarter of the way, and leave a cache of water. And do that several times. And another small army could use part of that cache to go further, maybe reach halfway, and leave a cache. And another small army . . .
It had taken months. A third of the men had died, of heat and dehydration and wild animals and worse things, the worse things that the desert held . . .
The catch with certain classes (maybe/probably all? disclaimer: am not theoretical computer scientist/mathematician) of uncomputable problems is that they are such that there is no notion of "getting closer" to the solution that's analogous to traversing the desert to a known location. There is no way to verify whether the next incremental step is taking you closer to or farther from the solution because calculating such is essentially the same problem as the root problem. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undecidable_problem
Thanks for pointing this out, my bad for using "uncomputable" wrong.
Great example
Some commenters responded saying rockets have this property... but I don't know. I'm having a hard time reconciling that mere stages model this concept. Since if so, you could argue that anything that introduces a progression satisfies this condition. Maybe there is some nuance here, for example, the caches can't be directly controlled by a player.
I would also think it's related to the rocket equation - with each iteration of "grab bananas, turn around" you have fewer bananas to carry with you, but it forms a parabolic curve as you need many bananas at the start of the desert, fewer as you go onwards and don't need to make trips to retrieve the bananas you've already eaten.
[1]http://www.crazyforcode.com/camel-bananas-puzzle/
If one is not trying to solve it in the fastest time, then an agreed ‘truth’ can be reached after ‘some time’ without a central entity. By deciding to go ‘slow’, a solution can be found eventually.
Dead Comment
I found out later she was the current world record holder at 10K meters. And she wasn't pushing it that day.
These folks can run like you wouldn't believe.
https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/thumbnails/imag...
Deleted Comment
I ran a 1/2 marathon where a highly ranked runner was competing in the full.
He passed me at mile 11 of the 1/2, so about 23 of the full. His pace for 26 miles was absolutely faster than I can run for one, maybe two blocks.
Just giant effortless strides, with a damn smile on his face. Iirc, his marathon time was 2:12.
Hell, the best marathoner the US had in the 2000 Olympics ran a 2:30. Literally a half hour slower than Kipchoge.
Curious, but why? That's an extremely achievable time for anybody who is athletic and trains.
(no disagreement that 4:30 pace is vastly more difficult than 6:00)
Ummm... why? Back then I ran 5 miles 3 times a week. They tend to nudge you out of infantry if you aren't getting a class A PFT; I would usually traipse in at 17:30 or so.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTlmxYwiqw4
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilbert_Tuhabonye
I can barely keep Kipchoge's pace for 1km.
not even one mile!
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EGqIhcSXUAca387?format=jpg&name=...
From https://twitter.com/BertBlocken/status/1182907965306748929