from Hacker News

What will it take to run a 2-hour marathon?

by neonkiwi on 10/10/14, 6:48 PM with 159 comments

• by outside1234 on 10/10/14, 7:48 PM

  Better drugs than they are currently on. Nobody wants to admit it, but that is the real reason for the change in inflection of the line. See cycling.

• by espinchi on 10/10/14, 7:18 PM

  Here's the hypothetical scenario that the report describes in the end.

  I've found reading the analysis after this story makes it an even better read:

  The road is so flat and straight, you can see them coming from a mile away. Six runners flow in arrowhead formation around the Canadian city of Saskatoon. The early November air is still and dry, the sky overcast, and the temperature hovers a bit above freezing, just as predicted.

  All in their early 20s, they’ve been training together for this moment for years; only in the last month did their coach select which three will go for the record. The remaining three form the front of the arrowhead, blocking the wind and enduring the mental effort of controlling the pace. Should one of them cross the finish line in two hours—or faster—all six will share equally in the $50 million jackpot promised by the heirs to the Hoka One One fortune. The pot of money is up for grabs, for any runner, anywhere in the world. The chase is on.

  So, will they make it? And what year is this? We’ve cut the distance to the sub-two marathon in half since 1998, but it will get progressively harder to trim the remaining seconds. Still, the physiologists tell us that it’s not impossible, meaning it is possible. I’m saying the year is...2075—and they make it

• by neonkiwi on 10/10/14, 6:55 PM

  This is an interesting analysis of available data for runners and record-breakers, outlining what will have to happen to break the two-hour mark for marathon times. Dennis Kimetto set the marathon record this year at 2:02:57.

  Cue complaints about scrolling behavior of this site, but the content itself is worth reading.

• by KobaQ on 10/11/14, 4:34 AM

  Unfortunately this article misses the third of the three components to improve endurance performance, which is lactate production rate (indicator for fat burning: the lower the more energy is produced by burning fat).

  Two athletes with the same VO2max and efficiency can have vastly different performances in a marathon. The body's VO2max potential can be used by solely burning carbs, which supply is limited (about 2000 kcal) whereas fat supply is practically unlimited (1 kg has about 7000 kcal. As a marathon requires more energy than is available as stored carbs, the ability to burn fat is a major factor in marathon performance.

• by Someone1234 on 10/10/14, 7:50 PM

  Does anyone have a mirror of this article on a readable page? Or a site I can run it through so it is viewable for humans?

• by tokenadult on 10/10/14, 8:01 PM

  I especially like this paragraph from the story: "Kenyans and Ethiopians have dominated the marathon since 1999; in fact, of the 100 fastest marathoners in history, 59 are from Kenya and 31 are from neighboring Ethiopia. Is it genes or environment—nature or nurture—that is responsible for this overwhelming domination? The answer doesn’t actually matter when it comes to who will run the first sub-two marathon. The success of East African runners reveals key traits that the eventual record-setter will possess, wherever he happens to be born." Yes, no matter where the runner who first runs a sub-two-hour marathon is born, from whatever group of ancestors, and where the runner trains, the runner will have to have certain characteristics to run that fast for that long. The article then proceeds to detail those characteristics.

  I used to turn off a lot of Javascript on webpages, but I'm actually managing to read this article reasonably well despite the appalling usability it has with Javascript turned on. The article is definitely worth a read, despite the annoying default screen presentation.

• by rrrrob on 10/11/14, 7:36 AM

  Surprised no-one linked to sportsscientists.com: http://sportsscientists.com/2010/08/the-sub-2-hour-marathon-...

  A line of thought that's particularly interesting there is that a 2h marathon has implications for 10000m and half marathon speeds, which make it seem quite a bit further off.

• by rcavezza on 10/10/14, 7:58 PM

  I'm consistently surprised by what the human body is able to achieve. If you've never heard of ultra marathon runners, you should check out this episode of radiolab. This lady runs for days on end in ultramarathons. http://www.radiolab.org/story/122291-in-running/

  It's intriguing that she suffered brain trauma and there's a part of her brain that doesn't function as expected. I expect there will be a marathon runner with a very specific brain trauma. The trauma will give him an unfair advantage to run a sub two hour marathon.

• by ck2 on 10/11/14, 8:29 AM

  I know we like nice round numbers like "2 hours" but anything remotely close to 2 hours is an insane, all-out pace as any runner knows.

  I doubt most cities have people who could run a half marathon at that pace. The best half-marathons are still around 59 minutes, now you want to double that with no performance penalty.

  It is going to take an incredibly genetically gifted person with a lifetime of training to do it. Basically the Usain Bolt of marathons.

  What I like is that in the half-marathon, women are only 5 minutes behind men. I am more interested when the first woman will run a one hour half-marathon.

• by arcticfox on 10/10/14, 11:58 PM

  Looking at a different pivot to the question, Allen Downey gives a good theoretical reason for the decline in times and projects 2041 as the year for the 2-hr marathon. Also, his original projection was made in 2011, so there are three years of data to compare against, which is interesting. http://allendowney.blogspot.com/2014/09/two-hour-marathon-in...

• by trhway on 10/10/14, 8:56 PM

  with regard to Berlin, weather, etc... - my meager experience of recreational runner matches it exactly - the best environment to run has been near Baltic Sea during Fall, soft, cool, almost mist air which cools you off and is absorbed by lungs without strain. The article doesn't mention humidity - it shouldn't be too heavy, yet dry air wouldn't work that well with lungs.

• by progress on 10/11/14, 8:23 AM

  What will it take for old people to stop writing in weird degree units so the rest of us don't have to convert it?

• by raverbashing on 10/10/14, 8:01 PM

  Marathon and other endurance sports are interesting.

  It takes a toll on the body. It catabolizes it. Compare a marathon runner with a 100m runner.

  Also, as expected, temperature plays a big factor in it, which makes me wonder why so many people "love when it's a nice day" (read: sunny and hot) to exercise.

• by diimdeep on 10/11/14, 1:38 PM

    ... data graphics were mainly devices for showing the obvious to the ignorant, 
    which led to two fruitless paths.  
    The graphics had to be alive, communicatively dynamic, overdecorated and 
    exaggerated (otherwise, the dullards would fall asleep)  
    The main task of graphical analysis was to detect and denounce deception 
    (because the dullards could not protect themselves)  
  

  Well, they hit the first one.

• by enchufadoo on 10/10/14, 10:24 PM

  I really like the Javascript Graphics used in this page to show statistics, anyone knows the library name if any?

• by dorfsmay on 10/11/14, 1:54 AM

  > VO2 max (a measure of aerobic fitness)

  Note that even though we used to be told that we could all increase our VO2 max through trainning, it turns out that only people with a specific set of genes can do so.

• by chrismcb on 10/11/14, 5:54 AM

  This article was painful to read. I had to scroll then wait as the page slowly faded in. I gave up after a couple of pages. Too painful

• by yarone on 10/10/14, 9:35 PM

  Is there software that makes it easy to put together a presentation / design like this? (e.g. wysiwyg / point-and-click)

• by andy_ppp on 10/11/14, 12:44 AM

  Great article; it got me wondering how much the oxygen weighs that an elite runner would use in the course of a marathon...

• by thomasfl on 10/12/14, 6:50 AM

  The new journalism is scroll effects and animated charts.

• by polskibus on 10/11/14, 8:14 AM

  The track should be downhill?

• by leighmcculloch on 10/11/14, 5:56 PM

  2 hours of running.

• by plorkyeran on 10/10/14, 7:16 PM

  This is an impressive amount of effort put into making the content unreadable. I sort of get what they're going for with the fade-in of content as you scroll down (although it's distracting as hell for actually reading rather than just looking at it), but what would possess someone to think that fading out text as I scroll down was a good idea? Crazily enough I like to be able to read more than two sentences without scrolling. I don't expect a site to use my monitor's full width, but I sure do expect it to use the full height.

• by anon4 on 10/10/14, 8:11 PM

  So much thought was put into the design and yet nobody bothered to add an option on whether you want to see units in standard or american measures.

  It's 2014, can't you people just detect I'm not american and put up normal Centigrade, km, kg, etc?

• by pgpcolby on 10/10/14, 8:10 PM

  2 hours

• by JustSomeNobody on 10/10/14, 8:35 PM

  Can we get the name of the person who designed that page so that we can blackball him?

• by Htsthbjig on 10/10/14, 9:23 PM

  Berlin, Dubai, Rotterdam, Frankfurt, Chicago, and London.

  In 4 of those cities they have no idea what a degree Fahrenheit is.

  It is a good idea to be able to choose between different units. Most of the world does not use imperial units is something that lots of people forget.

• by bayesianhorse on 10/11/14, 8:40 AM

  For some people? You need to be reborn with the right physiology and anatomy.

  Seriously. Some people are not made to run 2 hour marathons, or acquired some insuries or problems which makes reaching this goal either futile or even counterproductive, depending on why you are setting this goal.

• by qwerta on 10/10/14, 7:46 PM

  Data would suggest that 2-hour marathon record was already broken, but not recorded.

• by roneesh on 10/10/14, 9:04 PM

  No need to read the article, we know exactly what it will take: someone to run 13.1mph for two hours.

• by neves on 10/11/14, 1:20 AM

  Fantastic article, but the imperial measures are a PITA. Kills the flow of reading to stop at each paragraph to translate the Fahrenheit degrees, the inches, the feet and the miles to reasonable measures.

• by Uhhrrr on 10/10/14, 9:28 PM

  Geez - just run downhill. Problem solved.

  EDIT: OK, now that I actually read the article, it turns out the Boston Marathon is ineligible for records for just this reason - it's overall downhill. With that attitude, why not just require galoshes while you're at it?