New world record: the first ever official sub 2-hour marathon!

Back in 2018, I wrote about some fascinating new research published by a group of international scientists from Brazil, Switzerland and Greece [Open Access J Sports Med. 2018; 9: 139–145]. Basically, the scientists involved  summarized the key factors known to be essential when trying to improve  marathon performance, and then performed a mathematical analysis to predict when the first sub-2-hour marathon would be run by a male runner. 

Predicting the future

To do this, the researchers collated the best official marathon race times from males and females. This included data from the 1999–2018 (up to April 2018) World Championships and the Olympics (the best official Olympic Marathon race times since 1920 for males and 1984 for females, which was the year when the marathon running distance was standardized and involved females, respectively).They also included the times of the fastest marathons run in a given year for both males and females.

These times were then subject to a ‘regression analysis’, which is a mathematical technique to model a set of points lying on a curve from data already collected, and to predict where the curve is heading – in this case, how long it should take to hit the 2-hour time barrier. The equation that best fitted the data was as follows:

Y =0.045X²–15.12X +3194

This yielded a predicted date of 2027 for the first sub-2-hour marathon.

When the Kipchoge’s 2017 record using Nike’s Zoom VaporFly Elite shoes was included, the regression equation was slightly different:

Y =0.0417X²–14.18X +3128

This equation yielded a predicted date of 2026.

The future is here!

Yesterday, the future arrived at the 2026 London Marathon when Kenyan runner Sabastian Sawe made history at the London Marathon by becoming the first man to officially break two hours for the distance, winning the World Athletics Platinum Label road race in a world record* of 1:59:30. He didn’t just break the 2-hour barrier - he smashed right through it! Spare a thought for the remarkable performance of Ethiopian Yomif Kejelcha, who finished second in 1:59:41 – the second-fastest time in history and the fastest marathon debut ever. It must have been something of a bittersweet experience to break through the 2-hour barrier and the previous world record, but only place second. Let’s not forget too the superb performance by Ethiopian Tigst Assefa in the women’s race, who successfully defended her title with an improvement on her own women-only world record of 2:15:41. 

Understanding how to run faster

We cannot but marvel at these performances, but are there any lessons that the rest of us can learn about how to run faster? How much of the performance gain needed to break through the 2-hour barrier was due to better endurance training techniques, and how much was due to other factors such as better conditioning and superior shoe technology? These are the questions we have answered, and which you can find in this article.

Here at SPB, our job is to present the latest findings to you from the world of sports science to help you (literally) keep ahead of the pack. As you can see from our article published eight years ago, we are doing just that! So if performance really matters to you - regardless of whether you’re a recreational, amateur or elite athletes - make sure you subscribe to SPB and STAY ahead of the pack!