I can’t remember the specifics, but I remember seeing a poll a few years ago where an unusually high percentage of people believe that they could be professional athletes. Like if they just got the right shot, they could go pro. It’s completely ludicrous, but it’s just how people think. Like I feel like half of the people watching Olympic curling and bobsled think they could jump right in.
Well, even the most overconfident armchair quarterbacks would admit they could never compete with the likes of professional marathoner Sebastian Sawe. They probably would admit the same for Yomif Kejelcha, another elite runner. That’s because last weekend at the London Marathon, they became the first two athletes to break two hours in the marathon. That’s 26.2 miles in under 120 minutes, in Sawe’s case, 30 seconds under. That’s just over 4:33 per mile, over and over again. And he got faster in the last few miles, including a 13:42 for his last full 5K. Think about that next time you almost blow out your knee at the local turkey trot.
The two-hour marathon has been one of those mythic barriers that challenged the human imagination, more considered in recent years as the once comical became oddly proximate. We aren’t all that far removed from when breaking 2:10 was super elite, good enough to win most marathons. Even at the turn of the century, the mark was over 2:05. What changed?
The most obvious shift was shoes, adding a carbon plate that acts a bit like a springboard. Not enough to make mortals elite, but enough to change the calculus for anyone on the edge of human limits. There’s also an argument for evolutionary progress in training techniques and diet, which can make a difference in a race as long as the marathon, where athletes need to transform what their bodies can endure under incomprehensible strain.
Lowering the marathon record is kind of like building a spaceship that can go further into space. There are just a lot of variables in the mix, so even small changes can make a lot of difference. Beyond that, I’m sure there’s simple progress that happens in any form of human performance. But I suppose the biggest difference is the shoes.
Whenever something like this happens, a record we previously thought science fiction, it makes us consider not just the performance, but also what it means about the nature of humanity. Scientists have long studied this – how fast you can run, how much weight we can lift, and on and on. And I suppose any study is grounded in who we are right now, not what we might look like in 50 or even 20 years. I’ll spare any mention of scientists altering DNA or even good old fashioned doping, because that’s the red herring of anything athletic. In any brave new world, you can engineer a human just like a racehorse, which I find equally abhorrent – if not worse. But breaking two hours not only makes us question previous assumptions, it also becomes catnip to chase the next impossible dream.
I’m actually a little torn about all of it, as a human and a fan of distance running. On the one hand, this is part of the magic of sport. Defying imagination and transcending barriers. My high school kid isn’t a huge marathon fan, but even he got excited. There’s something cool about that.
On the other hand, when sport becomes only the pursuit of the physiologically impossible, where anything short of a new record is unimportant, it changes the whole idea of what sport is – and what I think makes it most magical.
This may sound odd, but I’m a huge fan of the slow tactical running race, especially if it means a bunch of folks sprinting at the end for a win. Not a record, but a win. That may not catch the fancy of the average sports fan, especially the kind who only watches a marathon when their friend is running, but I’d argue it’s a much bigger part of sport than the outer limits, especially if we’re talking about sport beyond the elite few.
Records are amazing, but they only matter because of every other great performance that isn’t one. Hopefully we don’t forget that in the London afterglow.
Then again, at least according to some polls, a lot of people think they could set a record themselves. Except maybe just not in the marathon.
Keith Strudler is the Dean of the College of Communication and Media at Montclair State University. You can follow him at @KeithStrudler.
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