The Greatest Marathon Ever - It's Not What you Might Think

On September 28, 2014, Dennis Kimetto broke the Marathon World record with a time of 2:02:57, a 26 second improvement on the old record. This record held for four years when, with the help of the space age tech of carbon plated shoes, Eliud Kipchoge ran 2:01:39 in 2018. At the time, the Nike Vaporfly shoes that Kipchoge was wearing were dubbed "4%", as studies had purportedly shown they made runners 4% faster than non carbon shoes. Quick math tells us that 2:02:57 minus a 4% advantage would bring Kimetto's carbon equivalent down to about 1:59:17. Since then, shoe technology has improved even further and people are scrambling to buy the New Adidas Evo Pro that Sebastian Sawe wore in finally breaking the 2:00 barrier with his 1:59:30. So eight years and countless enhancements after the the first "4%" carbon shoe entered the world record chat, the record is still inferior to what Kimetto's carbon conversion would have been. This doesn't even account for the Bi-Carb system or the 115g of carbs - both provided by Maurten - that Sawe used. So... is the current record, while it looks very impressive on paper, truly superior to what Kimetto ran in 2014? Or is the just this side of legal supplementation and shoe tech disguising the fact that the best of the best haven't improved at all since 2014 at least.

Let's look at the stats from another angle. Since 2002, the world record has improved almost exactly 2:00 per 8 years consistently.
2026 2:01:30 (-2:09)
2018 2:01:39 (1:59)
2010 2:03:38 (2:00)
2002 2:05:38
There is no statistician on the planet that would say these numbers were enhanced at any point by an advantage that took even 1% off predicted times. A 1:59:30 is the exact time, maybe 1:59:40, that would have been predicted by previous improvements since 2002.

So here is our dilemma: Are runners simply getting better tech, a la fiberglass poles versus bamboo or the Fosbury Flop, and not truly any faster than they were in 2014, or is all the new shoe tech and nutrition and supplementation simply smoke and mirrors. My personal opinion, having run in several carbon racers, is the shoes, while maybe not worth a full 4%, are certainly a substantial advantage. Of course this could all be decided with the simple solution of having someone run a sub 2:00, or a sub 2:03 even, in a pair of the old World Record shoes like the Adidas Adios worn by Kimetto and Gebreselassie in their record runs. If not Adidas athletes, maybe a pair of Asics Hyperspeeds or whatever pre-carbon Nike shoe someone wanted to try. But I think we all know that will never happen and thus we get a fairly strong read from the people with the most skin in the game that the vast majority of the improvement over the last 12 years has been due to the advanced tech, and not the athletes themselves.

The bottom line is I'm thrilled to see a sub 2:00 marathon and will be thrilled to see a woman break 2:10 with a clean test. (BTW - the women's record progression is equally sluggish since Radcliffe's 2:15:25 in 2003. I have little doubt the men will soon see 1:57:30 and the women will get that 2:10. But I will also always be adding 3-4 minutes to convert what the times would have been pre carbon, just like my dad and I did back in the 70s and 80s when we added 1.5 seconds per lap to convert the "new" tartan (the first all weather tracks) to the dirt tracks that guys like Ryun and even Bannister ran on. (Although we gave Bannister 2 seconds for that disaster he had to trod.)