Eliud Kipchoge relaxes after crossing the finish line
A few minutes ago, 2016 Olympic Marathon Gold Medalist Eliud Kipchoge of Kenya, unofficially smashed the marathon world record at a Nike "Breaking2" run on the Formula One race track in Monza, Italy. Two other runners, Lelisa Desisa of Ethiopia and Zersenay Tadese of Eritrea, also competed in and finished the run, though falling many minutes short of Kipchoge's time. Kipchoge ran 2:00:25, 2 minutes and 32 seconds faster than the official marathon record of 2:02:57, lowering the fastest marathon time by more than 2%. Percentage-wise, it's the greatest leap in marathon times since Sergei Popov ran a 2:15:17 in 1952, bettering the previous mark of 2:18:04. However, the time will not count as an "official" world record, as, among other things, it featured a rotating group of pacers, jumping in and out, in "arrowhead" formation in front of the three runners. Most world-class marathons now feature pacers, but they must start with the other runners. Nevertheless, Kipchoge's effort was an amazing performance that shocked many observers.
The aim of the Nike Breaking2 project was to apply state-of-the-art scientific analysis to train a small group of elite runners to try to break the 2:00:00 marathon barrier. Among other things, a revolutionary new type of shoe was designed. While the "goal" was to run a sub two-hour marathon, I suspect that very few believed that could actually be achieved or achieved now. Kipchoge came close, staying on two-hour pace for more than half of the race. While many (including me) were skeptical of the effort at first, Kipchoge's incredible time indicates that it's very possible if not probable that Kipchoge or another runner will soon break the world record in an official race. And the two-hour mark, formally thought of as an almost mythically unachievable mark, now actually seems within reach. In an interview after the race, Kipchoge was asked how it felt to have put himself only twenty-five seconds away from a sub-two-hour marathon, the 32-year-old Olympic champion graciously turned the question around and said that the world was now only twenty-five seconds away.
The Barkley Marathons, one of the world's most grueling ultramarathon trail races, takes place every spring in Frozen Head State Park, Tennessee. An award-winning documentary on the event - Barkley Marathons: The Race that Eats It's Young - was released in 2014. For the fun of it, I've bracketed some facts on the race and the movie with the words from an old Appalachian Bluegrass song. This version of I Feel Jesus was written in 1962 by Frances Reedy and recently recorded by the contemporary folk duo, Anna and Elizabeth. It very fittingly ends the film. Ooh ooh ooh, my my my, I feel Jesus shut up in my bones.
Barkley Marathons was co-founded and designed by trail runner Gary "Lazarus Lake" Cantrell in the early 1980's.
Cantrell claims to have gotten the idea for the race when Martin Luther King assassin James Earl Ray famously escaped from a Tennessee maximum security prison in 1977. Ray kept searchers looking for 54 hours but only travelled eight miles.
Cantrell gets hate mail from people thinking he is a James Earl Ray fan. Actually, he thought Ray was a wimp for only getting eight miles. He felt participants in his race could do much better.
One bit of the race actually follows a sewer/stream that travels under the prison.
An "ultramarathon" is any race longer than marathon distance - 26.2 miles.
The Barkley distance is at least 100 miles. Some think it's closer to 125. No one knows for sure and Cantrell changes the route slightly each year.
These 100-125 miles are run through remote Tennessee woods and mountains.
It's Holy Ghost power shut up in my bones. I've got the one desire to make heaven my own.
The race is five loops of 20-25 miles each.
You have 60 hours to finish all five loops.
Finishing racers run the equivalent of two ascents and two descents of Mount Everest.
Ooh ooh ooh, my my my, I feel Jesus shut up in my bones.
The first two loops are clockwise. Depending on the circumstances, this means one is probably run in the light and the other is probably run in the dark
The second two loops are counter-clockwise.
The first place runner (if any) after four loops decides whether to run the last loop clockwise or counter-clockwise. The second place runner (if any) must run in the opposite direction.
Well, it'll make you happy, it'll set you free, It'll make you love your neighbor, it's a work of charity.
In the film, Cantrell comes across as a sort of benevolent/sadistic Santa Claus figure.
He has created a unique mechanism for entering the race. Anyone can apply by paying a $1.60 application fee. But you must also write an essay and fill out numerous forms. The criteria for selection is not transparent.
Only 40 per year are selected.
One of them is designated the "human sacrifice" - someone who Cantrell feels has absolutely no chance of completing even one loop, even though they might otherwise appear to be in good shape. He's always right. The "human sacrifice" shown in the movie was a Navy Seal.
If you're chosen, you receive a "letter of condolence."
At check in-time, you must bring a license plate and a "gift" for Cantrell. The gift has varied from a white shirt, to socks, to a flannel shirt - whatever Cantrell thinks he needs that year.
Ooh ooh ooh, my my my, I feel Jesus shut up in my bones.
The race has no preset start time. Rather Cantrell blows a conch shell at a surprise point within a 12 hour period. That signals that the race will begin within one hour.
The actual race begins when Cantrell, at the start line, lights a cigarette.
Very few even finish more than one loop.
If you finish three loops, it's called a "fun run."
As each competitor stops or gives up, a designated trumpeter plays "Taps."
It's resurrection power, shut up in my bones. It's got the same power to raise Jesus from the tomb.
There is no chip timing. GPS is banned. You only have a compass and a map. Every few miles in the loop, there is a pre-placed vintage paperback in a plastic bag. You must tear a page out of each book (corresponding to your race number) to prove you have stayed on the course. After each loop you give the probably crumpled pages to Cantrell who verifies them by lining them up on a stone wall.
The legs of most competitors are usually completely bloodied by a particularly hostile strain of Tennessee bramble.
After each loop, you can eat, rest, tape your blisters or sleep. almost no one sleeps (if they get that far). The leading runners usually spend no more than a half hour "in camp."
The course record, set by Brett Maune in 2011, is 52:03:08 - an average speed of approximately 2 miles per hour.
Ooh ooh ooh, my my my, I feel Jesus shut up in my bones.
"Barkley" is a Tennessee farmer and friend of Cantrell. He is amused that the race is named after him.
The movie is absolutely brilliant. I highly recommend it, whether you are a running enthusiast or not. It chronicles the 2012 race in which there were three finishers - a record.
Ooh ooh ooh, my my my, I feel Jesus shut up in my bones. Here are a few trailers for the film - the full version of which is currently available on Netflix - as well as a short additional video featuring the mischievously charming Cantrell discussing why no woman has ever completed the race (although a number of women do compete every year), and a YouTube audio clip of I Feel Jesus.
Yesterday, I piled on Libertarian nominee for president, Gary Johnson, for his "what is a leppo" gaff. I do not like Johnson very much, at least as a political candidate. Among other things, he has taken a number of positions in his current campaign that are more leftist than libertarian. It is still not clear to me whether this is because he is an "idiot" - not really understanding what libertarianism is - a fraudster - using libertarianism as a cloak to mask what is really more of an anti-christian agenda - or an opportunist - believing that by making certain concessions to the non-libertarian left, he can pick up some of their votes and therefore break through the traditional libertarian ceiling of 1% of the vote.
But in this post I want to discuss another aspect of Gary Johnson. Whatever else Gary Johnson might be, he is the fastest marathoner of any nominee for president or vice-president in history. He is also probably the fastest marathoner of any candidate in history - counting the major Republican and Democratic primary candidates in the relevant elections. Johnson may be even faster in the triathlon. I don't know triathlon times that well, but he could also be the fastest triathlete. Here's a list of famous election candidate marathoners and their times. Johnson is at the top. Not only is he faster, he's way faster: Gary Johnson: 2:47:27, Fiesta Bowl, 1984 John Edwards: 3:30:18, Marine Corps Marathon, 1983 Michael Dukakis: 3:31:00, Boston Marathon, 1951 George W. Bush: 3:44:52, Houston Marathon, 1993 Sarah Palin: 3:59:36, Humpy's Classic Marathon, 2005 Paul Ryan: 4:01:25, Grandma's Marathon, 1990 Mike Huckabee: 4:37:29, Marine Corps Marathon, 2005 Al Gore: 4:58:25, Marine Corps Marathon, 1997 Source (this list also contains the marathon times of other famous people and celebrities).
Notes:
Nice job by Dukakis in 1951.
Palin's Humpy's Classic Marathon, now called the Big Wild Life Runs Marathon, is in Anchorage. It had the smallest field of any of the above, with only 203 finishers in 2005. At the age of 41, Palin finished 15th among 62 women.
While running for vice-president in 2012, Paul Ryan claimed he had run a sub-three hour marathon. This was subsequently determined to be a fib. The truth is he never even broke four hours.
As the article below states, Gary Johnson also got his time wrong - he actually ran a minute faster than he claimed.
You likely know that Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders was fleet of foot as a youngster. He has claimed a personal best of 4:37 in the mile.
But another candidate, whose campaign is gaining steam, is no slouch himself.
“Any day that I am not campaigning, I train an average of two to three hours a day,” Gary Johnson, former governor of New Mexico and the Libertarian candidate for president, told Runner’s World Newswire by email. “Campaigning 6 a.m. to midnight—[training is] not happening, although I walk as often as is possible.”
Johnson appeared on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert last week, sporting a pair of Nike Zoom Air Pegasus 32 running shoes—footwear highly unusual for a man seeking the highest office in the land, but completely appropriate for a lifelong athlete.
It hs been widely reported that Johnson is into extreme and endurance sports—he has climbed Everest and competed in the Ironman World Championship at Kona, Hawaii. But he was a speedy runner. In an email, he listed some of his best efforts at various distances:
“For starters—best marathon time, 2:48, Fiesta Bowl, 1984. Best 10K, 33:45. Best Olympic triathlon, 1991, 2 hours. Best Ironman Hawaii, 10:38, 2001. 16 marathons (Boston 2002 3:13ish). Leadville 100 mile run.”
A search for results from the 1984 Fiesta Bowl didn’t yield Mr. Johnson, but we did find a 29-year-old Gary Johnson from Albuquerque, New Mexico, who ran even faster—2:47:27 at that race in 1982.
And Boston’s official results have the then-49 year governor running a chip-timed 3:11:11 in 2002.
We also found results to support his Leadville performance. In 1989, he completed the rugged 100-miler in 29 hours, 45 minutes, 9 seconds.
At the recent Olympic marathon, the two American-born athletes ran PRs, beating their previous best times by about a minute each. Galen Rupp, finished 3rd in 2:10:05 (previous PR: 2:11:13) and Jared Ward finished 6th in 2:11:30 (previous PR: 2:12:56). Every other top ten finisher ran slower, sometimes dramatically slower than their PRs. Elide Kipchoge of Kenya finished 1st in 2:08:44 (5:39 slower than his PR of 2:03:05). Feyisa Lilesa finished 2nd in 2:09:54 (5:02 slower than his PR of 2:04:52). The next ten finishers included 5 sub-2:10 marathoners. None of them did that in Rio. Two Kenyans and one Ethiopian failed to finish in Rio. They had previous scorching PRs of 2:06:13, 2:03:51 and 2:04:24. Before the race, on paper at least, it looked as if the Americans had no chance. But virtually all of the top runners had disappointing performances in terms of time. Except for the two leading Americans. Consider:
What explains this? I really have no idea. But let's look at three possibilities:
The humid conditions were brutal. Only the Americans were ready for this. Undoubtedly, the Americans trained very well (more kudos to Rupp's coach, Alberto Salazar). But all the top runners are relatively wealthy professionals with top coaches who, among other things, anticipate the possibility of varying race conditions. Most of these runners train on multiple continents. This explanation does not seem satisfactory to me.
The pace over the first-half was slow. Thus, PRs were not in the cards for most runners (the reason Rupp and Ward ran PRs was because their PRs were relatively slow coming in). Indeed, I think each of the top 10 finishers ran a negative split (their first half was slower than their second half). But of course, this doesn't explain why the initial pace was so slow. Rupp claimed that his strategy was largely just to hang on to the favorite, Kipchoge for as long as he could. That sounds like a pretty good strategy to me, if you're Rupp. But why did Kipchoge and the other East Africans set such a slow pace at the beginning? It strikes me that if you are 7 or 8 minutes faster than, say Rupp, you want to take advantage of that over the full length of the race. The last thing you want is to have a 10,000 meter champion still with you with 10,000 meters to go. I'm not claiming Kipchoge and the other speedsters did the wrong thing. Obviously, they're smarter than I am when it comes to pacing. But I simply do not understand their strategy.
The Americans were simply hungrier than the others. The Olympics are now the one international race where there is no monetary reward. All the other top runners (outside of the Americans) have successful careers where they make hundreds of thousands of dollars by finishing well at other races. So, perhaps from the point of view of one of these professionals, if things are not going perfectly at the beginning of the non-paying Olympic race, why kill yourself by going fast and thereby perhaps messing up your performance at the next paying marathon? Indeed, this might explain why the three super-fast East Africans dropped out. (My point is not to be critical, only to understand.) But again, this doesn't really explain why the fast guys didn't make more of an effort to set a faster pace at the beginning, or why more of them didn't try to hang on for a Silver or Bronze. Even the pace in the second half of the race was slower than many of them had run before.
Again, my intention is not to be critical of anyone, least of all the superb East Africans. But I do think it's a puzzle. Does anyone else have any better explanations?
