Next frontier of human endurance: the two-hour marathon
Tomorrow, the Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront Marathon will see 4,600 people run a 42.2-kilometre test of their physical limits. Breaking the two-hour mark would be the ultimate prize
“I would argue that it will be broken for sure, but it won’t be any time soon.”
GREG WELLS PHYSIOLOGIST, ON THE 2-HOUR BARRIER
Like the four-minute mile of yesteryear, breaking the two-hour marathon will be a singular athletic milestone.
The current world record of 2:02:57, set by Kenya’s Dennis Kimetto in Berlin last year, might seem to be snapping at the heels of that achievement. To a casual observer — especially one who has never run 42.2 kilometres — three minutes isn’t much.
To a marathoner already running near the limits of human endurance, three minutes is a chasm.
When the record is chiselled down, the increments tend to come in seconds, not minutes.
“The faster humans go, the harder it gets to keep improving, and when you get close to the two-hour marathon, every single second requires an enormous amount of training,” says Greg Wells, an
exercise physiologist at the University of Toronto and author of Superbodies: Peak Performance Secrets From the World’s Best Athletes.
“I would argue that it will be broken for sure, but it won’t be any time soon. It’s an incredibly difficult challenge that requires many things to go absolutely perfectly.”
The bulk of the championship-calibre marathon training cycle has remained the same for decades.
Sports scientists have validated the benefits of a program that features extremely high mileage — 120 kilometres per week at minimum, and more than 250 for some — with most at an “easy” pace, but peppered liberally with key speed workouts. The pros subscribe nearly universally to a three-week pre-race taper period, where mileage is cut back to give the body a chance to absorb physiological adaptations.
Since all the top marathoners train this way, exercise physiologists are scouring the margins for techniques that might improve performances just a fraction of a per cent — a boost of a few seconds here or there, but if taken together, enough to make the difference.
One source of improvement has been cleaning up runners’ diets.
“Athletes used to think they could eat anything and get away with it. That’s not the case anymore,” says Wells. “The elite athletes that are doing really amazing things on the world level are discovering the benefits of ultra-healthy nutritional habits.” (Some of the highest-profile “ultra-runners,” who run races of days or weeks, are vegans and even fruitarians.)
Other areas of research are more controversial, such as the benefits of concurrent training: adding strength exercises to an aerobic training base. Studies suggest that it does provide a benefit, at least for elites.
But the details are in dispute: are low-weight, high-repeat drills best, or the opposite? What about explosive plyometrics (rapid stretching and contracting of muscles)?
Yet another topic of debate is the ice recovery bath. The rationale behind submerging the body in frigid water post-exercise is that the temperature shock will reduce inflammation and speed recovery.
But some researchers have hypothesized that ice baths decrease the body’s ability to adapt to exercise, since inflammation is part of the natural recovery process. So far, the lab results have been mixed. Some studies find a tiny benefit, others a tiny detriment.
Until more research resolves the question, runners are probably best sticking to what they like, says Joe Baker, a professor at York University’s school of kinesiology and health science who specializes in sports psychology. “The placebo effect is so powerful,” he says. “If you believe it’s doing something, then it probably is — and I think a lot of things probably have that potential.”
Baker’s research points to perhaps the most significant barrier when it comes to cracking the two-hour marathon: the invisible psychological hurdle of accomplishing a world first.
After Roger Bannister broke the four-minute mile in 1954, another runner beat his record months later. It has since been broken dozens more times, and currently sits at 3:43.13. “We know there’s a barrier there, but we don’t really know how to get people to surpass it. What we do know is that once that barrier’s broken, we can expect that time to continue to drop,” Baker says.
In his lab, Baker studies psychological barriers to performance in older adults.
He notes that society used to believe seniors couldn’t run a marathon. Canadian Ed Whitlock was the first person to run a sub-three-hour marathon over the age of 70, and continues to break records in his 80s.
Women were considered incapable of running the distance until, in 1967, Kathrine Switzer shook off an angry race official to become the first woman to officially complete the Boston Marathon.
Today, Paula Radcliffe’s 2:15:25 world record is considered by some to be at least equivalent to a men’s sub-two-hour marathon.
“It seems to be something our species does: put up these arbitrary barriers. Like that no one is going to climb Everest. Now, people can pay guides to get them up Everest relatively straightforwardly,” says Baker.
In the end, the first person to break the two-hour marathon will be a superbly genetically gifted individual benefiting from both long-standing practice and cutting-edge research — and a bit of luck.
This runner will need a flat course (the last six records have been set on Berlin’s ultra-fast course, but Toronto’s is also very flat) and perfect, cool weather.
Three minutes: “It sounds really simple,” says Baker. “But it clearly isn’t.”
People used to believe seniors and women couldn’t run marathons