Kiwi Zane chases runners’ Everest
The New Zealander has joined a revolutionary project headed up by a sports scientist with a crazy dream, reports Henry Rounce.
Zane Robertson is in Ethiopia training among the civil unrest. His story is well documented. At 17, he moved to Kenya with twin brother Jake to live among the best runners in the world. He broke the New Zealand record for the 10,000 metres at this year’s Olympics. After a good stint on the track, he’s turning his attention to the roads and will make his marathon debut next year. He joined the Sub2 hour team, a revolutionary running project aiming to run a sub two-hour marathon, after founder Yannis Pitsiladis approached him.
Robertson is a strong believer in the project and thinks a sub twohour marathon can be run.
‘‘I do think it’s possible, but first the right situation and preparation must be achieved. I’m not saying it will be me but Sub2 is about pushing limits and breaking barriers.’’
The current New Zealand record holder in the 10km and the half marathon has fully dedicated his life to running and has no concerns about pushing himself over the edge.
‘‘I live for this. I completely love testing my limits and have always done so. The only difference now is that there’s better recovery and scientists watching over me.’’
He’s coy on what it takes to run under two hours, but says there’s some ‘‘crazy training involved’’. It’s the highest level of commitment, with ‘‘100 per cent of the day dedicated to training, eating and resting’’.
The New Zealand marathon record holder is Rod Dixon. The Kiwi runner from Nelson famously won the 1983 New York Marathon in a time of 2:08:59. Now 66, he spends his time in the United States with the running foundation he set up, called KiDSMARATHON. He thinks a sub two-hour marathon can happen. ‘‘If I’ve got another 30 odd years, yeah I think we’ll see a sub two hour inside my life span . . . we know now today the impossible can happen because we’ve got so much more at our disposal.’’
Dixon says marathon running is a lot different from when he ran, with a high level of sophistication and knowledge existing that was never available to him.
He’s observed Robertson’s career closely, and thinks he could give it a good crack.
‘‘He certainly knows how to train, he knows how to put it all together, he’s someone who’s probably at the forefront of all this.’’
The Sub2 project has traditionally looked at African runners, because of their genetics and success in distance running. But Pitsiladis insists the person who breaks the record may not have the ‘perfect’ body type.
‘‘There’s isn’t one type and you may find that in the Sub2 team, they’ll be athletes that may look like [Kenenisa] Bekele – more stocky and muscular, someone like [Haile] Gebrselassie with very big lungs and someone like Wilson Kipsang with almost no calves.’’
Pitsiladis doesn’t expect the team to be all African, and that’s where Zane and Jake come into the story.
‘‘We think that they are certainly capable of being there or thereabouts, they have the right attitude and we are working closely with them.’’
Dennis Kimetto powered home, raised his arms to the sky and broke through the flimsy white tape at the finish line. It was the 2014 Berlin Marathon. Hunched over, he put his hands on his knees. As he gingerly walked away, brightly coloured shoes flashing against the tarmac, he checked his watch. 2:02:57. World record. Twenty-six seconds faster than the previous one, set at the same course a year earlier.
Running a sub two-hour marathon has never been under as much threat as it is today. The men’s marathon record has been falling for the last 100 years, getting closer to the magical twohour mark.
Pitsiladis laughs when he says it’s probably easier to put someone on Mars than run a project like his. But his joke doesn’t hide the determination and tenacity of a man hell-bent on breaking one of the most remarkable records in world athletics. Long considered impossible, Pitsiladis is the leader of the Sub2 project. It’s a dream he’s been working on for the last 15 years.
It began in early 2000, when he went out in the field to try to understand what made the Ethiopians and Kenyans such good distance runners. Pitsiladis wondered what would happen if you combined the best sports science and innovation with the
He certainly knows how to train, he knows how to put it all together. Rod Dixon
best natural talent. But while he was analysing the DNA of some of the world’s greatest athletes, he encountered an issue that’s plagued the sport of athletics in recent years; the use of performance-enhancing drugs. It was a big problem in the early 2000s. He was compelled to do something about it.
If he could demonstrate that the best talent and the best sports science could produce amazing results, then maybe athletes would be less inclined to use performance-enhancing drugs. Doing it on the world stage, in a prestigious event such as the marathon would be the perfect platform.
Pitsiladis switched his attention to starting up the project, something he calls a ‘‘completely uphill struggle’’. Setting up in Ethiopia and Kenya was a logistical nightmare. Ethiopia has a history of civil war, while in October this year the government declared a country-wide six-month state of emergency. Kenya isn’t much better. In 2007-08 the results of the general election triggered widespread violence, with more than 1000 people killed.
Despite this, the Sub2 project set up its camps in Ethiopia and Kenya. Zane Robertson is based at the Ethiopian camp, which is about 15-20 minutes’ drive from the capital Addis Ababa.
The biggest hurdle to overcome was funding, with the project needing $30 million. And no-one, bar Pitsiladis, believed in the project.
It was tough going. So the team did what it could, investing its own money in the project. A story in the New York Times helped raise awareness of the project while Pitsiladis called on two of the greatest distance runners of all time to help him out; Kenenisa Bekele and Haile Gebrselassie.
Bekele is the world record holder in the 5000 and 10,000 metres, as well as an integral part of the Sub2 project. He missed the world record by six seconds at this year’s Berlin Marathon. Then there’s Gebrselassie. A legend of the sport, he’s won two Olympic golds in the 10,000 metres and held the marathon world record for three years. He’s a strong believer in the project, helping to support the facility in Ethiopia.
All of this helped to legitimise the project, and companies around the world began to email suggestions of new innovations the team could use to produce faster times.
‘‘One of those companies was called Maurten who had an idea which really enthused me, it was kind of a eureka moment. I was actually in the bathtub when I got the call,’’ Pitsiladis said.
Maurten is a Swedish company developing a revolutionary sports drink for the project, which will allow the body to accept a high amount of carbohydrates. It’s one of many factors, or innovations as Pitsiladis puts it, which will hopefully help reach the goal of the sub two-hour marathon.
The current world record of 2:02:57 was set at a pace of 2.91385 minutes per kilometre. To break the two hour mark, and reach a time of 1:59:59, the pace has to be 2.84354 minutes per kilometre. That’s 4.22 seconds faster per kilometre.
How easy is it to run that faster pace? Bekele has shown his ability to cut down his time, moving from 2:06:36 in April to 2:03:03 in September. Further improvements could come through the analysis of many aspects including nutrition, data management, biomechanics and sports physiotherapy.
The project was recently given a massive shake-up. It appears there’s now competition to see who can be the first to run under two hours. An article in a German newspaper reported that the Olympic marathon champion Eliud Kipchoge was involved in a meeting at the headquarters of Nike to discuss a potential sub two-hour record. The information ‘‘completely surprised’’ Pitsiladis and he’s hopeful Nike will soon declare its project publicly so it can become a race.
Pitsiladis has a strong stance against drugs which matches the beliefs of his runners, including Robertson who has always been vocal against the use of drugs in athletics.
The Sub2 project includes testing from the Dutch doping authority in Holland and the South African Institute for Drug-Free Sport (SAID). Their job is to ensure Pitsiladis’ runners get extra testing, extra intelligence and extra education. If one of his athletes tests positive for drugs, it would destroy the project.
‘‘For us it’s a very, very important part of the project, when we achieve our results we want to be absolutely sure that noone can turn around and say, well they did this by doping. With all the crises and the scandals of drugs and corruption, there’s so much negativity about sport rather than celebrating it. I just think it’s making the sport so much more interesting than it has been.’’
It’s starting to get results as well, something that the wider running community is noticing. ‘‘I would say the number of sceptics has really reduced and I don’t even know who they are now because they’re not talking about it any more.’’
Instead, they’re talking about the record being broken. And while there’s a possibility it will be, it’s not guaranteed. History has shown long stretches where the record has hardly changed, none more so than between 1988 and 1998 when it took 10 years to shift from 2:06:50 to 2:06:05.
Whether the record changes, and when it happens, remains a question no-one knows the answer to.
The author is a student at New Zealand Broadcasting School.