Breaking2: Straddling the Line of Human Limitation

At 5:45am on the morning of May 3rd, 2017, with the sun just barely peeking over the Italian horizon, an air horn sounded and the methodical pounding of footsteps began that would carry on for a little over two hours. Nine dark silhouettes became a blur of black, white, and orange. In a little under 30 seconds, the blur disappeared around a bend and hundreds of people waited anxiously for them to come back around the other side. History was made that day, as Eliud Kipchoge traveled 26.2 miles faster than any human had ever traveled before.

Everyone always wants to be the first to do something. With the technological advances that scientists and researchers have given us and the immense knowledge shared around the globe, the region of what humans haven’t done yet is ever receding. Nowhere is this more prevalent than in running, where world records are seemingly broken every time a runner steps onto a track. Since 1977, the 100m sprint world record has been broken 12 times and the 200m 23 times. Most running milestones have been reached. Roger Bannister broke the four-minute mile in 1954. Jim Hines broke the 10 second 100 meter in 1968. Year after year, another record falls and human potential continues to seem unlimited. However, there is one ultimate running achievement that millions have attempted and nobody has been able to break yet: the two-hour marathon. In 1991, Michael Joyner, a scientist at the Department of Anesthesiology at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, published a paper titled “Modeling: optimal marathon performance on the basis of physiological factors.” In it, he controlled for a number of factors, including a runner’s VO2 max (the maximum amount of oxygen an individual can use during exercise), their blood lactate threshold (how intense they can exercise before painful lactic acid begins to accumulate in their body), their running economy (how much energy is used up during exercise), and more. Using empirical data, he calculated the fastest possible marathon time a human could run to be 1:57:46. One of the main takeaways from this paper is that achieving that kind of time is not something that can just be done from intense training. Running a marathon in 2 hours is about a bare, physiological limit. Grit and determination are needed, but this type of feat would require every attribute of the runner, the environment, and the technology to be absolutely ideal. It was just about impossible. In May of 2017, Nike had three runners attempt to prove everyone wrong and break the 2 hour mark. Nike’s goal, which was termed the “Breaking2” project, attempted to get someone as close as possible to that theoretical limit and break two hours, and in doing so, popularize their new shoes, the “Vaporfly 4%s.”

Nike is the world’s most successful shoe producer by all accounts. Not only have they sold more shoes and continue to sell more shoes than any other company in history, but they are the shoes of choice of the top athletes in the world. Cristiano Ronaldo, Rory McIlroy, Rafael Nadal, Kobe Bryant, and thousands more have chosen Nike as their shoe. Michael Jordan popularized their shoes so much that Nike created a separate company called “Air Jordan,” which is now the fourth best selling shoe brand in the world. However, they have been unable to assert themselves in debatably their most important market: running. Sure, they have been worn by running greats like Carl Lewis and Mo Farah, but most runners, and especially distance runners, have often chosen more running-centric brands. Dennis Kimetto was wearing the Adidas “Adios 2” shoes when he crossed the line to break the marathon world record in 2014. Most top distance runners wear Adidas, New Balance, Saucony, Brooks, Asics, and a few others. Nike needed that to change, and the Breaking2 project was their way of doing so. They strapped three of the top runners in the world with their new Vaporfly 4% shoes and tried to have them do the almost impossible. And if they were going to commit tens of millions of dollars and hundreds of people towards the project, they weren’t going to leave it up to chance.

To minimize the chance of failure to break 2 hours, Nike attempted to control every possible variable involved in running the 26.2 miles. To do so, they enlisted the help of endurance experts, performance engineers, physiologists, nutritionists, doctors, and many more to create the perfect conditions for the runners’ success. Nike’s thinking was that if they employed the latest advances in training, technology, and shoe design, used the top athletic experts in the world, and chose the fastest possible running environment, all the marginal gains could add up to a world record.

Although the runners’ performance is vital, giving them the right environment to succeed was debatably what made the most difference in this attempt. The two major ways Nike cut the running time down was through their course choice and their methods for countering air resistance.

The fact that 7 of the last 8 fastest marathon world records were recorded during the Berlin marathon, one known for being especially flat and straight, is a testament to how important running course is. The course chosen for the Breaking2 project was the Formula One racetrack in Monza Italy, more formally known as the Autodromo Nazionale. The fastest Formula One lap ever recorded was done at the track in Monza, and the setting was the perfect place for two important reasons.

The first reason: Elevation. Getting oxygen into your body is vital for running performance and the higher the altitude, the thinner the air is and the less that oxygen is available. Runners often choose high-altitude locations for training, as it causes them to develop a higher red blood cell volume count, helping move oxygen through their body. However, for racing, the lower the altitude the better, as the runners will want to maximize the amount of oxygen available to them. Monza’s altitude is 600ft, well low enough that the air would be rich with oxygen.

The second reason: incline and turning. It’s harder to travel up an incline than it is a flat ground, and it’s harder to travel around a curve than a straightaway. When covering 26.2 miles, the amount of time spent going uphill is of great importance. The incline of Monza is a 0.5% elevation gain. That’s not large enough to even notice. There are zero sharp turns.

Clearly, the environment was created for success. However, the intensity of the task at hand can’t be stressed enough. In order to accomplish this near-impossible feat, the athletes had to travel at 13.1 miles per hour for 120 minutes. That means running a mile every 4 minutes and 34 seconds. That’s faster than most people can run, period. The runners involved, however, were not most people.

Nike brought together three of the world’s best runners in Lelisa Desisa, Zersenay Tadese, and Eliud Kipchoge. Lelisa, the youngest of the three at 26, was the youngest winner of the Dubai marathon in history, becoming the champion in 2013 at age 22. The young Ethiopian followed that by two Boston Marathon victories in three years. Zersenay Tadese, the 34 year old Eritrean, wanted to be a professional cyclist when he was younger. Not able to afford a bike, and having to run 8 miles to school every day, he fell into running, and became the first ever Eritrean to run at the olympic final, winning bronze in 2004. He now holds the two fastest half-marathon times in history. Lastly, Eliud Kipchoge, the 32 year old Kenyan, was one of the world’s best marathoners, who had won 7 of the 8 marathons he had run in. In his words, running was “not about the legs. It’s about the heart and mind.”

On Wednesday, May 3rd, the time had come. Once the runners had lined up on the starting line, it was up to them to run 13.1mph for 2 hours. At 3am, alarms went off and the runners were up. Requiring the coordination of hundreds of people, the runners were shuttled to the starting line and prepared for the start. With an air horn, the runners shot off the line, and began what would be a historic day for the human race. With 18 miles to go, Lelisa begins to fall back. His coach Haji looks on with concern as the young runner begins to slow and break off from the main group. It seemed as though the pace was just too fast for the relatively inexperienced runner. 11 miles in, Zersenay begins to fall back, as the half marathoner is used to the race being almost over. All of a sudden, there is only one. At the halfway mark, with 13.1 miles left, Kipchoge is the only runner left running at world-record pace, projecting a 1:59:57 finish. Zersenay is 1 minute behind, and Lelisa is dragging by 3 minutes. By the halfway mark, it was clear that there was only going to be one real contender. Five miles later, the pace slowed past the 2 hour projection for the first time, with Eliud projected for a 2:00:04 finish. For the rest of the race, the goal would be to keep Kipchoge as close to the 2:00:00 pace as possible, with the race strategists hedging their bets on the runner being able to speed up for the last few miles.

Each lap takes around 6 or 7 minutes. As the miles counted down, it became clear that the pace needed to be pushed. With his manager yelling at him from a bicycle, the message to Kipchoge was made clear. On the side of the track, pacers discussed how to get him to run faster, aiming to slowly increase their speed to ease Kipchoge into it. With three miles left, the projected time was 2:00:10. Going this fast already, knocking ten seconds off was going to be just about impossible to pull off. The Nike team knew, though, that if anyone could do it, it was Kipchoge. The year before, in the London marathon, he ran at a 4:40 pace for the last two miles, and in order to break the 2-hour mark he had to run even faster. With Kipchoge “knocking on the door of history” in the last lap, as the announcer, said, he still needed an increase.

Eliud Kipchoge finished the race having run 26.2 miles in 2:00:25. National Geographic made a detailed documentary about the race and showed a 30 second clip of Kipchoge finishing the race. The pacers had fallen back, and all that could be seen was the 115-pound Kenyan running on. His face was tightened in total concentration, his head barely moving above his pumping arms. When he crosses the line, he comes to a walk, breathing heavily but not quite as heavily as someone might expect. He heads to his coach and gives him a big hug, clearly appreciative of the effort that the past years have involved. In order to break the 2-hour mark, he would’ve needed to run just a second faster for each mile. After the race, Kipchoge said that with three laps to go, he felt “a little tired in my legs.” He “tried to pick it [up] but it was too late.” Those simple words make it seem like he was going for a casual run in the park, not doing something that no human had ever done before. Zersenay finished at 2:06:51, and Lelisa at 2:14:10, both of the runners having run most of the course by themselves, unaided by NIke’s tactics.

In the end, the runners were not able to break the 2-hour marathon limit. However, they and Nike pushed the boundary of human limitation further than it had ever been pushed before. Not only did the runners travel 26.2 miles faster than anybody has ever done in human history, but they were part of a team that revolutionized race preparation and strategy. The pacing and wind breaking tactics were profound and are sure to be used in the future.

A little over a year later, Kipchoge broke the official marathon world record and ran 26.2 miles in 2:01:39 in the Berlin marathon. This feat is debatably more impressive than his performance at the Breaking2 project, as the variables that were controlled by Nike were not controlled in Berlin. It truly shows that although human limitation does theoretically exist and empirical evidence has suggested that breaking a 2 hour marathon may be beyond that limit in the real world, nobody will stop trying. In some of his last words spoken during the project, Eliud Kipchoge selflessly said “It was hard for me to shed all those minutes, but I think it will be easy for another human being to shed 25 seconds.” Those words summarize the transformation that took place: what started as a shoe advertisement became a project that pushed human potential as far as it can go.