Athletic records shattered, is marathon record next?

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The question came up in a group of three sub-three-hour marathoners during a long, Sunday run in preparation for the next challenge against the standard many marathoners below the professional ranks measure themselves: How long will we be able to say we finished a marathon within the same hour as the world record holder?

A talented young group at the top of the world marathon rankings — and a speculated step up to the distance for the 2012 Olympics by 5,000 meter and 10,000 meter world record holder Kenenisa Bekele — will produce shocking results, but the 4:34 per mile pace required for a sub-two-hour marathon is too close to the half marathon world record for the next hour barrier to be in jeopardy.

With the training resources available to today’s athletes, records in several sports that were once safe are being shattered. Usain Bolt, Lance Armstrong and Michael Phelps are enigmas. Their feats are more publicized than distance running’s phenom, Samuel Wanjiru the half-marathon world record holder of Kenya, but Wanjiru’s nearly half-minute margin ahead of marathon world record holder Haile Gebrselassie’s half-marathon time, which he bested in 2007, makes the 22-year-old the most apparent threat to the two hour feat. Wanjiru could cover nearly another mile though in the 3 minutes and 59 seconds between Gebrselassie’s marathon record and the milestone.

On Sept. 28, 2008, Gebrselassie, from Ethiopia, lowered his record set on the same Berlin course a year earlier by 27 seconds and became the first to cover the 26 mile, 385 yard distance within four minutes above two hours, stopping the clock at 2:03:59.

In five years, nearly an entire minute was shaved off Kenyan Paul Tergat’s record 2:04:55 clocked in the 2003 Berlin race. Four minutes seems like a blink of an eye compared to the other two hours of continuous running, but when the average mile split of the world record is 4 minutes and 43 seconds, the discussion becomes scientific to determine whether the human body can sustain a greater effort.

Although Gebrselassie was able to take almost half a minute off his record in one year, it took 25 years to complete the last four-minute progression. Great Britain’s Steve Jones set a world record of 2:08:05 in 1984 at the Chicago Marathon.

Both Gebrselassie and Tergat set the half-marathon world record before breaking through in the marathon. Wanjiru broke Gebrselassie’s half-marathon record of 58:55 in 2007 a month after it was set with a 58:33 in the Fortis City-Pier-City Half. Wanjiru, who won the 2009 Flora London Marathon with a personal best 2:05:10 and the gold medal in the 2008 Olympic Games Marathon in Beijing, went through the first 10 kilometers in The Hague, The Netherlands in 27:27.

Mount Desert Island Marathon Race Director Gary Allen ­— a member of the trio bounding up the hills of Acadia National Park’s carriage roads — pointed out that the 2009 Beach to Beacon 10k — an elite event held in Cape Elizabeth — was won by Kenya’s Ed Muge in 28:05. Wanjiru covered more than twice the distance at a pace of 4:28 per mile, and his arranged pacesetters could not keep up.

Wanjiru’s race proved that at the pace required of a sub-two hour marathoner, even elite pacesetters would be of minimal assistance. Unless a cooperative group of runners were able to match Wanjiru’s ability, maintaining a 4:34 mile clip for the second half of the race would be an unthinkable solo effort.

By the time Sunday’s running group finished and returned to the parking lot, another 22-year-old from Kenya, Sammy Kitwara, became the sixth person to eclipse the 59 minute barrier in the half, winning a race in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, in 58:58.

Wanjiru’s first of three career marathons was in London, so he has not been tested on the flat and fast Berlin course, which is void of 90 degree turns that slow the field down. Four of the last six progressions in the marathon world record were run in Berlin. Wanjiru’s next attempt at Gebrselassie’s mark will be at the Bank of America Chicago Marathon on Oct. 11. American Khalid Khannouchi set the world record at 2:05:42 in Chicago in 1999 when he was a Moroccan citizen, and two of the last three women’s records were set there.  Chicago’s lack of hills resembles the Berlin course.

Examining trends in the progression of the marathon record reveals the contrasting era’s of distance running. As the jogging craze of the late 1960’s through the ’70’s hit, and athletes were allowed to compete professionally as well as maintain their Olympic eligibility, the marathon world record was lowered significantly and frequently. That phase settled down in the ’80’s, before the Africans began their dominance at distance running and began moving into uncharted territory.

The World Marathon Majors (Boston, London, Berlin, Chicago, New York) series standings show a depth of talent that history has not seen. The paying job of these runners is to utilize scientific findings in their time consuming training regimen and earn prize money at world-class events. The extent of the research is only as valuable as the human body is willing to benefit from it though, and physiological limitations will likely allow sub-three-hour marathoners to maintain the pride that they are within the same hour as the world record holder.

• Experience the Boston Marathon (April 23, 2009)
• Young runners lead U.S. rise in distance (April 27, 2009)
• Boston Marathon: The experience of a lifetime (April 22, 2010)
• Black Bears, Terriers tie in marathon match (October 3, 2005)
• Records fall at Penn Relays (April 26, 2010)

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 17th, 2009, 1:19 am. You can follow any responses to this article through the RSS feed.