Analysing Eliud Kipchoge’s Sub-2 Hour Marathon | Alex Hutchinson | Modern Wisdom Podcast 113

1. 0:00 – 0:50

   What it takes to run sub‑2: genetics, mindset, and Kipchoge’s longevity

   1. CWChris Williamson0:00

      How does a human with two legs and two arms and a head create a physiology which is capable of running a two-hour marathon?

   2. AHAlex Hutchinson0:06

      The first really important task is to pick your parents correctly. You've got to be born to, to, to run that fast. You can work as hard as you want and you can pull in all the science, but the thing we wo- don't want to do is say, "Oh, Kipchoge ran a sub two-hour marathon because there was a bunch of science and it made it easy." It's like, no, there's still only one human in the world who could have done this. There's, you know, all the other great runners in the world, you know, massively talented, have worked hard. They're still not at Kipchoge's level. Kipchoge is a super special guy. He's got the physical tools and, maybe just as importantly or at least p- part of the package is he's got the mental tools. He's been at the top since 2003. He won a world championships as a teenager 16 years ago, and that's unheard of. Nobody has that sort of l- or almost nobody has that sort of longevity.

2. 0:50 – 2:09

   Setting the stage: why endurance running is having a global moment

   1. CWChris Williamson0:50

      (wind blowing) Alex Hutchinson has joined us again. Alex, welcome to the show.

   2. AHAlex Hutchinson0:54

      Thanks a lot, Chris. It's great to be back.

   3. CWChris Williamson0:56

      It is timely to talk about endurance and running. This is the, we're at the, like, the genesis point of the, the new world of running right now, right?

   4. AHAlex Hutchinson1:07

      Yeah, it's, it's, uh, it's certainly an exciting time. Put it this way, I, I, I did Canadian radio this morning, I'm talking to you, talking to New Zealand Radio in a few hours, and then Australia a few hours after that. So, people are talking about endurance right now, and hey, I'm, I'm, um, happy to see it.

   5. CWChris Williamson1:21

      I bet you are. So for those of you who don't already follow Alex, if you have even the slightest interest in running, @sweatscience on Twitter. Ever since the podcast that we did at the start of the year, I only follow, I think I follow, like, 82 people or something on Twitter. Um, so you make up more than, like, about 2% of probably what, what I see on Twitter every day.

   6. AHAlex Hutchinson1:40

      All right. (laughs)

   7. CWChris Williamson1:40

      Um, and the articles that you've been putting out recently have been fascinating, so we're gonna go through, um, Eliud Kipchoge's recent, uh, marathon performance. Um, there's some really awesome breakdowns that you've done in the build-up to that and then afterward. Um, then we're gonna talk about some other records that have been broken. There's some, uh, controversy surrounding the shoes and the kit that people have been wearing. So we got, uh, we got a lot to get through today. It's gonna be exciting.

   8. AHAlex Hutchinson2:05

      Fantastic. Yeah, it's been a, it's been a busy week, so, uh-

   9. CWChris Williamson2:07

      (laughs)

   10. AHAlex Hutchinson2:07

       ... we'll have lots to talk about.

3. 2:09 – 7:23

   What the INEOS 1:59 Challenge was—and why it doesn’t count as a world record

   1. CWChris Williamson2:09

      Cool. So let's, let's start with, uh, Kipchoge's most recent performance. Let's say that someone somewhere has been living under a rock, uh, and doesn't know what's happened. Can you describe what the INEOS, uh, 1:59 challenge was?

   2. AHAlex Hutchinson2:22

      Yeah, for sure. So, uh, you know, the big headline, the top headline is, uh, a human being ran less than or faster than two hours for 42.2 kilometers, 26.2 miles, uh, the marathon distance. Uh, the second headline is, but it wasn't a world record. It's not an official world record. It was, it was not, doesn't count under the official rules. And that's where things start getting a little, a little, uh, tricky. So this was, this race was a- an exhibition race held on, uh, uh, streets in Vienna, a, a park in, in a park in Vienna. Um, only one competitor, like, Eliud Kipchoge, who is the reigning Olympic champion and official world record holder. But every possible thing anyone could imagine to make him faster was done. The, the reported budget, this is just rumors, the reported budget was £15 million for this one race by one person. And so this is what made it exciting and interesting for, for people like me who are interested in the sort of th- the science of endurance, but also made it controversial, made it, you know, people felt it was a bit of a stunt, a marketing stunt, uh, maybe even a sport-washing stunt for INEOS. Um, but they, so they had, you know, they had an electric car driving in front of him at exactly two-hour marathon pace, shining lasers on the ground so that his teams of, you know, a to- there were a total of 41 world-class runners who were serving as pacemakers for him, blocking the wind in, in teams of, I, I think it was, uh, one, two, three, four, five, I think seven pacemakers at a time were trying to, you know, enco- encompass him or, or cocoon him from the, the forces of, of, of drag. Uh, and they were ru- and knew exactly where to run 'cause the, the car was shining lasers on the ground. Um, you know, he had, uh, um, uh, uh, a g- a guy on a bicycle handing him water bottles every few kilometers, which is instead of, you know, he d- didn't want to slow him down by having to pick up a bottle off the table. And he had these wacky, uh, prototype shoes on that nobody else ha- or, uh, basically nobody else has, has seen or run in, which are the latest iteration of a pair of shoes called the Nike Vaporfly, which s- uh, in the last three years has basically rocked the running world and totally reshaped what people think shoes are capable of doing for us. So all this stuff is boiled into, you know, p- people didn't think he could do it, people aren't sure whether it's fair, people aren't sure whether it's a good or a bad thing that we've got this exhibition event that won't count as a world record. And so basically everyone in the running world is having a big massive brawl about it.

   3. CWChris Williamson4:56

      (laughs) Yeah, I can imagine there's so many different people, right? Because for me, as someone who I don't have a... apart from entertainment and a, uh, genuine interest in f- sport and fitness, I don't have a side here. Um, I would, you know, if someone could run a one-hour marathon, like, sweet-

   4. AHAlex Hutchinson5:14

      (laughs)

   5. CWChris Williamson5:14

      ... like, oh, he had, he had rockets on his feet, but, you know, he still ran it or whatever. But I just want the entertainment value, but I imagine there's some sport purists out there who are going to be much more critical. Um, so to set the scene, no matter what the shoe is and the, the track and, and the pacers and the car and stuff like that, how does someone, uh, how does a human with two legs and two arms and a head create a physiology which is capable of running a two-hour marathon?

   6. AHAlex Hutchinson5:41

      Yeah, so the, the first really important task is to pick your parents correctly. You need, uh, you've got to be born to, to, to run that fast. There's only, you know, you can work as hard as you want and you can pull in all the science, but the only person, you know, w- th- the, the, the, the thing we wo- don't want to do is say, "Oh, Kipchoge ran a sub two-hour marathon because there was a bunch of science and it made it easy." It's like, no, there's still only one human in the world who could have done this. There's, you know, all the other great runners in the world, you know, massively talented, have worked hard. They're still not at Kipchoge's level. Kipchoge is a super special guy. Uh...... he's got the physical tools and, maybe just as importantly or at least pa- part of the package, is he's got the mental tools. He's got... He, he's been at the top since 2003. He won a world championships as a teenager 16 years ago, uh, and that's unheard of. Nobody has that sort of l- or almost nobody has that sort of longevity. So he's been... He's the classic... H- he grew up in the Rift Valley, uh, of Kenya. And a- a- at altitude, um, it's, it's a total cliche for world beater runners, but, you know, running back and forth from school, hugely active as a kid, uh, accumulating more training as a... you know, as an eight-year-old than most, like, university-aged runners, even serious runners in Canada, where I am, or i- in Britain w- would, and then started training seriously. He's been doing it year after year, week after week, hundreds... You know, he was running, uh, reportedly in the ne- in the neighborhood of 140 miles a week leading up to this, so that's... we're talking well over 200 kilometers a week, some of that at a relaxed pace, some of that at a absolutely inhumanly fast pace.

   7. CWChris Williamson7:22

      (laughs)

4. 7:23 – 11:08

   Kipchoge’s ‘monastic’ training life meets high-tech optimization

   1. AHAlex Hutchinson7:23

      And, and, and, you know, one of the cool things, I think one of the things that makes people root for Kipchoge is he got a lot of publicity two years ago. There was a very similar attempt sponsored by Nike called Breaking Two, where he came within 25 seconds that time of breaking two hours. And there was a documentary that, that, uh, National Geographic put out about his preparations for that, and it gave people a window onto this guy who is probably one of the richest men in Kenya. Uh, he has a wife and a few kids. He visits them on weekends, but he spends his weekdays at this totally spartan training camp where he lives with other runners. Uh, you know, it's just like... i- it's not quite mud hut, but it's, it's absolutely spartan. He... You know, they have a roster. He takes turns mopping, you know, mopping out the toilet, washing from, you know, getting water from the well and washing from it. You know, he could live like an absolute sultan there, but he is a very simple guy, and he's got all these aphorisms about how if, you know, if you don't control your mind, your mind controls you. And so he's just... uh, he, he's totally focused on performance, and he, he lives this hard life, this very simple life, trains and, uh... So, this is a long answer, but the, the point is, uh, uh, this moment has been, you know, not years in the making, but decades in the making, and h- and he's worked very, very hard to, to become the, the, uh, you know, absolute running machine that he is now.

   2. CWChris Williamson8:44

      Yeah. I, I think one of the things that fascinates me and a lot of people with Kipchoge is the fact that he has this monastic, very zen, like, transcendent, uh, uh, quality that he des- uh, how he talks about his sport or... uh, it's not even a sport. It's his life or his calling, whatever he wants to refer to it as. Um, but then he gets thrust into this world where there's a guy on a bike giving him water during the race. Then, when he takes the bottle of water back, they measure how much water is being drank, uh, offset how much he, they know he needs because they've done muscle fiber tests to work out how much he dehydrates. So you have this, this beautiful kind of yin and yang of the, the real technological cutting-edge stuff that's attached to someone who has this purity, uh, uh, very back to basics approach to running. I think that's what makes it interesting.

   3. AHAlex Hutchinson9:42

      Y- y- you're absolutely right. There's this amazing juxtaposition. And so, you know, two years ago, when he was doing this first Nike race, I had a chance to chat with him a few times and, you know, I was... I'm a science journalist, so I was like, "I want to know all about the formulation of the, the, the drink you're using and, and, you know, how are you going to alter your, your training distribution," blah, blah, blah. And he's a smart guy. Like, he, he, he knows what's going on, uh, so I don't want to make it sound like h- he's just, like, "Oh, the scientists take care of it." But he knows what his job was, and he knows the science was not his job, so he was able to, in the midst of, of this sort of massively scientific and, and, let's face it, commercial enterprise, his job was just to, to, uh, to run and to look within himself and, and, you know, learn to push his limits, and he was able to maintain that. So I would ask him all these questions, he'd be like, "Yeah, that stuff's important, and I leave that to the scientific team. My job is to, is to train my mind and be ready to go." And I think that's one of the... You know, I think when Nike chose him two years ago, they were lucky th- that they got him, because that's one of the reasons this whole endeavor has this sort of magical feeling to it.

   4. CWChris Williamson10:52

      Mmm.

   5. AHAlex Hutchinson10:52

      Uh, and, and rather than feeling like a sort of Barnum & Bailey, like, step right up and see the, the, you know, the fattest woman in the world or whatever-

   6. CWChris Williamson11:00

      Mmm.

   7. AHAlex Hutchinson11:00

      ... it's like he, he gives it a purity because he really... like, he, he comes off as absolutely sincere. So what you said, I think, uh, that juxtaposition is absolutely fascinating.

5. 11:08 – 17:33

   The physiology debate: levers, light lower legs—and the mystery ‘X factor’

   1. CWChris Williamson11:08

      He's a great guy. Um, so just before we get on to the race itself and, and the course, the course choice and stuff like that, physiologically, Eliud, is he... if you were to design a, a runner in a lab, um, I remember reading (clears throat) a while ago, something to do with long shinbones being genetically something which is, uh, disproportionately more in Kenyan athletes, which, uh, means that they're good and then they need light feet and other bits and pieces and VO2 max and running efficiency. How, how does all that tie together for him?

   2. AHAlex Hutchinson11:40

      Y- y- you, you've been reading the right stuff, yeah. Uh, it, it, it... So-

   3. CWChris Williamson11:41

      I've been, I've been following you on Twitter, Alex. That's what's been happening.

   4. AHAlex Hutchinson11:46

      (laughs) Y- y- you know, so, uh, there's been this great mystery for the last 20 years, like, "Why are the Kenyans so good? And let's figure out if we can copy it somehow." And so, uh, there's all these, all these things, like you said. So the... the... there's... Go- going back decades, there's been fascinating experiments where it's like, okay, let's take a, uh, a lightweight, you know, uh, uh, a few ounces, and let's strap it onto someone's foot or their shin or their hip or wherever, and let's see how their running efficiency changes. And what you find, sort of not surprisingly, is the farther away from the center of your body a weight is-... the harder it is, th- the more ... I mean, and you can think about that, you know. You hold a weight up in front of you, it's one thing. You hold your arm out straight and hold a weight up, it's a lot harder. So if you have weight ex- a little bit of extra weight, a tiny bit of extra weight on your feet, for instance, with shoes, that changes your efficiency quite a bit. So what that means is that it's very advantageous to have very long but skinny, like no calf muscle, legs-

   5. CWChris Williamson12:42

      Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

   6. AHAlex Hutchinson12:42

      ... uh, and that gives you these levers that can propel you forward without paying that weight penalty. So, you know, the, and this happens to be a, a sort of typical characteristic of people who grew up in the area that Kipchoge grew up in. Was Kipchoge ... Is Kipchoge a perfect running machine? So when Nike first embarked on this project a few years ago, they, uh, I mean, and they sponsor a, a pretty large fraction of the best runners in the world, so they said, "Let, let's ..." They brought about more than two dozen of their best runners into the lab to say, "Let's, let's get out the calipers. Let's get out the treadmills. Let's measure all these guys and see who has the greatest endurance capacity." And Kipchoge was not at the top of the heap-

   7. CWChris Williamson13:19

      Do you know who was?

   8. AHAlex Hutchinson13:20

      ... by those measurements. Uh, there's a guy named Lelisa Desisa who actually won the World Championships this year. Um, so very good runner. He ... And he's won Boston a couple times, so he's, he, he's good. And, and, and they could see in the lab that he, he was off the charts. Um, but he has never run as fast as Kipchoge has. Kipchoge had good, like he had the kind of VO2 max and lactate threshold and running economy that you'd need to be a world-class runner, but he didn't have the kind that makes you say, "This guy's a one-in-a-generation talent." He's a, he's a world-class runner, but whatever makes him once-in-a-generation is something that doesn't show up in those lab tests.

   9. CWChris Williamson13:55

      How amazing is that? Like how cool is that to hear, that you've got this guy who is, you know, he's elite level, but not a freak, and there's something which can't be measured. 'Cause everyone talks about it in sport, right? They all talk about this X factor. But I think increasingly now as we get into the 21st century and we have pundits who are able to analyze with increasing dexterity a- a- and resolution on what's happening, we're becoming m- more and more cerebral about sport. We, we think more and more about the quantifiable metrics. And to hear that we have someone that's got this difficult-to-define X factor, uh, it's, it's so magic. He's just ... He's a hero.

   10. AHAlex Hutchinson14:35

       Yeah, You- you know, i- it's interesting because for me, again, I, I'm all about the science. I'm very interested in it, and you're absolutely right that our, our ability to analyze and understand the, the, the bases of his success is getting better and better. But for me, the moment we reach the point where you can go into a lab, measure 10 people, and, and tell y- tell you with 99% certainty who's gonna win a race and who isn't, that's the moment to me that sport loses its, its interest in a way. If, if, if you, if everything becomes quantifiable, then it's like, it's, it's just sport, you know. A race becomes a plumbing contest, who's got the biggest aorta or whatever.

   11. CWChris Williamson15:11

       Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

   12. AHAlex Hutchinson15:12

       And that's ... There has to be s- there has to be some- something that we can't measure for it to be interesting, so, uh, yeah, to me, that's, that's, that's some of the magic. And, and, you know, I'll, I'll tell you, you talk about the X factor, uh, I guess I met Kipchoge for the first time, you know, what, three years ago maybe, and it's easy to say this in hindsight but he, he has an, uh, a presence that is, that is hard to quantify. It's like I'm not gonna say, "I knew that moment that-"

   13. CWChris Williamson15:39

       Yeah, yeah, yeah.

   14. AHAlex Hutchinson15:39

       ... "he, you know, he was gonna break two hours." But it's like this guy has the ... Y- you know, some people have, some people just have a presence where it's like th- there's p- you know. It's not a swagger 'cause he's very humble and very quiet-

   15. CWChris Williamson15:50

       Mm.

   16. AHAlex Hutchinson15:50

       ... but you just, you, you feel that he's bigger than he is, and, and, and, you know, that's z- I think that's something that in some un- unquantifiable way that plays into his, his abilities.

   17. CWChris Williamson16:00

       I'd love to see him at a party talking about swagger. Like I'd love to-

   18. AHAlex Hutchinson16:04

       Aapparent- apparently, he likes to spin the tunes. Uh, uh, in Vienna-

   19. CWChris Williamson16:06

       Does he?

   20. AHAlex Hutchinson16:07

       ... he was, he was, uh-

   21. CWChris Williamson16:08

       (laughs)

   22. AHAlex Hutchinson16:08

       ... he, he, he, he wa- there was a big dance that night and he was giving out prizes to all of his, uh, the pacemakers, these world-class runners who paced him, but yeah, he, uh, he, he, he's not like a super party guy, but I think he can get down.

   23. CWChris Williamson16:19

       After you've just run a sub-two-hour marathon, you got to at least have a beer or something, right? You gotta, you gotta chill out somehow.

   24. AHAlex Hutchinson16:25

       Yeah, yeah. You gotta- (laughs) you gotta unwind. He, he takes a month off after a marathon like that-

   25. CWChris Williamson16:29

       Wow.

   26. AHAlex Hutchinson16:29

       ... and just chills out. So he's not one of these obsessive people who's like, "Okay, I've, I've already taken 12 hours off, I have to get my next workout in."

   27. CWChris Williamson16:35

       Mmm.

   28. AHAlex Hutchinson16:35

       He goes hard, then he, then he relaxes and has a good time.

   29. CWChris Williamson16:38

       Talking about the way that he has presence, there's a, a clip, um, and if anyone goes back and watches the intro to the race, so the pacemakers at the very, very beginning of the race, the pacemakers are all there and then Eliud walks through this gap in the barriers behind them. And I remember ... So I haven't watched the full race. It was a silly time last week if were ... I was in the UK and I'd worked late and blah, blah. And I watched this clip and it, it f- looks ... I know this sounds w- weird and a- existential, but it, it looks like the universe just parts around him as he walks through those barriers, and it's like, it's like he's not moving, the universe is moving around him.

   30. AHAlex Hutchinson17:19

       (gasps)
6. 17:33 – 20:43

   Choosing Vienna: course design, weather control, and the need for crowds

   1. AHAlex Hutchinson17:33

      Yeah, it, it was a sort of global search for, for trying to find the best of all possible worlds for a bunch of different factors they had to optimize. Uh, one was they wanted a course that was flat, as flat as possible with as few sharp turns as possible. They needed to get the temperature and the altitude and the humidity and all these things right. Uh, even from a logistical perspective, they needed to find a place where the city was willing to say, um-... "Yeah, we can guarantee you access to this for like a s- uh, uh, a, a two-week period."

   2. CWChris Williamson18:07

      Mm.

   3. AHAlex Hutchinson18:07

      Because they didn't wanna just say, "We're gonna run this race on October 12th," or whatever. They, what they said when they, when they planned it is, "We're gonna run it some time between..." I think it was like October 10th and 23rd or something like that. And they were gonna decide at the last minute based on the weather forecast, because if it happens to be a little warm or rainy or something, they weren't gonna do that. So, um, there were about... And, and, you know, when they initia- when they were originally searching for places, they, they considered all sorts of options. They considered the world's largest indoor convention center, or at least North America, the largest corn- convention center in North America in Chicago. It, so it's indoors, climate controlled, perfectly flat, huge. Uh, the problem with that one was that the air conditioning in the, in the building wasn't strong enough to get it as cold as they wanted.

   4. CWChris Williamson18:46

      No way.

   5. AHAlex Hutchinson18:47

      Uh, they considered a dike in the Netherlands, which is perfectly flat for like 23 miles or something like that, and has a really reliable tailwind in one direction. So you could be, "Let's just run straight along this dike with the wind blowing."

   6. CWChris Williamson18:59

      Yeah.

   7. AHAlex Hutchinson18:59

      They decided that would feel too much like cheating.

   8. CWChris Williamson19:01

      Yep. Okay.

   9. AHAlex Hutchinson19:02

      Uh, s- so, and they, they even considered building like ice walls along a track, uh, that would keep it, keep it locally cool. I, I mean they were, they were... Uh, and then like the Nike one ended up on a Formula One track in northern Italy-

   10. CWChris Williamson19:14

       Mm-hmm.

   11. AHAlex Hutchinson19:14

       ... so it was like a 1.5-mile loop. Uh, then Vienna gave them longer straightaways. Uh, and crucially, the one thing that's different really from, between the Nike race two years ago and the INEOS race this year is Kipchoge wanted crowd support. He wanted people cheering. It was, it was sort of, uh, deathly quiet at the, on the Formula One track, aside from just at the finish line there were a few people, some people cheering.

   12. CWChris Williamson19:37

       It was eerie. It was eerie when they set off, wasn't it?

   13. AHAlex Hutchinson19:40

       It w- yeah, it was like 5:00 in the morning-

   14. CWChris Williamson19:42

       Uh, it was misty.

   15. AHAlex Hutchinson19:42

       ... it was, it w- and they had these fluorescent lights and it, it, it was, it-

   16. CWChris Williamson19:45

       Oh, man, yeah. Kevin Hart there just being loud, bouncing around.

   17. AHAlex Hutchinson19:49

       He was the only guy with any energy.

   18. CWChris Williamson19:50

       Yeah, he was.

   19. AHAlex Hutchinson19:52

       (laughs) Um, yeah, so Kipchoge wanted t- wanted people cheering, and he got that in Vienna. And, and, uh, you know, I, I actually think if I, if I were designing it, I would want it to be deathly quiet for the first like 20 f- 25 or 30K, 'cause the marathon's supposed to feel easy for a long time, and you don't wanna get too excited-

   20. CWChris Williamson20:11

       Mm-hmm.

   21. AHAlex Hutchinson20:12

       ... too early in the race. Uh, so my optimal, if I were designing it, would be totally quiet, relaxed, just chilling out for 25, 30K, and then-

   22. CWChris Williamson20:22

       Then open the gates.

   23. AHAlex Hutchinson20:23

       ... w- just when it's getting hard, then you get-

   24. CWChris Williamson20:25

       Yeah.

   25. AHAlex Hutchinson20:25

       ... some, some crowd. For, for the next... Yeah, for you get like medium crowd-

   26. CWChris Williamson20:28

       Taper the crowd in.

   27. AHAlex Hutchinson20:29

       ... and then for the last part of it-

   28. CWChris Williamson20:30

       Yeah. Okay, good.

   29. AHAlex Hutchinson20:30

       ... it's like, "Everybody go nuts."

   30. CWChris Williamson20:32

       (laughs)
7. 20:43 – 23:37

   Do corners matter? Biomechanics modeling of curve costs

   1. CWChris Williamson20:43

      This route, if anyone was to, to look at it, there's some... Go to @sweatscience on Twitter and you'll be able to see it. It's, um, uh, from an aerial view, it's like a, a lollipop stick. It's like a long, thin thing with a little bump at one end, and then long all the way back with a longer roundabout at the top end, and then you go back down. One of the concerns that I'd seen you talking about was what do corners do. A corner that's this sharp, right? 'Cause you gotta do 180 degrees in the space of, is that 25 meters? Something like that.

   2. AHAlex Hutchinson21:13

      Yeah, the radius, so the radius curvature was actually, if you think about a standard athletics track, you know, 400-meter track-

   3. CWChris Williamson21:18

      Mm-hmm.

   4. AHAlex Hutchinson21:19

      ... uh, one of those little, uh, lollipop ends was tighter than the curves on a, a track.

   5. CWChris Williamson21:24

      Mm-hmm.

   6. AHAlex Hutchinson21:25

      And so, so that was a concern, and they got in touch with a guy at the University of Colorado who's one of the world experts in, in running biomechanics, and they had him build a model of how much does it slow you down or how much extra energy does it take to go around a curve. And, and not to get too deep into the, the, you know, the, the vector diagrams of forces and stuff, but if you're going around a curve, you've got, you've g-... The force of gravity is always pressing you down, and that's a big factor in how much energy you spend running. Then you've also got to spend a little extra energy turning. So pushing, uh, in- into the curve.

   7. CWChris Williamson21:57

      Mm-hmm.

   8. AHAlex Hutchinson21:58

      And the result is that you effectively, the way you can think about it is you weigh a little bit more when you're going around a corner. And what they calculated is on the tight corner, the extra weight was the equivalent as if Kipchoge was carrying two and a half cups of water with him, so he, he's that much heavier when going around the corner.

   9. CWChris Williamson22:17

      Mm-hmm.

   10. AHAlex Hutchinson22:17

       And what they, and so they ran the calculations and they decided it's no big deal. It's, the, i- in the end they, what they concluded is that course overall was, would, would, would be about five seconds slower than if they'd been able to come up with a hypothetical track that was perfectly straight and perfectly flat and just, you know, 26.2 miles in a straight line-

   11. CWChris Williamson22:38

       Mm-hmm.

   12. AHAlex Hutchinson22:38

       ... along like the salt, salt flats of i- in the Utah desert or whatever.

   13. CWChris Williamson22:42

       Yeah.

   14. AHAlex Hutchinson22:42

       So five seconds, like, uh, you know, if he had run two flat, zero-

   15. CWChris Williamson22:46

       (laughs)

   16. AHAlex Hutchinson22:46

       ... and three seconds, they would have said, "Goddammit, we should have gone to Utah."

   17. CWChris Williamson22:50

       Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

   18. AHAlex Hutchinson22:50

       But, uh, but they decided that that was pretty close, that it wasn't a, wasn't a big deal. If it had been 20 seconds on the curves, 30 seconds on the curves, uh, they would have been more concerned. And the other thing they could have done is if it had been significant, they would have altered the pace around the curves so that he wasn't working too hard around the curves. They would have said, "Let's slow down a bit on the curves-

   19. CWChris Williamson23:08

       Mm-hmm.

   20. AHAlex Hutchinson23:08

       "... so that you're not pushing into the red zone."

   21. CWChris Williamson23:10

       Got you. Okay, so we've got the track. We've got Kipchoge. He's been doing his 140 miles a week which is, I mean, that's gotta be pretty extreme even for like normal marathon prep, isn't it? Or is that, is that-

   22. AHAlex Hutchinson23:22

       It's, it's-

   23. CWChris Williamson23:22

       ... in the, the normal window?

   24. AHAlex Hutchinson23:23

       For a world-class marathoner, that's in the normal window. It's, it's on the high end. It's, um, there are certainly people who do less. But, uh, y- yeah, if you go to the, if you s- go to the start line of the Olympic marathon and do a little survey, you'll find, uh, quite a number of people will have hit 140 miles, uh, uh, a week for a while.

8. 23:37 – 26:08

   Drafting engineering: the pacer formation, wind-tunnel logic, and the “two behind” tactic

   1. CWChris Williamson23:37

      Such an amount of volume though, isn't it, still? So anyway, we've got him there, and then he's got how many, how many pacers? 70 pacers, did you say?

   2. AHAlex Hutchinson23:44

      He, he's got a, a total, total group, I think it was 41 pacers including like Olympic champions, world champions, so some of the best runners in the world. And, but who were getting paid reasonably well, I think.

   3. CWChris Williamson23:55

      Yeah.

   4. AHAlex Hutchinson23:55

      (laughs) And, and they were divided into teams of I, I think it was, uh, seven runners. Uh-

   5. CWChris Williamson24:00

      Five in front, two behind, yeah.

   6. AHAlex Hutchinson24:02

      E- exactly. The two behind was a, was a, was a sort of surprise. That was another difference from th- the last time. 'Cause you'd say, "Well, who cares? Why, why is there someone behind him? They're going to, like, push him forward if he falls down?" But, uh, they, they ran these simulations, these, uh, uh, wind tunnel tests and c- computational fluid dynamic simulations, and determined... And, and cyclists know this too, 'cause cyclists have thought about drafting before. It's faster to be in the middle of the peloton than at the back of the peloton.

   7. CWChris Williamson24:25

      Mm-hmm.

   8. AHAlex Hutchinson24:25

      And, uh, the reason is you want the air to be as smooth as possible going past you. And if you're the, you're at the back, the air behind you is, is, is kind of turbulent.

   9. CWChris Williamson24:32

      Very messy.

   10. AHAlex Hutchinson24:33

       If you've got two people behind you, the, the air just keeps flowing right past you, and then the turbulence is pushed back behind the last pacemaker.

   11. CWChris Williamson24:39

       Yeah. If you've ever been driving on the motorway behind a big truck and you're close and then that truck pulls away a little bit and you start to then catch where those, uh, those winds start to cross over, it's really ugly. It's like a lot of, uh, a lot of turbulence.

   12. AHAlex Hutchinson24:53

       That's exactly... Yeah, that's, uh, that's, that's the perfect analogy. Um, Kipchoge wasn't going as fast as a truck, but (laughs) like-

   13. CWChris Williamson24:59

       Yeah. Well, no, it depends. I've seen some trucks in the UK that go about as quick as he did. So, we've sent them away. We've got a guy, we've got a man with a, a wonderful mustache who's one of the pacemakers. Great mustache. There might have been a couple of mustaches. Um, a lot more, uh, white athletes than I actually thought at that very, very top end of, of it. I would have thought it would have been... I think Breaking2 was heavily, uh, K- Kenyan, African-based, and it seemed like INEOS had really pulled out every athlete from everywhere that they could.

   14. AHAlex Hutchinson25:24

       I, I think they were... I, you know, I'm not... I'm, I'm speculating here. I suspect they were consciously, uh, trying to make it a globally appealing event. So they had-

   15. CWChris Williamson25:33

       Oh.

   16. AHAlex Hutchinson25:33

       ... uh, they had several American athletes. They had, uh, Australian athletes. Uh, I can't remember if they had any... Uh, they had British athletes. Um-

   17. CWChris Williamson25:41

       Representative pacemakers, then.

   18. AHAlex Hutchinson25:43

       Yeah, yeah. So th- th- they were... They brought together... All of those guys were amazing. They're all, uh, you know, n- near the, the top end. They had, they had Norwegian athletes, the three Norwegian brothers, the Ingebrigtsens, who were the first time that three brothers have ever made the World Championship final this year. So anyway, they had, they had... Uh, th- I think they were, uh, they weren't just saying, "Let's find the cheapest pacemakers we can."

   19. CWChris Williamson26:01

       Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

   20. AHAlex Hutchinson26:02

       They were like, "Let's find people who are all world-class, but let's also give people around the world, uh, a r- reason to tune in."

9. 26:08 – 27:32

   Free speed at the start: the bridge descent and what record rules allow

   1. CWChris Williamson26:08

      That's awesome. I really like that idea. So w- we're onto the race, they've set away. Uh, they actually started off on a section of the track that they only ever run once, didn't they? So this-

   2. AHAlex Hutchinson26:17

      Yeah, and it was-

   3. CWChris Williamson26:17

      ... start off on this, like, inc- uh, decline. Sorry.

   4. AHAlex Hutchinson26:21

      And that's free time. So they, th- so before they start, before they got onto this loop, they did a, about a 500 meter down a bridge, which d- I think it descended p- p- 13, 14 meters. And the calculation was that that actually saved about 10 seconds. And before you say, "Hey, that's cheating," uh, the, the official IAAF rules for, uh, world records on, in road races, you're allowed to have a little bit of a downhill, and it's... Uh, you're allowed to have a one in 1,000, uh, perc- uh, ratio descent. So that means for a 42 kilometer race, you're allowed to go down four- 42 meters.

   5. CWChris Williamson26:59

      Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh.

   6. AHAlex Hutchinson27:00

      Uh, and that... And so... And they, they only went down, I think, 13 meters.

   7. CWChris Williamson27:03

      Mm-hmm.

   8. AHAlex Hutchinson27:03

      So they, they, they took advantage of about a third of the allowable downhill that they could have put in the race. And, you know, 10 seconds could have... That's actually... You know-

   9. CWChris Williamson27:12

      Significant.

   10. AHAlex Hutchinson27:13

       ... if, if anything, it would have been nice if they could have got a little more downhill-

   11. CWChris Williamson27:15

       Oh, oh, yeah.

   12. AHAlex Hutchinson27:15

       ... but, of course, the bridge, the bridges are still up.

   13. CWChris Williamson27:17

       Extend, extend the bridge up a bit more.

   14. AHAlex Hutchinson27:19

       Y- you want to have 41.9 meters, like you...

   15. CWChris Williamson27:21

       (laughs)

   16. AHAlex Hutchinson27:21

       Ideally, you want to have that, that descent, and you probably want it at the end where they're tired. But anyway, they couldn't, they couldn't, uh, get everything.

   17. CWChris Williamson27:27

       Work out how to do that. Yeah, exactly.

   18. AHAlex Hutchinson27:29

       Yeah. Y- you'd have to kind of get the earth movers out to, to build the actual perfect course.

10. 27:32 – 31:03

    Watching it unfold: live-race tension, mid-race doubts, and the feel vs the numbers

    1. CWChris Williamson27:32

       Got you. Um, so moving on to the race, how did you... 'Cause did you watch it live? Did you get to watch it live?

    2. AHAlex Hutchinson27:38

       I did. It started at 2:15 in the morning my time.

    3. CWChris Williamson27:40

       (laughs)

    4. AHAlex Hutchinson27:40

       So I, I have very few memories of the, the first, uh, 45 minutes of the race. But, uh, I finally was awake by about 3:00 in the morning. I was like, "I think this is happening. I think this is gonna, going to be something." So, yeah, I-

    5. CWChris Williamson27:52

       What did you feel like? You're watching it, you're analyzing him. You know, this is what you do. How, how did you, did you feel? Did he look worried at any point? Did you assess his running form?

    6. AHAlex Hutchinson28:01

       Yeah. You know, he, uh... So I di- I was worried at about... Just before halfway, he started to drift back a little bit. Uh, he, uh, there... A gap opened up between him and the pacemaker in front of him, and he didn't look too happy. And I thought, "Man, if he's struggling now, I think this is gonna be trouble." Now, after the race, he reportedly said... People asked him about that, 'cause I wasn't the only person who noticed that. And he was like, "No, I don't know what you're talking about. I felt great the whole way." (laughs) So I don't know if that's just a little bit of revisionist history. You know, you don't always remember what you're thinking in the middle of the race. Or it was just he, he was not, you know, not paying attention or something.

    7. CWChris Williamson28:33

       Yeah.

    8. AHAlex Hutchinson28:33

       But so I wa- I was, I was watching for little signs like that. Uh, I was... It was interesting because I... So I was in... For, for the Nike race a couple of years ago, I was there in Italy. And at that point I ex-... For that race, I expected to feel kind of cynical 'cause it was, you know, it was a sort of big Nike marketing stunt-

    9. CWChris Williamson28:54

       Mm-hmm.

    10. AHAlex Hutchinson28:55

        ... uh, as well as an athletic event. And I ended up feeling totally blown away by the sort of magical feeling of, of that Breaking2. So this time, I think my, my expectations were a little higher. I was like, "Take me to that special place, Elliott. I want to, you know, uh-"

    11. CWChris Williamson29:09

        Feel it, yeah.

    12. AHAlex Hutchinson29:09

        ... feel... Exactly. And, you know, it was, it was special, but it was, it was less surprising because he'd already been within 25 seconds. So instead of feeling like, "I can't believe he's doing this," I was more feeling like, "I hope he doesn't screw up" because-

    13. CWChris Williamson29:24

        Yeah. Yeah.

    14. AHAlex Hutchinson29:24

        ... you know, there's no second place in this race.

    15. CWChris Williamson29:26

        Yeah.

    16. AHAlex Hutchinson29:26

        Like, if he doesn't do it, th- that's 15 million pounds down the drain. And if that's everyone just-

    17. CWChris Williamson29:31

        (laughs)

    18. AHAlex Hutchinson29:31

        ... uh, you know, that's a night of sleep. Like, I'll tell you, I was, I was wiped out for the whole weekend after watching that.

    19. CWChris Williamson29:35

        (laughs)

    20. AHAlex Hutchinson29:36

        So there, there was a little bit more of just kind of like, "Just do it already, Elliott." And I, I hate to say that. It was still magical, but it was just, um... The second time is never the same as the first.

    21. CWChris Williamson29:45

        I agree. I think to give INEOS... Who are IN-... They're, they're like an engineering company, right? Is that right?

    22. AHAlex Hutchinson29:50

        Yeah, they're a petrochemical company in, uh, in Britain.

    23. CWChris Williamson29:52

        Obviously the... I mean, the tie-ins with running, uh, make perfect sense.

    24. AHAlex Hutchinson29:55

        Yeah, of cou- of course. Yeah, yeah. 'Cause if you want to, you know, fuel up, I guess, on the way home from the race.

    25. CWChris Williamson30:00

        Yeah, exactly. (laughs)

    26. AHAlex Hutchinson30:00

        Yeah, no. I think, I think they just wanted their, their name out there. Yeah.

    27. CWChris Williamson30:03

        I get it. Well, if you've got the money. Um, but yeah, there was something... You're right. I'll be interested to see... There'll be a-... after-movie documentary thing-

    28. AHAlex Hutchinson30:14

        I hope so.

    29. CWChris Williamson30:14

        ... coming out eventually, I'm gonna- I'm gonna guess. Um, but yeah, the Nike breaking too, it really did feel very special. Like I loved, I loved how, you know, they got Kevin... O- obviously, it's Nike. Like, they've... You know, when you think about the people that they can call in, like who the fuck is INEOS? Like, they can call in, like, a, like a petrol pump attendant or something-

    30. AHAlex Hutchinson30:33

        (laughs)
11. 31:03 – 38:01

    The shoe revolution: Vaporfly’s plate + foam, prototypes, and “Formula 1 vs stock car”

    1. CWChris Williamson31:03

       had he have done it on that first time. I wonder how, how people might have changed and stuff. So, getting onto one of the more major controversies that's going on at the moment before we talk about some other records that have been broken recently, the shoe that Eliud had on for the first one was, was, uh, uh, again, a new, uh, a new iteration of a- a line of shoes, and then they've then taken it up a notch for this. Can you, can you talk us through how they relate?

    2. AHAlex Hutchinson31:32

       Yeah, and this is really important because I don't, I don't think we can talk about this race without talking about the shoes, uh, because I don't think we would be having this discussion or be here if it wasn't for a major change in shoe technology that took place in 2016, and Nike introduced a new line of shoes, uh, which has t- two distinct features. One is a- a stiff carbon fiber plate that goes through the- the- the midsole, and the other is that the- the midsole was made of this new ultra-light, ultra-resilient foam. And by resilient, I mean you squeeze it down and it springs back really quickly. And so marathon flats used to be as thin as possible. You wanted to be ra- racing in a shoe that weighed nothing, and so they're basically just a piece of rubber wrapped around your feet. Now, they're these big, thick, uh, y- you know, uh, uh, more than an inch thick is- is the sole of this foam, this lightweight foam, and then it's got a- a carbon fiber plate, uh, through the middle of it. And-

    3. CWChris Williamson32:27

       They look comical. If you look at the- the shoes that they're wearing now at the start of the race, it looks funny. Look like platform shoes.

    4. AHAlex Hutchinson32:34

       Yeah, it- it's- it's sort of taking us back to the '70s. It's, uh, uh, uh... They're- they- they look like sort of running pimps or something like that.

    5. CWChris Williamson32:40

       (laughs)

    6. AHAlex Hutchinson32:40

       Uh, it... And- and it's... You know, initially, when Nike introduced these shoes, no one believed they worked, so they were like, "Oh, it's all a big stunt, you know. All the magic is in the drafting or- or the- the course, and they- they're just trying to sell us these shoes." But it's become clear that, no, the- the- the data was true. These shoes-

    7. CWChris Williamson32:58

       They still are legit.

    8. AHAlex Hutchinson32:59

       ... really are several percent better than any previous shoe, and th- the sort of all-time lists and- and records have been rewritten over the last two years, and w- it's not just that one pair of shoes. So, so Kipchoge was... Two years ago, was wearing the initial line of the shoe. Since then, they've had a- a second iteration. It was the Vaporfly 4%, then the Vaporfly NEXT%. And now Kipchoge was wearing yet another shoe that is even... Which looks even wackier than the previous ones, because it's got these two pods under the forefoot in addition to the thick sole, and it's thicker, even thicker than the- the initial. Like, the initial ones were something like 31 millimeters thick, and apparently the prototype, although no one has been allowed to touch it yet, is quote pushing 40 millimeters, which is, uh... I don't know if... You know, a lot of people have heard about Hoka shoes, which are these big, super cushy maximalist shoes that- that... Uh, with thick soles. The Nike shoes are even thicker than these sort of clown shoes that everyone used to make fun of.

    9. CWChris Williamson33:56

       Wow.

    10. AHAlex Hutchinson33:56

        So, it sparked a big controversy-

    11. CWChris Williamson33:57

        (laughs)

    12. AHAlex Hutchinson33:58

        ... because when you have a shoe that's that much better and it's made by one company and s- and not everyone has access to the newest prototypes, then you start to ask, "Hang on. Uh, i- is it... Is it... Is the shoe determining who's winning the race? Have we moved to a Formula 1 model where it's an engineering competition rather than a stock car model where everyone's driving the same car?"

    13. CWChris Williamson34:19

        Yeah. It is strange. I think, uh, you know, for me, as someone who... If you tried to put 26 and a bit miles in front of me, like, you could put me in a pair of rollerblades and I'm not making it, but I- I wonder just how much of a difference the shoes make. I- I would be skeptical until reading and hearing more about it, I think, "Oh, it's just a pair of shoes. They can't make that much of a difference."

    14. AHAlex Hutchinson34:42

        So it... You know, if- if the goal is, uh,, you know, "Me and my mates are gonna run a marathon in- in a year just as a big challenge and we want to make it to the finish, eh, you know, doesn't really matter about the shoes." If you're- if you're racing yourself and if you're trying to set a best time or if you're trying to hit an external time like the Boston Marathon qualifying standard or something like that, then all of a sudden you start really paying attention to two minutes here, three minutes there. And there was a big... So, for the elites it's one thing. There was a big... The New York Times did a big crowdsourced analysis a year or two ago where they- they used data from Strava, which is this, uh, online platform that... You know, where people upload their- their- their runs from GPS, including their races and the... And they sometimes record which shoes they're wearing. So they said, "Let's look at the same runners who have switched from one shoe to another, either from another shoe to the- to the Vaporfly or the Vaporfly to another shoe," and what they found was more or less exactly what Nike- Nike was claiming. The runners were a couple of minutes, a couple of percent faster in the Vaporfly than they were in other shoes.

    15. CWChris Williamson35:45

        That's so crazy. So, what's the... What does that pod do? Have you got any idea what the- the pod... Is that similar to the... Is it the Joyride or the Float Ride that they've just brought out, that Nike have brought out?

    16. AHAlex Hutchinson35:55

        Oh, I'm not... Yeah, I'm not sure. I'm not sure. That- that's-

    17. CWChris Williamson35:57

        So that's the one that's got... That's a pod that's got little beads inside of the pod, like a beanbag.

    18. AHAlex Hutchinson36:02

        Oh, okay.

    19. CWChris Williamson36:03

        So that's... They- they recently brought that out, but the thing that Eliud's got looks a lot more, like, hardcore than that.

    20. AHAlex Hutchinson36:09

        Yeah, so the only- the only information we have is that there was a patent filing, uh, that someone unearthed that looks like Kipchoge's prototype, and so people are speculating that this is what's in his shoe. Uh, it's not clear that it... But- but the pod itself had these sort of fibers within it that get tensed and stretched, and like...

    21. CWChris Williamson36:28

        This is serious space age shit, isn't it?

    22. AHAlex Hutchinson36:31

        Yeah, and here's the, here's the thing, it's like shoe companies have been making these crazy claims for technology for as long as I've been alive. Every, every year there's a new, it's like, "We're, we're introducing the Nike Shox. We're introducing, you know, the, the gel this, or the torsion that," or whatever, and it's, and there's always this complicated plausible sounding explanation of why this is gonna be the best thing since sliced bread. And the, the sort of, the heuristic that I learned over the years is just ignore all that, because it's never true. It never makes a difference. All this stuff is just noise. And so that's why the Nike shoe caught everyone by surprise, so it was like, "Whoa, this really works." So now-

    23. CWChris Williamson37:15

        Yeah.

    24. AHAlex Hutchinson37:15

        ... they're g- th- they're still doing the same thing. They're still, "So here's these po- uh, pods, and the pods have torsion or beads or whatever the h- heck you want." I, my default is still to say, "Uh, probably doesn't do anything. Let, like, let's just ignore what that is." We've been wrong once. The carbon fiber plates and the foam really did something.

    25. CWChris Williamson37:32

        Mm-hmm.

    26. AHAlex Hutchinson37:32

        And we'll see whether the pods do something more, but it, that may, the pods may just be sort of a, you know, pay no attention to the, to the, you know, the man in the, with the big hat or whatever, like a, a distraction to the fact that they actually... The other thing in this prototype, or in this patent application, is they suggested they could have up to three carbon fiber plates-

    27. CWChris Williamson37:50

        Mm.

    28. AHAlex Hutchinson37:50

        ... in the shoe. So may- maybe it's al- still all about the carbon fiber plates and the foam, or maybe the pods do something, but that claim hasn't been tested by, by scientists, unlike the carbon fiber plate.

12. 38:01 – 51:48

    Fairness and regulation: hidden prototypes, sponsorship conflicts, and drawing a clear line

    1. CWChris Williamson38:01

       Got you. So what have been some of the criticisms then of, of this particular run? From the running purists and the people that you'll, you'll have to see having their bickerings online, what, what have people been saying?

    2. AHAlex Hutchinson38:13

       Yeah, well, th- you know, how long do you have? 'Cause there's-

    3. CWChris Williamson38:16

       (laughs)

    4. AHAlex Hutchinson38:16

       ... there's lots of criticisms. Uh, you know, the- there's, there's a, there's a co- there's two, basically two basic things. One is the sort of general criticism of exhibition races like this that they should've been done, you know, like my grandfather used to run a marathon, you know, this is how we run races, and this is how it always should be. I hate all this publicity and this advertising. And I think that's, that's basically grumpiness, and I, I, you know-

    5. CWChris Williamson38:39

       Curmudgeons.

    6. AHAlex Hutchinson38:40

       ... I understand whatever, but, uh, yeah, I'm not... Uh, uh, eh, uh, th- to me, that doesn't carry a lot of water. If they don't, if they're not interested, they don't have to pay attention to it.

    7. CWChris Williamson38:46

       Mm-hmm.

    8. AHAlex Hutchinson38:48

       The, the other criticism is more based on the shoes, and, y- you know, to, to understand that, you have to go back to 2016. Uh, so no one knew these shoes existed. They weren't publicly announced until mid-2017. But a select few Nike runners were given prototypes of the shoes, which were f- specially fabricated to disguise what they were. They were disguised as Zoom Streak 6s, so they looked like old shoes, but they actually had these carbon fiber plates and the foam in them. They took these shoes, they went to the Olympics, they swept the top three spots in the men's marathon, and they also won the women's marathon.

    9. CWChris Williamson39:26

       No way.

    10. AHAlex Hutchinson39:27

        So now you've got a situation where you've got a shoe that helps, and only a few people have it, and they're taking, sweeping the medals. And so people are like, "That's not fair. That's not fair." The, the, a race should be among the runners, not among who happens to be favored by Nike, uh, and given the best shoes. And I have, I, I have a lot of sympathy for that argument. In fact, I agree with it. I think that was not, that was not kosher, and that, th- that should not be done. Now, the IAAF, the, the governing body of track changed the rules the next year to say, "Okay, any shoe that's... We're not gonna ban carbon fiber plates, but any shoe used must be widely available to all, d- uh, in the spirit of the university- universality of athletics." Now, that rule is now on the books, but it hasn't changed anything. People are using prototypes, uh, elite athletes are still using unreleased prototypes, so I don't know why they put the rule in if they're not actually gonna be-

    11. CWChris Williamson40:19

        Hmm.

    12. AHAlex Hutchinson40:19

        ... enforcing it. Um, but that's where, so that's where I think the real meat of the controversy is. First of all, is it, is it fair to have these shoes? And that's a, I, I think banning the shoes, uh, you know, I, I can see arguments on both sides, but there should definitely be, huh, regulations or rules to make sure that there aren't, s- that only a few people, you don't have this situation where only a few people have a shoe and nobody else doesn't and it's making an appreciable difference. That's just not how the Olympics should be decided.

    13. CWChris Williamson40:49

        Well, what about if, what about if the shoe's available to all, but you're, you, as an athlete, you have, with a different sponsor?

    14. AHAlex Hutchinson40:55

        Yeah, so that gets a little, uh, that gets tricky, and there have been some amazing, amazing instances of runners at like the world championships running in the Nike shoes but having painted them to look like their sh- their-

    15. CWChris Williamson41:10

        New Balance-

    16. AHAlex Hutchinson41:11

        ... their own sponsored shoes.

    17. CWChris Williamson41:11

        ... or Asics or-

    18. AHAlex Hutchinson41:12

        Yeah.

    19. CWChris Williamson41:12

        ... whatever.

    20. AHAlex Hutchinson41:12

        Yeah, yeah. Pa- painting the N for New Balance onto the Vaporflys.

    21. CWChris Williamson41:15

        Oh my god.

    22. AHAlex Hutchinson41:15

        And they get busted. People, people are there with, with cameras, and they're like, "Look at this dude." And I personally know a couple of people who've lost their sponsorships because they raced-

    23. CWChris Williamson41:24

        Shit.

    24. AHAlex Hutchinson41:24

        ... in Nike shoes.

    25. CWChris Williamson41:25

        Yeah.

    26. AHAlex Hutchinson41:26

        Um, and I, and I, and, you know, there's, I, there's a guy, I know a number of, you know, elite marathoners with, with sponsorships, and, and one of them was saying recently, it's like, "I have to decide, is it worth it to me, the relatively small amount of money that I get from shoe company X-

    27. CWChris Williamson41:39

        Mm-hmm.

    28. AHAlex Hutchinson41:39

        ... to race in a slower shoe, or should I just give up my sponsorship so that I can, 'cause maybe I'll make so much more prize money if I'm a minute or two faster?"

    29. CWChris Williamson41:47

        Yup.

    30. AHAlex Hutchinson41:47

        So this is, this is a real challenge. And I think the best case scenario, there's a few different paths we could go, but probably the best case scenario is that other shoe companies come out with com- comparable shoes-
13. 51:48 – 58:53

    Records keep falling and the ‘tech line’ problem: Kosgei, Maurten, and what counts as acceptable aid

    1. AHAlex Hutchinson51:48

       Yeah. So the, the women's record, women's world record for the marathon went down the day after Eliud Kipchoge's sub two. A- and this was, to me it was actually more surprising than Eliud. 'Cause Eliud was already 25 seconds from the barrier, we kinda knew that it could happen even though it wasn't gonna be easy. But then the next day in Chicago, uh, Brigid Kosgei broke Paula Radcliffe's, uh, marathon world record. Paula's, Paula's record had, uh, was 2:15.25 and it had stood since 2003, and basically no one had come within a m- well, not a mile, but no one had come within shouting distance of that record. Uh, uh, Mary Keitany I think was the second fastest, and she was like 2:17 something.

    2. CWChris Williamson52:28

       Miles off.

    3. AHAlex Hutchinson52:28

       So... Yeah, yeah, like ages, ages off. And then out of nowhere, out of absolutely nowhere, uh, r- uh, you know, not completely nowhere, but very surprisingly all of a sudden Brigid Kosgei, this Kenyan, uh, runner ran 2:14.04, so smashed Paula's record by over a minute, um, i- i- in Chicago, uh, o- o- off a very fast pace. It wasn't even optimally paced. And after the race she said, "Yeah, I think a lady can run 2:10. I'm gonna keep trying it." So it's like, what? You know. A- and, and, and needless to say, the important, you know... maybe the first thing I should say is she was wearing, uh, Nike's Vaporflys.

    4. CWChris Williamson53:02

       (laughs)

    5. AHAlex Hutchinson53:03

       So it's-

    6. CWChris Williamson53:04

       It sucks though.

    7. AHAlex Hutchinson53:04

       You know, we have to re-evaluate.

    8. CWChris Williamson53:05

       Doesn't it suck that we're all... that this is the discussion that we're having now, that every performance that's good's got to be caveated with an asterisk that's talking about it was in this pair of shoes? I re- I hope, I really do hope for the sport that they just work out what the rule is, implement it, hard lines, and, and everyone can get back to, to talking about running.

    9. AHAlex Hutchinson53:26

       I 100% agree, and it's, it's, it's, it's unfortunate that that's the discussion, and so it's understandable that some people would say, "Therefore we wish the shoe had been banned, you know, strangled at birth and just gotten rid of." And, and maybe that would've been the best situation, but it's not, it's not what's happened. And at this point, I think there'd be... it would be more trouble or more disruptive than, than it's worth to try and, like, s- erase all the records that have been set in these shoes.

    10. CWChris Williamson53:50

        Mm-hmm.

    11. AHAlex Hutchinson53:51

        So I think we have to say, okay, this is where we're at, but let's put... and this is what the British Journal of Sports Medicine paper says, let's, let's put a limit on where we're at now and not let it go any farther. Let's... and then the... 'cause the most disorienting thing is when the, the standards are changing every six months and, and-

    12. CWChris Williamson54:08

        Mm-hmm.

    13. AHAlex Hutchinson54:09

        ... things are getting faster. Once, once they settle into a new stasis, even if it's faster than it was five years ago, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll get used to that.

    14. CWChris Williamson54:16

        Yeah.

    15. AHAlex Hutchinson54:16

        'Cause we, we've gotten used to it in many other sports before. It's like, oh, okay, now speed skaters have clap skates on, e- everyone's faster than they were in the '90s, but we're not arguing about it every six months. It was, there was a brief period of disruption in the late '90s and then it was done. And even with the swimsuits in, in 2010 I guess it was, you know, records were just falling, falling, falling. They said, "Okay, here's where we're gonna set the line-"

    16. CWChris Williamson54:38

        Mm-hmm.

    17. AHAlex Hutchinson54:38

        "... of what swimsuits are allowed."And then, since then, it's- it's kind of a n- a non-issue now. So, I- I think running can do that, but they need to, they need to set a, you know, set some rules now so that people understand what the parameters are and what's allowed and what's not.

    18. CWChris Williamson54:51

        It's interesting. It's quite a philosophical debate, or quite a philosophical thought about, what are you allowing to be enhanced with regards to an athlete? For instance, if you were, if someone had come up with some unbelievable new intra-workout nutrition drink which was able to fuel muscles at 10 times the- the pace, or what ... do you know what I mean? Like, if it was, w- where are we allowing this to happen and where are we not? I think it's because it feels somehow, because the shoe is not a part of the athlete, it is not literally integral to the athlete is s- perhaps why people feel a bit sort of icky about it.

    19. AHAlex Hutchinson55:30

        Yeah, I mean, it's funny you should say that because they're, uh, th- the other innovation in the last two years has been a new sports drink wi-, uh, called Maurten made by this small Swedish company which-

    20. CWChris Williamson55:39

        Maurten?

    21. AHAlex Hutchinson55:40

        It has ... Maurten. M-A-U-R-T-E-N.

    22. CWChris Williamson55:43

        Okay, cool.

    23. AHAlex Hutchinson55:44

        And it, uh, the- the claim is that it has these two ingredients, pectin and alginate, I think th- they're made from, like, seaweed or something like that, y- and it's, other than that it's a standard sports drink. It's got a bunch of carbohydrates in it. You swallow it, and when the, when those ingredients get in your stomach, they react with the stomach acid to create a hydrogel which kind of encapsulates the carbohydrates, effectively sort of hiding them from your stomach. Normally, if you try and take in a bunch of carbohydrate when you're exercising, uh, you reach a point where it, you can't handle any more. Your stomach rebels and you either get diarrhea or you vomit or you just f-

    24. CWChris Williamson56:15

        Hmm.

    25. AHAlex Hutchinson56:15

        Or you just feel like crap.

    26. CWChris Williamson56:16

        Mm-hmm.

    27. AHAlex Hutchinson56:17

        The hydrogel hides this carbohydrate. It's in your stomach, but you don't e- you're not e- y- y- you're, you're not detecting it. It then goes into your intestines and is absorbed into your bloodstream. So, the claim is that you can drink much higher concentrations of carbohydrate, uh, and, to get more fuel in during a marathon or other endurance activity without messing up your-

    28. CWChris Williamson56:37

        Stomach discomfort.

    29. AHAlex Hutchinson56:37

        ... your gastrointestinal system. And this has swept the endurance world in the last couple of years. It's, uh, p- everyone loves it. There's been no data showing that it actually works the way it claims. Uh, you know, my, my, my question is always, how do we know you're not just pooping out a bunch of hydrogel-

    30. CWChris Williamson56:53

        Mm-hmm.
14. 58:53 – 1:04:15

    The ‘kamikaze index’: why championship races suddenly went out brutally fast

    1. CWChris Williamson58:53

       Totally right. So, what I wanted to finish on was, uh, an article which I'd, uh, seen you sharing recently to do with the, is it the suicide pace that people go out at at runs?

    2. AHAlex Hutchinson59:04

       (laughs) Yeah, yeah.

    3. CWChris Williamson59:04

       And I, I found, uh, I found that really just fascinating. Can you, can you take us through that?

    4. AHAlex Hutchinson59:09

       Yeah, sure. So, the- the World Athletics Championships, uh, just wrapped up last month in, uh, or a few weeks ago in, uh, Qatar, and, uh, you know, I- I spent a week or whatever watching all these races, uh, uh, streaming them online. And there was something really unique about this year which was that the- the- the- the dis- middle distance and long distance races almost universally went out really, really fast. Not like, "Let's just judge our pace carefully and go fast," but like, "I'm gonna go out and I'm, I might die but anyone who's gonna come with me is gonna die too."

    5. CWChris Williamson59:42

       (laughs)

    6. AHAlex Hutchinson59:43

       And that's really unusual because the- the, for the last 15 or 20 years, um, the standard thing in endurance, in championship racing, not- not time trial racing but in trying to win a gold, as I say, the Olympics, is everyone goes out really slowly and watches their competitors. Because there's a real sense that if you're out in front you're the hunted-

    7. CWChris Williamson1:00:03

       Mmm.

    8. AHAlex Hutchinson1:00:03

       ... and if you're lurking behind someone you're the hunter. And there, there's some aerodynamic stuff to- to do that. If you're leading you're- you're sort of breaking wind for everyone else. But it's, I think it's, uh, more than that it's psychological, this feeling of if you're the one who's stalking your prey you can choose when to pounce and then when you see a finish line you pounce, you go by them, they don't have a chance to react and it's over. So, it- it's sort of like these cycling pursuit races where they g- almost go as slow as possible for the first few laps.

    9. CWChris Williamson1:00:28

       It's crazy when you see that, isn't it? When they're doing those big U-turns-

    10. AHAlex Hutchinson1:00:31

        It's like they're almost falling over.

    11. CWChris Williamson1:00:31

        ... up and down. Yeah, it's so hilarious.

    12. AHAlex Hutchinson1:00:33

        Yeah, and those- those races can be fun to watch but it's interesting 'cause then you end up with really slow times and- and- and, and then this year was totally different. There were none of those sort of cat and mouse chess match games. It was like-... gun goes, I'm throwing down the gloves, and I am going balls to the wall to see, uh, and, and, s- see who can last. And so the times were extraordinarily fast, and just the way they were run. So, I, I ran some analyses. I, I, I, I calculated what I call the kamikaze index-

    13. CWChris Williamson1:00:59

        Mm-hmm.

    14. AHAlex Hutchinson1:01:00

        How fast did the races start compared to their average pace? And it, and it turned out that this year was anomalous compared to the last 20 years. It was the, th- there's, there's this cultural shift for some reason, and, and it's hard to know, like, did, did, d- did all the runners r- you know, did one runner do it and then everyone else was like, "Whoa, it worked for that guy, I'm gonna try that." And someone, "Well, I'm gonna try that," and everyone tr-

    15. CWChris Williamson1:01:21

        Mm-hmm.

    16. AHAlex Hutchinson1:01:21

        So, it was, it was interesting to watch. It's not that one type of race is better than, than o- others, but it was fascinating to see, uh, people letting it all hang out. And it made, you know, just from a personal perspective and a sort of applying this to, eh, g- general life and to a- the rest of us, it, it, it made me look back at the way I often run races, which is very cautiously, I don't wanna blow up.

    17. CWChris Williamson1:01:41

        Mm-hmm.

    18. AHAlex Hutchinson1:01:42

        And I've, I've thought a lot about this in re- you know, in recent years, just in the context of endurance that I think if you really wanna find your limits, sometimes you have to blow up. Sometimes you have to go out too fast.

    19. CWChris Williamson1:01:51

        Yeah.

    20. AHAlex Hutchinson1:01:51

        Um, and, you know, hopefully you go faster than you usually do and you discover, "Oh, wait, I can maintain this."

    21. CWChris Williamson1:01:56

        I can hold on, yeah.

    22. AHAlex Hutchinson1:01:57

        Yeah, and that's great. Then you set a new best time. Sometimes you discover, "Ah, no, no, it turns out I can't hold that."

    23. CWChris Williamson1:02:03

        Too fast, too fast. (laughs)

    24. AHAlex Hutchinson1:02:03

        That's fine. So, you gotta, you gotta chalk that up as, as a, as a valuable learning experience and say, uh, if you really wanna find out what your limits are, sometimes you've gotta exceed them and crash and burn.

    25. CWChris Williamson1:02:13

        Yeah, I, I love that. And you're right as well, there's part of me that just loves the idea of, of someone going out beyond what they usually would and then watching them hold on. It's the same way, so the CrossFit Open's out at the moment, and right now, uh, workout 20.2 just got released, which is just a, a grinder. 20 minutes, uh, AMRAP of, uh, dumbbell thrusters, toes-to-bar, and double-unders, and it's just the grippiest, longest, most painful thing that Dave Castro's ever programmed. It's savage.

    26. AHAlex Hutchinson1:02:43

        (laughs)

    27. CWChris Williamson1:02:43

        And, uh, I'm watching the guys in the gym do it this morning, and Jordan who has got the same score as Khan Porter, the guy that did the announcement. Uh, Jordan who's ex-regionals athlete in Newcastle, absolute freak. And I'm watching him go out and it's a 20-minute workout and he's going sub-one minute from the get-go. So, he's doing rounds in 45 to 50 seconds, his transitions are rapid, and I'm like, "Oh, he's gone hard." 'Cause once you've set yourself on that, it's the same with running, right? It's your splits. It's like, okay, I'm on this particular split, whatever it might be, you wanna try and run negative splits. You wanna try and run quicker, if you can. And I'm watching, I'm thinking, "He's gonna have to hold on." Sure enough, uh, three, two, one, and time. Clock goes, Jordan's straight outside because he needs to make sure that if he throws up, he throws up-

    28. AHAlex Hutchinson1:03:26

        (laughs)

    29. CWChris Williamson1:03:26

        ... in a drain. And he's just like, I wanna watch that. I wanna, and I wanna watch that on the world stage as well. I wanna know that professionals can be, um, as giddy and as, uh, uh, uh, caught in the moment as, as, uh, we can.

    30. AHAlex Hutchinson1:03:41

        And you wanna see them stretch their limits, not just totally under control the whole way. You wanna see the fear in their eyes two thirds of the way, like-
15. 1:04:15 – 1:07:17

    Putting sub‑2 speed in human terms—and why it looks deceptively easy

    1. CWChris Williamson1:04:15

       I love it. Um, final thing, just as a parting point, the one thing that we haven't actually said, how fast was Eliud Kipchoge running during his marathon attempt?

    2. AHAlex Hutchinson1:04:26

       Uh, in, in brief, I would say faster than most people could... Like, I've, I've chatted to a lot of people, there's, there's a lot of people in the world, most people in the world w- just wouldn't be able to, like, sprint that fast for 10 seconds. Like, he was doing 4:34 per mile, maybe 4:33, uh, and that's like two, 2:49 per kilometer, so that's, it's, for a 200 meters, that's, uh, something like 33, 34, so s- 16 to 17 seconds per a 100 meters. Um-

    3. CWChris Williamson1:04:57

       So is that, is it about 12 miles an hour? Is that it? What is it in-

    4. AHAlex Hutchinson1:05:01

       Uh, f-

    5. CWChris Williamson1:05:02

       ... car pace?

    6. AHAlex Hutchinson1:05:02

       Faster. So, so it's 13 and a bit miles an hour.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:05:06

       (laughs) And that's-

    8. AHAlex Hutchinson1:05:08

       And, and the difference between 12 and 13 is enormous when you're at that speed.

    9. CWChris Williamson1:05:10

       13 and a bit miles an hour in a car is a m- a m- moderately heavy accident. Know what I mean? Like, if you fall over at that pace, you're gonna skid for a while.

    10. AHAlex Hutchinson1:05:20

        Yeah, I, I mean, I think a lot of people would have, would be challenged to keep up with him on a bike, uh-

    11. CWChris Williamson1:05:24

        (laughs)

    12. AHAlex Hutchinson1:05:25

        ... certainly for, for longer than, you know, a, a brief sprint. Like, it, it, it's, it's almost unfortunate that he's such a smooth-looking runner and that he was surrounded by pacemakers who are among the best in the world, 'cause you don't realize how fast he was going. Except sometimes during the broadcast, you see off to the side someone has decided outside the barricades to run along beside him.

    13. CWChris Williamson1:05:44

        (laughs)

    14. AHAlex Hutchinson1:05:44

        And what you see is someone who looks quite fit, who's probably like a, a very serious recreational runner, and they are just absolutely pegging it, absolutely go, you know, just giving it with their whole being, and they last, you know, 15 seconds tops.

    15. CWChris Williamson1:05:59

        (laughs)

    16. AHAlex Hutchinson1:06:00

        And, and then you're like, "Oh, okay, just because he's-"

    17. CWChris Williamson1:06:02

        This is quick.

    18. AHAlex Hutchinson1:06:03

        "... looks relaxed," just because he's gliding along as if he's, you know, floating on air doesn't mean he's not really booking it.

    19. CWChris Williamson1:06:10

        Ah, man, how fascinating. Alex, today has been absolutely awesome. To the listeners, uh, who didn't catch our first episode, number 49 I want to say, 48 or 49, it was the first episode of this year, still in the top 10 of all-time plays on Modern Wisdom, it will be linked in the show notes below. I implore you to go and check that out. Also, Endure, Alex's book, absolutely fantastic, great analysis if you're into this. And like I said, @sweatscience on Twitter. Everything will be linked in the show notes below. Any questions that you've got, go hassle Alex, he's on Twitter all the time, or leave them in the YouTube comments below. Uh, I can, I, I want, I want there to be some more athletic stuff coming up so that I can, I can hassle you again and I can get you back on, man.

    20. AHAlex Hutchinson1:06:50

        It's a great thing, every year there's something new.

    21. CWChris Williamson1:06:52

        Awesome. Alex, thanks so much for your time. It's been great.

    22. AHAlex Hutchinson1:06:55

        Thanks, Chris. This was really fun to, to go into the nitty-gritty.

Episode duration: 1:07:14