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Posted by berkeleyjunk 10 hours ago

Sawe becomes first athlete to run a sub-two-hour marathon in a competitive race(www.bbc.com)
https://www.letsrun.com/news/2026/04/15930-sabastian-sawe-sh...

https://news.adidas.com/running/two-adidas-athletes-sabastia...

316 points | 217 commentspage 2
ternaryoperator 9 hours ago|
And the only place this appears on ESPN is if you click on "Olympics," which has nothing to do with this race. Where coverage should be: on the home page.
conductr 8 hours ago|
It’s certainly noteworthy and interesting but I could see how Running as sport isn’t popular enough for front page. Especially during NBA and NHL playoffs, NFL draft, and whatever else might be going on.
brewdad 7 hours ago||
If this happened at Chicago, it would be front page news. Boston and NY aren’t WR eligible. Since it happened in London, place it behind soccer in the priority list.
jonplackett 9 hours ago||
These were Sabastian Sawe's splits

5km - 14:14 10km - 28:35 15km - 43:10 20km - 57:21 Half - 60:29 25km - 71:41 30km - 1:26:03 35km - 1:39:57 40km - 1:53:39 Finish - 1:59:30

Yomif Kejelcha also ran sub-two, clocking 1:59:41 on his debut marathon

You have to feel for Kejelcha - breaking 2h marathon and not even winning the race!

freediver 9 hours ago||
Incredible result! (on the day I did my own 5K pb)

This is a nice video of the last 10 mins of the historic marathon race finish

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1voTDQQQf5g

bongripper 9 hours ago|
[dead]
stockresearcher 11 hours ago||
3 people beat the previous world record in this race! This is some combination of improved tech and extraordinarily good weather.

London is a fast course. Let’s see what happens in Chicago and Berlin. If it was primarily tech that did it, we should see the record fall again.

mellosouls 6 hours ago||
Great achievement. Worth remembering also the previous world record holder, Kelvin Kiptum who sadly died at 24 in a car accident a couple of years ago.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelvin_Kiptum

zhoujing204 6 hours ago||
> Previous research indicates improvements of 2–4% in running economy (RE), which translates into an approximate 1–2% improvement in running performance when running in these shoes.

- https://www.mdpi.com/2813-0413/5/1/2

- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29143929/

- https://sportrxiv.org/index.php/server/preprint/view/297

not_a_bot_4sho 9 hours ago||
Amazing to me that I'll never get my *half* marathon time close to his full marathon time.
nradov 9 hours ago|
A 1:59 half marathon time is achievable for pretty much anyone who doesn't have a serious physical disability and is willing to put in the necessary training. I've done it a few times and have no particular talent for running.
PaulDavisThe1st 9 hours ago||
That's a 9m10sec per mile for 2 hours. While I'd agree that there are millions or even billions of people who could train to do that, I think it's wrong to suggest that "pretty much anyone" could do that.
pollymarket 8 hours ago||
My predicted half time is under 2 hours and I was sedentary for years before starting to run 9 months ago, and I'm 40 years old.

Endurance sports are quite accessible and don't require that much time, effort, or talent to get way better than the vast majority of people, it's just consistency.

PaulDavisThe1st 8 hours ago||
I've been an endurance athlete most of my life, running 100 miles at 17, a 5:30 mile at 50, and lots of other stuff in between. I know that a 9min/mile pace is "easily achievable" by many folks, which is why I noted that millions or billions of people could do this. Nevertheless, I think it is really important to not overstate how achievable this is - there are many more people who could not do this than could, I think.

FWIW, that now includes me, as a 62 year old. I can hit 6:30 pace for 400m, but find it almost impossible to get under 10:0x for a mile. And that's even after 6 months of training for a 50 mile trail race.

piker 9 hours ago||
Insane; and second place was sub-2:00 as well. Relegated to trivia questions for the next decade.

It would be interesting to adjust this speed to account for the insane advancements in shoe technology over the last decade. Could it be as simple as measuring the delta in median marathon performance? Then look backwards to, say, 1996 and see what the technology-adjusted 2:00 mark is.

canucker2016 9 hours ago||
Second place male runner was running his first marathon race as well.

Sub-2hr marathon, beat the previous world record before Sunday, on your first try, and you don't win! Bad timing...

Prize money for London Marathon 2026 - https://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/38880592/london-marathon-2026...

Looks like first place male gets US$330K. Second place will get US$180K.

Divide by 2 to get the approximate hourly rate. :)

wry_durian 9 hours ago|||
I suspect there would be larger deltas due to improvements in nutrition and fueling. As another poster has mentioned, today's runners are ingesting so many more carbs per hour than 20 or 30 years ago. And if doping trends have changed over time, that's another factor. (No clue either way, but it's a potential factor.)

There's been lots of research into shoes though, so you might be able to work something out. For instance Jack Daniels (the running coach, not the beverage!) found that adding 100 grams to a running shoe increased aerobic effort by around 1%.

nradov 9 hours ago|||
The confounding variable is higher carbohydrate intake based on optimizing the glucose/fructose ratio and improved techniques for gut training. That happened at about the same time as the new carbon fiber shoes so it's hard to isolate how much impact the shoes had alone.
michaelt 9 hours ago||
> Could it be as simple as measuring the delta in median marathon performance?

The popularity of running waxes and wanes - and the performance of the median runner varies with popularity.

Back in the 1980s the average half marathon finishing time was 1 hour 40 minutes - whereas today it's a little above 2 hours because there are a lot more people particpating.

elchief 8 hours ago||
Kipchoge broke 2h a few years ago, but it was on a closed, low altitude track, with a fleet of rotating runners in front of him, providing wind blocking/drafting as well as pacing

Amazing these guys did it in a real race with no one in front of them (at the end at least)

wavemode 9 hours ago|
That's literally running a 4:30 mile, 26 times in a row. Jesus.
almost_usual 6 hours ago||
While consuming about 800 calories.
ccheever 9 hours ago||
4:33
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