EVERYTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE until somebody does it.
Think about how many very recently unthinkable things we encountered today alone: the electric car you saw this morning, the tablet I'm tapping this out on, Flamin' Hot Cool Ranch Doritos. They didn't exist, they couldn't exist, until they did.
Sometimes breakthroughs are the result of advanced technology. Sometimes they come from the exact right team of people with the exact right mix of skills. But sometimes the thing that brings it all together and makes it work is nothing more than pure will. Discipline. A defiant smile and a single step forward. And then, if this is a marathon we're talking about, several thousand more steps forward.
For decades, physiologists said a sub-two-hour marathon was impossible. Then, in 2019, Eliud Kipchoge broke the very recently unthinkable two-hour-marathon barrier, completing the INEOS 1:59 Challenge in Vienna, Austria, in 1:59:40. I'd call it a quantum leap if I didn't suspect that physicists had already started calling quantum leaps "Kipchoges."
He carried us into a new world. It is, in fact, Kipchoge's World, and we're just running in it. Much more slowly.
"Sub-two-hours? It doesn't seem real," says marathon legend Bill Rodgers. "I remember when the physiologists said a human being can't run [a marathon in] under two hours and two minutes."
A little more than a decade ago, "people started to wonder whether we would see a sub-two happen, and I said it would happen in our lifetime," says Meb Keflezighi, 2004 Olympic silver medalist in the marathon. "I just didn't imagine it would be this soon."
This story is from the Issue 03, 2023 edition of Runner's World US.
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This story is from the Issue 03, 2023 edition of Runner's World US.
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TO RUN 26.2 IS TO FEEL ALIVE
THE SUN IS rising from the east, and the waves of the Pacific crash below to the west.
LEAVE IT UP TO A PIECE OF PAPER TO TEACH YOU TO RUN EASY
BEFORE I FELL for running, I thought the hardest thing about the sport was the fast stuff: the speedwork, the sprints, and the intervals.
WHY-AND HOW-YOU SHOULD RUN DOUBLES
Those are just a few of the titles entered into my training log for the second run of a day.
FIND YOUR RUNNING COMMUNITY, ONLINE OR IN PERSON
I SIGNED UP for my first marathon while sobbing in the back of a rideshare, on my way to the airport to fly to my uncle's funeral.
FUEL WITH WHAT YOU WANT TO EAT
AS AN ULTRARUNNER, I'm all too familiar with the saying that long-distance running is an \"eating contest with a running component.\"
AT THE FERTILITY CLINIC, MY PAST CAUGHT UP WITH ME
I SAT IN the fertility doctor's office white walls, bare wooden desk, opaque window-alone.
THIS IS NOT AN ESCAPE STORY
AT 15, DARLENE STUBBS WALKED AWAY FROM A POLYGAMOUS CULT-THEN DISCOVERED A NEW LIFE AND COMMUNITY THROUGH RUNNING.
RUNNING WITH HANK
How my daughter's rambunctious mutt saved my sanity while she was lost to the darkness.
WHEN I FOUND OUT I HAD MS.I THOUGHT I'D NEVER RUN AGAIN.
I checked the pins on my bib, shimmied my spandex shorts into place, and teed up the stopwatch on my wrist.
A RUNNER'S GUIDE to sleep
Nike rocked the running world in 2018 when it released the Vaporfly 4%, claiming that the shoe could boost a runner's efficiency by that amount.
