Sub-2-Hour Marathon by 2019?

Here I predicted (with data) a sub-2-hour marathon by 2038, based on the rate at which previous world records have fallen. (Which by the way is amazingly logarithmic.) [Note - I was obviously wrong. Kudos to Eliud Kipchoge of Kenya for beating the record in 2019! And to his coach Patrick Sang of Kenya. A great day for humans!] A very ambitious Greek running coach and scientist (Yannis Pitsiladis) is trying to produce the first sub-2 by 2019. Here is the article in the New York Times. Their figure showing record marathons (and fastest marathons in each year) has more data and is prettier than mine, so I reproduce it here: Not super easy to see if I fit the whole thing into this blog's format, but: the Y-axis is marathon time, with the lower edge being 2 hours. X-axis is year, in 5 year increments. The colored dots are the world records, the text and arrow at the bottom middle of the graph is Pitsiladis's goal, and the shaded area is the trajectory records are likely to take going forward. The earlier edge hits the 2-hour level around 2033.

If the record is beaten much earlier than this, I suspect it would be some combination of the following two things: undetected doping, or genetics. Genetics further breaks down to good luck (a new mutation; see earlier article about how this may actually confound endurance sports); better recruitment (many credit Germany's dominance of soccer to this, but running as a sport just doesn't command the profits to accomplish the same thing); eugenics; and discovery of pre-existing genes in previously isolated populations. Maybe there's a group in Tibet or highland New Guinea just waiting to whoop the marathon world's ass! What I don't think will cause an early sub-2 is non-doping training innovations. We mostly seem to be chipping at margins of mature training techniques. A little taking advantage of altitude here, a little better nutrition there...will that really get us there so soon?

As an aside, the importance of human capital in the modern world is demonstrated by this caption from a photo in the article: "The biomedical lab at Addis Ababa University contains hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment. But because of insufficient funding and a lack of available experts to operate it, much of it is unplugged and covered by tablecloths."

(Watch Kipchoge cross the finish line here.)

Sub-Two-Hour Marathon in 2038

Inspired by Patrick Makau Musyoki's new marathon record in Berlin yesterday, I looked for trends in the marathon world records for each decade going back a century. I only included the fastest time in each decade. I expected a plateau like this, but I didn't expect it to be so neatly logarithmic. Explanation of the graph: the Y-axis times are in seconds, so 10,800 is a 3 hour race and 7,200 is a 2 hour race. The horizontal red line is a two-hour marathon, the vertical dark line is 2038, and the light gray prediction line is the trend for future marathons. (Note that the prediction line on the graph is for illustration only - the numbers come from the best-fit equation printed on the graph.)

Look at that R. That's a damn good fit. Marathon records are a very logarithmic phenomenon.

A whole crop of articles commented over the last year on statistically improbable sprinter Usain Bolt, who is ahead-of-trend by thirty years. In the same vein, looking at the marathon plot, we shouldn't expect a male human to break two hours in the marathon until 2038. And it's reasonably assumed that the incremental improvements we see in these times is a result of (decreasing marginal) improvements in training, nutrition, and running equipment. Therefore, if this record is broken significantly ahead of that (you can decide how to calculate standard deviations if you want to define exactly what "significantly" means) then I predict one or more of the following will have happened:

- A genuine new mutation and a recruitment sifting system that can deliver the talent to the field, as is presumably the case with Bolt in short distance (someone sequence this guy already);

- New technology allows undetectable doping, either to increase blood oxygen carrying capacity, muscular oxygen efficiency, or muscle strength;

- Deliberate breeding has occurred by nation states with long-term views and an overbearing need for international prestige (China, we're looking at you, and here's why);

- Most interesting possibility: a population of humans still mostly reproductively isolated and thusfar not competing in marathons, and that has gene variants which benefit them in this event. (Tarahumara, we're looking at you now).



Intrade doesn't have a market for this prediction. But they should.