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Eliud Kipchoge Breaks Two-Hour Marathon Barrier

nytimes.com

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Re: Eliud Kipchoge Breaks Two-Hour Marathon Barrier

#111
post #53
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Define "could", my intuition is that there is a vast population of men who couldn't complete a one mile run (right now with no training)

Interesting. Your intution bascially says that vast population of man could not walk a single mile. Because factor of 3 means walking, not running.

A 13-minute mile would be a very fast walk, or more likely a gentle jog.

Re: Eliud Kipchoge Breaks Two-Hour Marathon Barrier

#112
Link to full video in case you didn’t watch it live (in which case, what’s wrong with you?):

https://youtu.be/k-XgKRJUEgQ

This is an extraordinary achievement. It was just last September that Kipchoge set the W.R. time of 2:01:39[1]. It’s only a matter of time (no pun intended) till sub-2 is broken in competition. Probably at Berlin. Just knowing it’s possible is a huge barrier to break through.

I’ve run over two dozen marathons and it took me more than a decade of running (I started running in my 30s) before I was able to qualify for Boston. But once I did so, I was able to easily do so many times thereafter. Much of that was finally getting into proper physical conditioning, but knowing something is possible cannot be discounted. (My next goal is sub-3.)

Kipchoge’s next goal is surely a second Olympic marathon gold at Tokyo 2020. At that point he’ll be 35. He’ll have a few more years of prime marathon running after that at best, so I’m not sure he can run a sub-2 in competition but only he knows how much is in him. He’s the most accomplished marathoner of our time, but still, in 2013 the W.R. was lowered at Berlin by Kipsang. We’ll see.

1. https://www.runnersworld.com/news/a23279362/eliud-kipchoge-m...

Re: Eliud Kipchoge Breaks Two-Hour Marathon Barrier

#113

That's running 42km at 21km/h… Anybody who already tried to run a sub20 5km (5km at 15km/h) knows how crazy this is.

Exactly, I was a middle distance runner back in high school and nowadays focus on half and full marathons. I'm far from being an elite runner, but I do alright at local events.

I can barely keep Kipchoge's pace for 1km.

Re: Eliud Kipchoge Breaks Two-Hour Marathon Barrier

#115
post #2

Given that "[i]t will not be recognised as the official marathon world record because it was not in open competition and he used a team of rotating pacemakers," Mr. Kipchoge's attitude represents the best of sport: "Now I've done it, I am expecting more people to do it after me... This shows the positivity of sport. I want to make it a clean and interesting sport. Together when we run, we can make it a beautiful worl…

Besides, he already has the official world record anyway. This was an experiment to see if it was possible to shave a couple dozen seconds off the marathon time of the greatest marathon runner of all time. Doing it again in race conditions—whether it’s by Kipchoge or another runner—will be a historic milestone but there is greater confidence that it will happen now. Besides, I know you can’t control for adrenaline an…

I'm not alone in thinking this, but it's not just his pace that makes him truly remarkable, it's his consistency. I can't remember accurate numbers, but I think it's like in ten consecutive marathons, he came first nine times.

Runners are prone to injury, and if you're not feeling 100% on the race you're likely to not win or run at your best.

Re: Eliud Kipchoge Breaks Two-Hour Marathon Barrier

#116

So Kipchoge had rotating teams of pacemakers running _before_ him, throughout the race. Each team was able to outrun Kipchoge for a short amount of time, but of course Kipchoge himself had to keep the same pace throughout the race. This reminded me of an episode from Terry Pratchett's Small Gods . This is mostly from memory, but he describes an invasion of the country Ephebe where the invasion force comes from the si…

I don't know about uncomputable but for intractable, I think, and as rco8786 has already pointed out, dynamic programming sorts of fit the bill. Similarly, this is what reinforcement learning does for search. Recursive or sequential monte carlo algorithms where states hold memory across transitions probably also fit this bill. And most generally, this is what humanity does with science, skills and knowledge.

No single human could discover general relativity, but generation after generation, from the first humans who worked out how to count symbolically to the definition of a Lorentzian manifold, we've been leaving caches of knowledge for each other so each next generation could reach ever farther.

Re: Eliud Kipchoge Breaks Two-Hour Marathon Barrier

#117

So Kipchoge had rotating teams of pacemakers running _before_ him, throughout the race. Each team was able to outrun Kipchoge for a short amount of time, but of course Kipchoge himself had to keep the same pace throughout the race. This reminded me of an episode from Terry Pratchett's Small Gods . This is mostly from memory, but he describes an invasion of the country Ephebe where the invasion force comes from the si…

Seems similar to Conway checkers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_Soldiers

Re: Eliud Kipchoge Breaks Two-Hour Marathon Barrier

#118
post #112

Link to full video in case you didn’t watch it live (in which case, what’s wrong with you?): https://youtu.be/k-XgKRJUEgQ This is an extraordinary achievement. It was just last September that Kipchoge set the W.R. time of 2:01:39[1]. It’s only a matter of time (no pun intended) till sub-2 is broken in competition. Probably at Berlin. Just knowing it’s possible is a huge barrier to break through. I’ve run over two doz…

> but knowing something is possible cannot be discounted

This applies to other areas of life. On a few occasions, I didn't try things because I thought it was not possible based on my background/age (e.g. applying for some position, school, or switching careers), only to realize later that people with the exact same profile managed to do it....

Re: Eliud Kipchoge Breaks Two-Hour Marathon Barrier

#119

So Kipchoge had rotating teams of pacemakers running _before_ him, throughout the race. Each team was able to outrun Kipchoge for a short amount of time, but of course Kipchoge himself had to keep the same pace throughout the race. This reminded me of an episode from Terry Pratchett's Small Gods . This is mostly from memory, but he describes an invasion of the country Ephebe where the invasion force comes from the si…

I don't know for sure but I strongly suspect that Pratchett was heavily influenced by Operation Black Buck: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Black_Buck In particular, this diagram from that page makes the process clear: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Black_Buck#/media/Fi... Hopefully the name of the original mission is enough to help you find a link to some relevant mathematics :-)

That diagram is anything but “clear”.

Re: Eliud Kipchoge Breaks Two-Hour Marathon Barrier

#120

So Kipchoge had rotating teams of pacemakers running _before_ him, throughout the race. Each team was able to outrun Kipchoge for a short amount of time, but of course Kipchoge himself had to keep the same pace throughout the race. This reminded me of an episode from Terry Pratchett's Small Gods . This is mostly from memory, but he describes an invasion of the country Ephebe where the invasion force comes from the si…

I don't know for sure but I strongly suspect that Pratchett was heavily influenced by Operation Black Buck: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Black_Buck In particular, this diagram from that page makes the process clear: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Black_Buck#/media/Fi... Hopefully the name of the original mission is enough to help you find a link to some relevant mathematics :-)

Yeah, OK, wow. That's ... complicated. And I think they didn't manage to get a very good return for all this effort, from a diagonal reading of the article.

Er. Sorry, I'm being thick, but your hint about the link to the relevant maths etc went way over my head. I might be missing a cultural reference? :0

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