171–180 of 281 posts
The LetsRun thread on this is pretty great, starting with a heated debate about his shoes. Were they too springy? https://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=9640871
Wow, that was not heated but toxic. I had to nope out of that after reading the first 2 pages.
Anyone have estimated of how many calories he burned during this run? I wonder how much he ate before starting and when? Are they allowed calorie dense drinks during these runs? I do not do runs, walking sure, so I am just really curious how much it takes for the human body to do this type of run
In addition, you can only digest and metabolize a certain number of calories per time unit. This limits how many carbohydrates you can consume during the race.
The idea behind carbo-loading [1] is to pack as much glycogen as possible into your muscles and liver before the race. You then top up those stores just before the race with more carbs, and then during the race you take on as many additional carbs as your body allows.
The faster you run, the more quickly you use up glycogen, similar to driving a car more quickly.
One thing that training does is to make you a more efficient/economic runner. [2] Your body can run faster using less fuel. I don't think we know exactly how all this works. Some of running economy comes from improved form, and indeed, Kipchoge has perfect running form. As well, your body's vascular system improves. You improve your mitochondrial volume. And so on and so forth. [3]
But at the end of the day, you eventually run out of glycogen and slow down. You just hope you've picked a pace not too fast for your ability so that you cross the finish line before that happens.
This is largely why ultra runners run at a significantly slower pace.
Lastly, metabolic factors[5] are only one many things that ultimately limit marathon performance.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbohydrate_loading
2. https://runscribe.com/improving-run-efficiency-what-research...
3. https://www.issaonline.com/blog/index.cfm/2018/mitochondrial...
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…
If one is not trying to solve it in the fastest time, then an agreed ‘truth’ can be reached after ‘some time’ without a central entity. By deciding to go ‘slow’, a solution can be found eventually.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I remembered this article also, thanks for digging it up again. Its predictions were pretty spot-on: - Predicted in November, actual mid-October - Predicted in Debno, actual in Vienna, but both are very flat courses (I can't find if Debno is flatter) - "The pacemakers will form a human wall" - yes, pacemaker strategy seemed critical here. - "Mindblowing pay-day" - No clue, no articles seem to mention it. - "Kenyans w…
> the shoes I guess - I don't know how big an advance these are The pacers wore Vaporfly, Kipchoge wore a prototype. The Vaporfly have been shown to actually make a difference of around 4%. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/07/18/upshot/nike-v...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Dude, I get it. It wasn't a race. But it was damn close to race conditions. Pacemaking is a situation that regularly happens on race day. There was no giant fan. It was basically race day under ideal conditions. You are obviously not a runner, and don't appear to have an understanding of how important certain rules are (or aren't) and yet want to enforce your judgment on everybody else. Now that's what I call Bullshi…
It was damn close to a race, and they got a result that is damn close to the world record.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you must not have watched the broadcast because they made pains to point out that 1) it wasn't valid conditions for a world record and why, 2) it wasn't a race, 3) they were doing it so that when he and others run their next marathon under race conditions they have the psychological benefit of knowing that the human body is capable of it. And if you saw him bouncing around like a bunny rabbit after finishing,…
> when he and others run their next marathon under race conditions they have the psychological benefit of knowing that the human body is capable of it. One of the world major marathons is tomorrow in Chicago. Similar elevation to Wien and ideal temperatures are predicted, though breezy. Let's see if anything happens.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 :-)
This blog post has a great detailed description of Operation Black Buck: https://www.navalgazing.net/Falklands-Part-6
Count it! Cuz in everyone's mind, we do! We don't care about the technicalities, we care what a human was capable of doing. The crowd was a huge help in getting him there. Nike's course was sterile, this one specifically had crowds to help.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How are they bending the rules if they try to prove that a human can run a marathon distance in less than two hours? I am not arguing that he has run a marathon below 2:00, but he is the first recorded human that has achieved such a feat - which is kind of a barrier many people have tried to break or at least recognized to exist - even though it has required them to remove all possible outside factors like wind and t…
the human had artificial draft from a car and humans, so the human alone didn't run the marathon in less than two hours.
The car did not provide drafting, it provided the pace. It was kept far enough in front of the runners to minimize the drafting effect.