Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Sawe becomes first athlete to run a sub-two-hour marathon in a competitive race

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 363 posts

Re: Sawe becomes first athlete to run a sub-two-hour marathon in a competitive race

#151

Post by chongli »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #23
nikcub wrote: post #12

Stunning results at the top of the field. Some interesting takeaways on both fuelling and shoes. Maurten spent months working with Sawe and other runners getting their gut capacity trained so they could absorb and burn 100 carbs per hour[0][1] > The Maurten research team was embedded with Sawe’s team in Kenya for 32 days across six trips between last and this April. They were training his gut to absorb that load by m…

> could absorb and burn 100 calories per hour burning a hundred calories an hour is trivial. Most people will burn 100 calories per mile when walking or running, and more if moving as fast as these athletes, and many, many humans can do this for far, far longer than 2 hours. It's the absorbtion that's the challenge. Maurten is not somehow alone in the particular stuff they've developed - ultra runners are generally s…

Wow so he was absorbing 400 calories per hour with this gel, but he was likely burning 3-4x that amount (or even more) while running 13.1 miles per hour!

Re: Sawe becomes first athlete to run a sub-two-hour marathon in a competitive race

#153

Post by parsimo2010 »

icegreentea2 wrote: post #132
codezero wrote: post #94

Those shoes are gonna sell like crazy now but it would be hilarious if they were to be found to have been giving an unfair advantage because of some mechanical property of the shoe.

Reviews say that they have very very good, but not record breaking energy return and shock absorption. But what they are is insanely light at sub 100g. https://runrepeat.com/adidas-adizero-adios-pro-evo-3

For a while it was all about getting the lightest shoes, because picking up heavy shoes slowed you down. Then the energy return (pebax foam, carbon plates/rods) became the main focus because the weight didn't matter as much when the shoe was literally springy. Surely this is now going to spark a race for the optimal balance between weight and energy return.

Re: Sawe becomes first athlete to run a sub-two-hour marathon in a competitive race

#154

Post by nl »

spenjovewkwhalo wrote: post #68

Posted to my in-laws, who asked how: Super shoes. Most shoes have carbon plates in them now, they act as a spring, storing energy and propelling athletes forwards. Better understanding of fuelling. Most athletes are taking between 100-120g carbs (sugar) per hour. Bicarbonate of soda has also been effective. Better planning tools. Athletes look at elevation, headwind, tailwind and will plan a strategy around going har…

> probably a metric tonne of PEDs (performance enhancing drugs)

Note that Sawe funded extra testing drug testing for himself for the 2 months before winning the Berlin marathon. The testing followed Athletics Integrity Unit protocols (so surprise testing etc):

https://www.letsrun.com/news/2026/04/how-sabastian-sawe-conv...

Re: Sawe becomes first athlete to run a sub-two-hour marathon in a competitive race

#155

Post by darth_avocado »

signorovitch wrote: post #111

Feel a bit bad for Yomif Kejelcha who also broke the 2-hour mark, with this being his first competition marathon , but managed to neither break a record nor win.

While I know competitors want to always strive to be the best, as a completely normal human who struggles to complete a half marathon under two hours, I do not feel bad for the guy. He’s still one of the only two people to do it (outside of the very controlled run from Kipchoge). Not a feat to feel bad about at all.

Re: Sawe becomes first athlete to run a sub-two-hour marathon in a competitive race

#156

Post by nradov »

brewdad wrote: post #112
tejohnso wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Super shoes. Most shoes have carbon plates in them now, they act as a spring, storing energy and propelling athletes forwards. I wonder where that leaves the barefoot movement. Hype dust?

Was the barefoot movement ever about running faster? I always thought they sold injury prevention by strengthening tissues that running shoes tend to over support.

Yes, that was the claim but it was never really backed by evidence. Vibram settled a lawsuit over false claims that their minimalist shoes reduced the risk of injuries. (I still like those shoes myself and use them on some slow recovery runs.)

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-27335251

Re: Sawe becomes first athlete to run a sub-two-hour marathon in a competitive race

#157

Post by [deleted] »

jmb99 wrote: post #73
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fastest marathoners are moving at 4m30sec per mile or faster. Very few mere mortals could run that fast for even 100m.

> Very few mere mortals could run that fast for even 100m. That works out to roughly a 16.7-second 100m. While certainly not crawling, that would be a fairly average pace for a fairly fit middle- to early-high-schooler with a bit of practice. Yes that’s insane to maintain for a marathon, but it’s not even remotely out of reach for 100m for most relatively-fit people at some point in their lives.

[deleted]

Re: Sawe becomes first athlete to run a sub-two-hour marathon in a competitive race

#158

Post by dyauspitr »

kibwen wrote: post #143
dyauspitr wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is what the AI told him incorrect?

It sure would be great if the LLM in question would cite its sources so that we could verify whatever source it ingested this text from.

[flagged]

Re: Sawe becomes first athlete to run a sub-two-hour marathon in a competitive race

#160

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

hackingonempty wrote: post #114
sethev wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure that disproves the point :) Most people have never been anywhere close to competing with the top 6 athletes at a high school with ~2k students.

There are thousands of these high schools all across the USA. The top high schoolers in California so far this year are doing 1600m in 4m7s. https://www.athletic.net/TrackAndField/rankings/list/168546/...

OK, so let's do the math. There's about 25k high schools in the USA. Let's suppose they all have a track team, and let's assume that they all have 5 team members who can break 04:30 for 1600m. Sure, at some schools that's too few, but at others it is too many.

That gives us 125k high schoolers in the USA who can break 04:30 for 1600m. There are about 18M high school students. So of just the high school population alone, about 0.7% of them can do this.

Assuming there are the 4x as many adults that can do this as there are high school students, that gives us slightly less than 0.2% of the total US population capable of this.

I rest my case.

Post reply on HN