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What will it take to run a 2-hour marathon?

rw.runnersworld.com

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Re: What will it take to run a 2-hour marathon?

#41

Post by outside1234 »

mabbo wrote: post #19
outside1234 wrote: post #11

Better drugs than they are currently on. Nobody wants to admit it, but that is the real reason for the change in inflection of the line. See cycling.

What will drugs give them though? As the article says, the perfect runner will be light, short, have long legs, insane VO2 max, good heat dissipation, low oxygen requirements. Apart from blood doping to increase VO2 max, what can one do to improve those other things?

Basically what drugs allow you to do is recover faster and better - which allows you to train far harder than your clean competition and build all of these superhuman stats you enumerated.

A famous cycling reporter took drugs for a month to see just want the effect was and apparently it was like being superman. He would go out and ride 100 miles (something that normally leaves you in couch mode the next day) and be ready to do all again the next day like he hadn't even touched the bike the day before.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Doper-Next-Door-Performance-Enhanc...

HGH and EPO are the drugs we have all heard about but I'm sure there are 8 we haven't heard about yet. Also this book gives you insight into the violence we are seeing outside of the gridlines in the NFL. Apparently all of these drugs running around in you makes you crazy in a lot of cases.

Re: What will it take to run a 2-hour marathon?

#42

Post by oe »

anon4 wrote: post #31

So much thought was put into the design and yet nobody bothered to add an option on whether you want to see units in standard or american measures. It's 2014, can't you people just detect I'm not american and put up normal Centigrade, km, kg, etc?

That was maddening. I'm now testing autoConvert [1], a Chrome extension that promises to convert units automatically.

[1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/autoconvert-auto-c...

Re: What will it take to run a 2-hour marathon?

#43

Post by ArtB »

gnarbarian wrote: post #37
anon4 wrote: post #31

So much thought was put into the design and yet nobody bothered to add an option on whether you want to see units in standard or american measures. It's 2014, can't you people just detect I'm not american and put up normal Centigrade, km, kg, etc?

That sounds like a great idea for a bookmarklet.

No, it should be part of HTML. A dimension or unit tag. It seems like a perfect continuation of semantic tags and the direction of XHTML 2 before the presentation-focused monstrosity that is HTML 5.

Re: What will it take to run a 2-hour marathon?

#45

Post by rtkwe »

valarauca1 wrote: post #17
abuehrle wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you please elaborate? Genuinely curious.

At the project rate of decline that their model suggests. The 2 hour mark should have been broken by now.

Which trend line are you talking about? The only applicable one I see/remember is the figure labeled 'Marathon World Record' at the beginning of the article and that trend won't break 2 hours until around 2025.

Re: What will it take to run a 2-hour marathon?

#46

Post by scrollaway »

ArtB wrote: post #43
gnarbarian wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like a great idea for a bookmarklet.

No, it should be part of HTML. A dimension or unit tag. It seems like a perfect continuation of semantic tags and the direction of XHTML 2 before the presentation-focused monstrosity that is HTML 5.

A lot of wikis do that (wikipedia for one). Eg {{m|1500}} is 1500m or whatever the user wants to see it as/the website wants to display it as. I find it extremely useful.

Re: What will it take to run a 2-hour marathon?

#47

Post by DustinCalim »

anon4 wrote: post #31

So much thought was put into the design and yet nobody bothered to add an option on whether you want to see units in standard or american measures. It's 2014, can't you people just detect I'm not american and put up normal Centigrade, km, kg, etc?

Why are HN posts so pedantic? Bruce Lee has a great quote for this

Re: What will it take to run a 2-hour marathon?

#48

Post by cowsandmilk »

raverbashing wrote: post #24

Marathon and other endurance sports are interesting. It takes a toll on the body. It catabolizes it. Compare a marathon runner with a 100m runner. Also, as expected, temperature plays a big factor in it, which makes me wonder why so many people "love when it's a nice day" (read: sunny and hot) to exercise.

People like to sweat and believe sweating is the key to a good workout. When it is hot, you sweat easily. Most people who love to exercise when it is sunny and hot aren't going out for 20 mile runs.

Re: What will it take to run a 2-hour marathon?

#49

Post by stereopump »

neonkiwi wrote: post #2

This is an interesting analysis of available data for runners and record-breakers, outlining what will have to happen to break the two-hour mark for marathon times. Dennis Kimetto set the marathon record this year at 2:02:57. Cue complaints about scrolling behavior of this site, but the content itself is worth reading.

I thought the scrolling behavior was nice. Seeing a long article can be distracting if you're not interested in the topic and check its length. Having a single paragraph or element load as you scroll looks like an intentional design concept to prevent this.

Re: What will it take to run a 2-hour marathon?

#50

Post by aardvark179 »

ArtB wrote: post #43
gnarbarian wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like a great idea for a bookmarklet.

No, it should be part of HTML. A dimension or unit tag. It seems like a perfect continuation of semantic tags and the direction of XHTML 2 before the presentation-focused monstrosity that is HTML 5.

Units are harder than you might think. If I write 1 pint do I mean an imperial pint, a US liquid pint, or a US dry pint? The foot is equally tricky. This requires that the person writing the page gets it right, whereas with plain text we can rely on context to make a good guess at the unit that was meant.
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