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

Re:Sawe becomes first athlete to run a sub-two-hour marathon... by piker on Sunday April 26, 2026 @05:37PM (#47914849)

Insane; and second place was sub-2:00 as well. Relegated to trivia questions for the next decade.

It would be interesting to adjust this speed to account for the insane advancements in shoe technology over the last decade. Could it be as simple as measuring the delta in median marathon performance? Then look backwards to, say, 1996 and see what the technology-adjusted 2:00 mark is.

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Re:Sawe becomes first athlete to run a sub-two-hour marathon... by canucker2016 on Sunday April 26, 2026 @05:51PM (#47915024)

Second place male runner was running his first marathon race as well.

Sub-2hr marathon, beat the previous world record before Sunday, on your first try, and you don't win! Bad timing...

Prize money for London Marathon 2026 - https://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/38880592/london-marathon-2026...

Looks like first place male gets US$330K. Second place will get US$180K.

Divide by 2 to get the approximate hourly rate. :)

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Re:Sawe becomes first athlete to run a sub-two-hour marathon... by wry_durian on Sunday April 26, 2026 @05:48PM (#47914985)

I suspect there would be larger deltas due to improvements in nutrition and fueling. As another poster has mentioned, today's runners are ingesting so many more carbs per hour than 20 or 30 years ago. And if doping trends have changed over time, that's another factor. (No clue either way, but it's a potential factor.)

There's been lots of research into shoes though, so you might be able to work something out. For instance Jack Daniels (the running coach, not the beverage!) found that adding 100 grams to a running shoe increased aerobic effort by around 1%.

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Re:Sawe becomes first athlete to run a sub-two-hour marathon... by michaelt on Sunday April 26, 2026 @06:08PM (#47915206)

> Could it be as simple as measuring the delta in median marathon performance?

The popularity of running waxes and wanes - and the performance of the median runner varies with popularity.

Back in the 1980s the average half marathon finishing time was 1 hour 40 minutes - whereas today it's a little above 2 hours because there are a lot more people particpating.

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Re:Sawe becomes first athlete to run a sub-two-hour marathon... by nradov on Sunday April 26, 2026 @05:42PM (#47914903)

The confounding variable is higher carbohydrate intake based on optimizing the glucose/fructose ratio and improved techniques for gut training. That happened at about the same time as the new carbon fiber shoes so it's hard to isolate how much impact the shoes had alone.

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