How To Set A New Marathon World Record
Halloween in 2020 will forever be remembered as the day Boris Johnson sent England into a second national lockdown. While this means that most of our freedom and the things we enjoy doing will be taken away from us, one saving grace for many people across the nation is the remaining freedom to exercise. Back in the lockdown summer, running became a way for many people to escape confinement and get some much-needed headspace. For some, running became a daily routine and led to vast improvements in performance.
The ‘Run 5 Donate 5 Nominate 5’ challenge raised an incredible £5million for NHS workers. Strava feeds were on fire, and people were sharing their 5km times all over social media. There were some unfortunately comical examples of people fabricating their times to seem faster than they were, only to be busted by athletics fans congratulating them on their new 5,000 meters world record. But other than a quickly photoshopped Strava upload, just what does it take to become a world-class runner?
On November 13th 2020, a team of sports scientists from the University of Exeter published results from a study investigating how fit you would need to be to run a marathon in under 2-hours, as Eliud Kipchoge did in Vienna last year. The study, which took place at Nike HQ in Beaverton, USA, didn’t just look at any ordinary lab rats. The 16 runners who took part included the current official world marathon record holder, the 2019 world marathon champion and the former world half-marathon record holder.
A commonly used measure of somebody’s aerobic fitness is their VO2max. This is the maximum volume of oxygen that they can breathe in, circulate around the body and use in the muscles every minute. The average VO2max value for an 18-25 year old male is between 42-46 ml/min/kg. The average VO2max of the athletes who took part in this study was almost double this, at 72 ml/min/kg. This means that these athletes have developed more efficient oxygen uptake in the lungs, a more powerful heart and leg muscles which are able to absorb and use the oxygen more efficiently, through years of training.
Perhaps the biggest trait of marathon runners, which sets them apart from the average runner, is a high lactate threshold. You can think of the lactate threshold as the point during your run when your legs start to ‘fizz’. This is because you are running faster than the muscles can cope with, using just oxygen alone, and lactic acid begins to accumulate. While the lactate threshold occurs at 62% of maximal effort for most people, the elite marathon runners tested can run at 83% of their maximum speed, before their legs start to burn.
The findings of this study showed that to sustain the speed required for a sub-2 marathon (21.1km/h or 13.1mph), an athlete would need to sustain a VO2 of 67ml/min/kg for the whole race. Assuming that this athlete would need to be below their super-human lactate threshold of 83% for the race, to stop them from crashing and burning, they would need an incredible VO2max of over 80ml/min/kg. This combination of outrageously high VO2max and lactate threshold values is a reason why only one man in history has been able to run a marathon in under 2-hours.
So now you know all the secrets of how to break a marathon world record. While it might take you a few years to achieve it, I’d certainly recommend using the freedom to run that Boris has given you. It’s great for escaping the four walls of your room, clearing the head and boosting your mood. Who knows, you might find yourself alongside Kipchoge on the start line at the Tokyo Olympics next year.
Written by Cam Dockerill
Cam is doing his PhD in Biomedical Engineering at King’s College London. He’s a huge football fan, distance runner and cricket lover