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Expert opinion is deeply divided over how long it will
take before the summit is reached, and some even remain
doubtful whether it ever will be. Plenty of authoritative
voices say otherwise, though, none with greater conviction
than David Bedford, the former world-record holder for 10,000
metres and now race director of the London Marathon. 'Without
doubt I will see a two-hour marathon in my lifetime,' Bedford,
who is 58, says. 'It might be towards the end of my life.
It might be another 20 years. But, yes, it will definitely
happen.'
Bud Baldaro, who has been UK Athletics' marathon coach,
agrees with Bedford. 'I think it will happen now,' he says.
'They have been getting significantly closer for the past
four or five years and I think that in the next 20 years
someone who has the running economy and track-running pedigree
of Gebrselassie or Kenenisa Bekele [the world 10,000m record
holder] will do it.'
The doubters include Ron Hill, who in 1970 was probably
the first runner to go under the 2hr 10min mark, the only
other sub 2:10 time having been over a course now reckoned
to have been short of the full distance. He
maintains his position despite having once said 2:05 could
not be beaten. 'I said that would be the limit before the
altitude runners began to show their potential,' Hill says.
He also cites pre-race diet, in-race fuel supplies and pacemakers,
unheard of in his time, as reasons for the record now being
faster than he previously thought possible.
Hill might have thrown in the considerable incentive provided
by financial rewards. Gebrselassie earned £102,000
plus an undisclosed appearance fee for his third win in
Berlin.
Glenn Latimer, one of the world's leading marathon authorities
who oversees long-distance running in the United States,
is as skeptical as Hill about the likelihood of anyone breaking
through the two-hour barrier, describing it as 'a far-off
dream'. He was in a lead vehicle watching Gebrselassie run
in Berlin last weekend, and says: 'You could tell from Haile's
face over the last four or five kilometres that it was hard
work. Although his form remained brilliant and he was very
smooth, he was showing stress.
'If you look at what his splits were, averaging around
14 minutes 45 seconds for each five kilometres, they're
amazing. You're talking something else altogether to go
down significantly below this.'
Latimer says he would be staggered if a time of under
two hours were ever recorded. Ever? 'They'd have to invent
some very good drugs for it to happen because we know what
happens to the body after 30 kilometres. It really starts
to suffer and break down.'
Gebrselassie, 35, himself a believer in the two-hour marathon
- 'Maybe in 20 years, maybe 40 years. The more technology
develops, the more athletes will run faster' - reeled off
kilometres at between 2min 53.8sec and 2:58.2
as he broke the record he set a year ago in the same race.
There have been seven world records in the event - four
men's, three women's - whose date in late September more
or less guarantees a perfect temperature (this year between
10C at the start and 14C at the finish). 'The course is
fast, the weather was perfect and the rain the day before
made everything fresh,' Gebrselassie said. 'And the pacemakers
were good. You don't often get all
these things together.'
The luxury of pacemakers referred to enviously by Hill
and the unexpectedly strong run by Kenya's James Kwambai,
who lowered his personal best by nearly five minutes in
finishing second in 2:05:36, were important
factors in Gebrselassie's run.
Although only one of four pacemakers who were there to
ensure a world-record tempo, the Kenyan Abel Kirui, survived
the relentlessly high pace beyond 30km, before being dropped
at 32km, Kwambai clung on and
appeared briefly to be capable of staying with Gebrselassie
until the finish. 'Haile looked over and you could see him
wondering, "Who is this guy?",' Latimer says.
Eventually, though, even Kwambai was burned off with just
over 5km to go, which had the positive effect of relieving
Gebrselassie of having to engage in a tactical battle over
the closing stages.
With just the clock to beat as the finishing line approached,
Gebrselassie wound up the pace to produce his fastest 5km
split between the 35km and 40km marker - a savagely quick
14min 29sec - which carried him to his 26th world best,
over distances ranging from two miles to the marathon, in
14 years.
Put in terms of seconds per kilometre, the task of raising
the pace from the one Gebrselassie ran last Sunday to the
one that would be needed to complete a two-hour marathon
does not seem especially daunting: 2min 55sec
pace would have to come down to 2:51. Expressed in terms
of distance, though, and a mere four seconds seems very
different. It is around 24 metres per kilometre, which would
be regarded as a substantial winning margin in a
1,000m race.
It is a figure that places Alan Storey, the UK Athletics'
senior performance manager, on the side of those who believe
two hours for the marathon is, as he puts it, 'somewhere
between very unlikely and impossible'.
Storey alludes to the old brain-teaser about how many jumps
it would take to reach a tree if every time you leapt forward
you covered half the distance of your previous jump. The
answer is you would never reach the tree. For tree read
two-hour marathon and the same answer applies, Storey reasons,
to the question of how many attempts it would take to gain
those 24 metres per kilometre.
'Given all of the science that we have available now,
I have seen nothing to suggest another huge improvement
could be made,' Storey says. 'If some exercise physiologist
discovers something new and exciting then anything
could be possible, but given all of the information we know
about I don't expect to see two hours broken in my lifetime
- and I'm a youthful 63.'
Asked about what new and exciting things might be out
there, Storey says: 'If I had any idea what they were I'd
have people working on them now - under wraps so that we
could use them in 2012. No doubt these physiologists are
trying to find ways to cope with the stresses of running
marathons, but I don't know anybody from a science background
who thinks two hours is likely.'
David Bedford might not claim to be from a scientific
background, but he was an extraordinary runner who lowered
the world 10,000m record by 7.6sec in 1973 when he ran 27min
30.80sec, a time that only three British runners have beaten
in the 35 years since. He became so addicted to training
that he covered more than 200 miles per week. 'It made me
incredibly strong,' he says, 'but it also kept me injured
a lot of the time.' This is the
experience on which he draws to make the argument, contrary
to Storey's and others, that it is not whether but when
the 120 minutes for the marathon will be breached.
Bedford believes it will be achieved simply through what
he calls a continuing evolution of times. 'For example,'
he says, 'if you take Kenenisa Bekele as the No1 10,000-metre
runner at the moment, he is significantly faster than Haile
Gebrselassie over the distance > - so therefore I believe
that when he and his generation move up to the marathon
we will start to see times like two hours two-and-a-half
minutes or even two hours two minutes. And this will continue.
So what I think we are talking about is maybe three generations
from now athletes getting it into their heads that it is
possible.
'You need to look back to the previous most famous barrier,
the four-minute mile. For a long time people didn't think
it was possible and then all of a sudden one whole generation
started to believe it could happen and started to work towards
it. But that generation had to be near enough to it to sense
that it was possible.
'Although Gebrselassie and Bekele are amazing, I don't
think their generation of distance runners is close enough
to two hours for the marathon to see it as possible. However,
they will continue the erosion of times and a future generation,
two or three down the line - so you're talking 10 to 15
years - will be the first to run two hours one-and-a-half
minutes, or something like that, and will start believing
that two hours can be done.'
Believing you can break a record as a necessary prerequisite
to actually breaking it is something that Tim Noakes, the
South African doctor and long-distance runner, has spoken
about. In reference to Bannister's four-minute mile, Noakes
has said: 'He was able to convince his brain that it could
achieve what none had done before.'
Bedford backs up his argument by citing the one-hour barrier
for the half marathon, which withstood all attempts at it
until Moses Tanui of Kenya ran 59min 47sec in Milan on 3
April 1993. Since then Tanui has been joined by 34 others
who between them have gone under 60 minutes on a further
69 occasions. 'That again was something that was viewed
as not possible,' Bedford says. 'As soon as people start
running 55 minutes for a half marathon [the record stands
at 58:33], the world will be ready for the first two-hour
marathon.'
The assumption that a man will be the first to run two
hours is not necessarily safe. Bedford, though, forthrightly
declares that a woman will not do it for at least 250 years,
while Bud Baldaro believes that it will be done by 'someone
with a very simple lifestyle'.
'Ethiopian and Kenyan runners have shown over the past
three decades what can be achieved and I wonder what might
come out of Asia and South America when the world changes
even more,' Baldaro says. He doubts US or European runners
will be involved. 'The Western lifestyle is so complicated
and complex now that the guys find it very difficult to
sacrifice everything to run 150, 160 miles a week.'
As to where the first sub two-hour marathon might be run,
Berlin in the autumn is the obvious answer, although Bedford
has not given up on London staging the historic event.
'Remember that Paula Radcliffe's two-fifteen-twenty-five,
which stands above and beyond what anyone else has done
in the women's marathon, was done in London,' he says, 'and
also Khalid Kannouchi did two-five-thirty-eight in the men's
event in 2002. So on the right day London is certainly able
to have a world record again.'
And could it be that in 20 years' time David Bedford will
still be the race director who secures the runner who makes
history through the streets of London? 'I think in 20 years'
time I will have spent the morning of the
marathon in the hospitality tent and the afternoon sound
asleep,' Bedford says.
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