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Nike recently had the Breaking2 project come to its climax on May 6, 2017. On that day, Eliud Kipchoge would come 26 seconds too slow to break 2 hours for the marathon.
Kipchoge’s personal best before that day was 2 hours, 2 minutes, and 57 seconds set at the Berlin Marathon in 2014. Just two years later, one year before the Nike project, Kipchoge ran 2 hours, 3 minutes, and 5 seconds at the London Marathon in 2016.
By 2017, that number fell to 2 hours and 25 seconds. Kipchoge improved the world record, unofficially, by 2 minutes and 22 seconds. To put that into perspective, Kipchoge ran 4 minutes and 42 seconds per mile for 26.2 miles at Berlin.
He improved that time to 4 minutes and 36 seconds per mile. The world record in a single mile was set by Hicham El Guerrouj in 1999. That time was 3:43.13. Less than a minute separates these two marks, with the one caveat that Kipchoge repeatedly runs this non-stop for the length of an entire marathon. That’s a little over 26 consecutive times.
