8 ms·

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

339 points by neonkiwi 12y ago

pgpcolby 12y ago
2 hours
- vblord 12y ago
  lol. I was totally going to say that!
pgpcolby 12y ago
2 hours
neonkiwi 12y ago
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.
- incision 12y ago
  >'...the content itself is worth reading.' It sure looks that way and I'm normally pretty tolerant of design flourishes, but I find this simply unbearable. Still, I really wanted to read this, but neither Pocket, Readability nor Instapaper are able to pull more than a few paragraphs of usable text out of it. The design isn't just bad or annoying it's hostile.
  - kazinator 12y ago
    In addition to my observation that disabling JavaScript from runnersworld.com stops all the effects while evidently showing all the content nicely, I'd like to add that the page renders very nicely in the print view of the FireFox add-on known as "Print Edit". "Print Edit" lets you trim out superfluous junk from the document, and then print it or save a copy.
- kazinator 12y ago
  Your comment caught my attention, because I don't have any problem with the display of the content. Then, I immediately realized: I do not have Javascript enabled from runnersworld, thanks to the NoScript Firefox extension. I temporarily turned it on, and saw the annoyances. The static view without JS is just fine: the graphs and their labels are all there; nothing moves when you scroll.
- stereopump 12y ago
  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.
- rconti 12y ago
  Huh. works great for me in Safari on OS X - and normally I'm the first to complain about poor site behavior (particularly animated gifs which Safari is terrible with).
plorkyeran 12y ago
This is an impressive amount of effort put into making the content unreadable. I sort of get what they're going for with the fade-in of content as you scroll down (although it's distracting as hell for actually reading rather than just looking at it), but what would possess someone to think that fading out text as I scroll down was a good idea? Crazily enough I like to be able to read more than two sentences without scrolling. I don't expect a site to use my monitor's full width, but I sure do expect it to use the full height.
- jordanpg 12y ago
  Maybe it's time to update this for the second decade of the 21st century: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/design_hell http://theoatmeal.com/comics/design_hell
  - MBlume 12y ago
    See also: http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/
- gaius 12y ago
  Digital Presentation by Daniel Fuehrer There you go.
- sliverstorm 12y ago
  If they could just implement it in a lightweight fashion, I might be able to put up with it. But glitzy UI seems to routinely overload nearly every machine I use, which makes it 10x worse. Thanks, you not only made the UI worse, but now it stutters, my fans spin up, and my browser (sometimes) freezes. Progress!
espinchi 12y ago
Here's the hypothetical scenario that the report describes in the end. I've found reading the analysis after this story makes it an even better read: The road is so flat and straight, you can see them coming from a mile away. Six runners flow in arrowhead formation around the Canadian city of Saskatoon. The early November air is still and dry, the sky overcast, and the temperature hovers a bit above freezing, just as predicted. All in their early 20s, they’ve been training together for this moment for years; only in the last month did their coach select which three will go for the record. The remaining three form the front of the arrowhead, blocking the wind and enduring the mental effort of controlling the pace. Should one of them cross the finish line in two hours—or faster—all six will share equally in the $50 million jackpot promised by the heirs to the Hoka One One fortune. The pot of money is up for grabs, for any runner, anywhere in the world. The chase is on. So, will they make it? And what year is this? We’ve cut the distance to the sub-two marathon in half since 1998, but it will get progressively harder to trim the remaining seconds. Still, the physiologists tell us that it’s not impossible, meaning it is possible. I’m saying the year is...2075—and they make it
- x0x0 12y ago
  The whole article is beyond stupid. It's impossible to seriously discuss athletic records in 2014 and not mention drugs. No discussion of steroids, blood doping, hgh, nothing. For context, the major marathons just increased their drug penalties [1]. The second they get serious about testing they'll discover they have the exact same problem as bicycle racing. [1] http://www.bmw-berlin-marathon.com/en/news-and-media/news/2013/02/22/world-marathon-majors-introduces-tougher-antidoping-penalties-for-elite-athletes.html http://www.bmw-berlin-marathon.com/en/news-and-media/news/20... curun1r: steroids are useful for the exact same reason in the tour de france: decreased training recovery times, joint protection, etc. See eg nordic skiing [2]. You don't take the same doses as bodybuilders do because your goal isn't hypertrophy, but it still helps. Or see this quote [3] To boost their strength is not the sole reason athletes turn to steroids, Yesalis adds. "They have been taken for at least 45 years by endurance athletes to recover from workouts rapidly. With steroids, a marathon runner can run longer, a swimmer can do more laps and a cyclist can spend more time pedaling." In sports where endurance is everything, the ability to last longer during workouts and competitions confers a definite advantage. Read more at: http://phys.org/news71508517.html#jCp Also -- and I missed this mention amidst the scrolling -- while the article mentions epo, it proceeds to discount epo, and avoids any other drugs Doping with EPO or blood transfusions is one way of boosting an already-high VO2 max—and it’s possible that cheating may have contributed to the drop in the marathon record, and could even be the “secret” that allows runners to approach sub-two in the future. But Radcliffe’s numbers offer a reminder that such tactics aren’t necessary to achieve boundary-breaking performances: Her VO2 max was already exceptional when she was a teenager, and it stayed at a relatively constant level throughout her career. Steroids and other drugs help, as demonstrated by baseball, basketball, football, hockey, powerlifting, olympic lifting, bodybuilding, tour-de-france cycling, time-trial cycling, cross-country skiing, nordic skiing, judo, boxing, and mma. Every athletic endeavor that has been seriously tested has found record-breakers using steroids. The point isn't that having an off-the-scale vo2 max isn't required. That's table stakes. Steroids plus other drugs take that exceptional vo2 max and turn it inhuman. [2] http://www.steroids.info/2012/10/09/documentary-looks-at-steroids-in-finnish-cross-country-skiing/ http://www.steroids.info/2012/10/09/documentary-looks-at-ste... [3] http://phys.org/news71508517.html http://phys.org/news71508517.html
qwerta 12y ago
Data would suggest that 2-hour marathon record was already broken, but not recorded.
- abuehrle 12y ago
  Can you please elaborate? Genuinely curious.
  - valarauca1 12y ago
    At the project rate of decline that their model suggests. The 2 hour mark should have been broken by now.
    - rtkwe 12y ago
      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.
  - qwerta 12y ago
    People have to train and city road is not best of surfaces. So it is very possible that somewhere someone already ran faster than 2 hours, just did not care to record it or announce it.
    - justinpaulson 12y ago
      I find it pretty hard to believe that someone would maintain the level of fitness required to run a sub-2 hour marathon (a level which no recorded human has ever achieved despite devoting their lives to the sport) and not even track it.
    - neonkiwi 12y ago
      I'm not a runner, but I know many. Training for a marathon involves running fast, and it involves running far, but typically not at the same time. I don't know anyone who runs a marathon distance in order to train for a marathon, you save it for race day because it takes a lot out of you. The article also talks about drafting and the role of 'pace bunnies' in setting a record. For those reasons, I don't think someone has gone out on a 42.2k run and broken the 2 hour mark.
outside1234 12y ago
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.
- mabbo 12y ago
  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?
  - outside1234 12y ago
    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-Enhancing/dp/1582437157 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.
    - TwoBit 12y ago
      That reporter was an idiot. His entire experiment was qualitative instead of quantitative. How did he know that his performance improved? Because he reported that he felt like he was going faster. Useless.
      - jerf 12y ago
        Are you seriously going to defend the proposition that the placebo effect is that large? Science requires us to be more careful in our thinking than we are naturally inclined towards. It does not require us to pretend we have a lobotomy, nor does it require that we pretend that we must seriously entertain the hypothesis that large doses of steroids have no effect.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
Someone1234 12y ago
Does anyone have a mirror of this article on a readable page? Or a site I can run it through so it is viewable for humans?
- ryanwhitney 12y ago
  Turn off Javascript for the page. Everything loads instantly, no more animation. The amount of work that went into making this pretty-good layout unreadable is insane.
  - Ecio78 12y ago
    Not sure if I'm particularly lucky with my PC, but everything is smooth and nice and I really enjoyed the effects on this page, and I appreciate their effort to use more modern technique than a plain static article.
  - Someone1234 12y ago
    Thanks, that is a huge improvement. There is still a large amount of completely useless whitespace, I guess that is there to enable the obnoxious animation malarkey... This site should be used in schools to teach future web developers what not to make.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
rcavezza 12y ago
I'm consistently surprised by what the human body is able to achieve. If you've never heard of ultra marathon runners, you should check out this episode of radiolab. This lady runs for days on end in ultramarathons. http://www.radiolab.org/story/122291-in-running/ http://www.radiolab.org/story/122291-in-running/ It's intriguing that she suffered brain trauma and there's a part of her brain that doesn't function as expected. I expect there will be a marathon runner with a very specific brain trauma. The trauma will give him an unfair advantage to run a sub two hour marathon.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- x0x0 12y ago
  If you find ultras interesting, watch a documentary called _Running on the Sun_ (trailer [1]). It's about the badwater 135: a 135 mi course run in 120F weather through Death Valley with 13k cumulative feet of elevation gain [2]. The runners are insane. Current course records are just below 23 hours. [1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-e4bOLAuXg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-e4bOLAuXg [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Badwater_Ultramarathon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Badwater_Ultramarathon
  - signa11 12y ago
    yeah badwater gets a lot of mention in the classic "born to run" book as well. i f you can spare a day or three, highly recommended.
anon4 12y ago
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?
- gnarbarian 12y ago
  That sounds like a great idea for a bookmarklet.
  - ArtB 12y ago
    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.
    - scrollaway 12y ago
      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.
    - aardvark179 12y ago
      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.
      - thinkpad20 12y ago
        I don't think that's a major issue. It should be straighforward to disambiguate: make separate units for imperial pint, liquid pint, dry pint, etc. If this is cumbersome, provide an option to set aliases for these in a meta tag, for example. If the writer of the document is sophisticated enough to be using these tags, they should be sophisticated enough to look up what the proper name is for the unit they're using.
raverbashing 12y ago
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.
- sheltgor 12y ago
  Always found that strange as well. I've always loved being a runner in Seattle because its generally cool, cloudy, and often light rain. To me that's the perfect weather for a run since it prevents you from overheating or dehydrating as quickly, and, in my experience, the sun tires you out much quicker. I've always been confused about the fact that you see by far the most people out running on a hot, sunny day. Every one of them seems to be sweating bullets.
  - sp332 12y ago
    A lot of people aren't out running to run as fast or as far as possible. They're just out to enjoy the weather.
  - bduerst 12y ago
    A good rule of thumb is to assume that the temperature is going to feel 10 degrees (F) warmer when you're running or doing extended aerobic exercises outside.
- b_emery 12y ago
  *catabolism: the breakdown of complex molecules in living organisms to form simpler ones, together with the release of energy; destructive metabolism. Incredible.
  - Florin_Andrei 12y ago
    meta = ana + cata Creation and destruction. Build up of tissue, and burning of energy stores.
- 12y ago
tokenadult 12y ago
I especially like this paragraph from the story: "Kenyans and Ethiopians have dominated the marathon since 1999; in fact, of the 100 fastest marathoners in history, 59 are from Kenya and 31 are from neighboring Ethiopia. Is it genes or environment—nature or nurture—that is responsible for this overwhelming domination? The answer doesn’t actually matter when it comes to who will run the first sub-two marathon. The success of East African runners reveals key traits that the eventual record-setter will possess, wherever he happens to be born." Yes, no matter where the runner who first runs a sub-two-hour marathon is born, from whatever group of ancestors, and where the runner trains, the runner will have to have certain characteristics to run that fast for that long. The article then proceeds to detail those characteristics. I used to turn off a lot of Javascript on webpages, but I'm actually managing to read this article reasonably well despite the appalling usability it has with Javascript turned on. The article is definitely worth a read, despite the annoying default screen presentation.
- revelation 12y ago
  A lot of the success of Kenyans and Ethiopians is probably down to the economics of running (which is to say, it is an easily accessible sport to even the poor) and the feedback loop of other successful Kenyans. Kimetto, the recently crowned world marathon record holder, was a subsistence farmer just years ago (http://www.runnersworld.com/elite-runners/from-poverty-to-podium http://www.runnersworld.com/elite-runners/from-poverty-to-po...). There are simply no western school kids growing up thinking distance running is a viable career path for them (and given what we make the kids do for exercise in school, we couldn't spot a talent anyway). Contrast this to other extreme endurance sports such as pro cycling, where there are basically no Kenyans, Ethiopians or Africans at all to be found. Theres a high cost to entry and it requires infrastructure to train.
  - infinitone 12y ago
    You make it sound like the Africans are the only ones racing. There are plenty of Euro/Asian/American runners competing for it and probably had much better infrastructure and training counsel than their African counterparts. Yet still, the Africans dominate. By definition then, its definitely more than just 'economics' and certainly more to do genes/physique/etc.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
JustSomeNobody 12y ago
Can we get the name of the person who designed that page so that we can blackball him?
trhway 12y ago
with regard to Berlin, weather, etc... - my meager experience of recreational runner matches it exactly - the best environment to run has been near Baltic Sea during Fall, soft, cool, almost mist air which cools you off and is absorbed by lungs without strain. The article doesn't mention humidity - it shouldn't be too heavy, yet dry air wouldn't work that well with lungs.
roneesh 12y ago
No need to read the article, we know exactly what it will take: someone to run 13.1mph for two hours.
Htsthbjig 12y ago
Berlin, Dubai, Rotterdam, Frankfurt, Chicago, and London. In 4 of those cities they have no idea what a degree Fahrenheit is. It is a good idea to be able to choose between different units. Most of the world does not use imperial units is something that lots of people forget.
- x0x0 12y ago
  The article is in an american magazine targeting an american audience.
- rconti 12y ago
  You sure don't think much of the intelligence of the average German, Dutch, or... Emir..ati... person.
Uhhrrr 12y ago
Geez - just run downhill. Problem solved. EDIT: OK, now that I actually read the article, it turns out the Boston Marathon is ineligible for records for just this reason - it's overall downhill. With that attitude, why not just require galoshes while you're at it?
- x0x0 12y ago
  those courses are ineligible for records
- amaks 12y ago
  Actually running marathon distance downhill is very hard on quads, so for Boston people specifically train running downhill. In fact, for any marathon event, training course usually closely resembles the event (e.g. hills, downhill, level sections).
yarone 12y ago
Is there software that makes it easy to put together a presentation / design like this? (e.g. wysiwyg / point-and-click)
- leeoniya 12y ago
  i genuinely hope there isn't
- jmulho 12y ago
  Yes, but it will improve your presentations in much the same way that screeching car tire and ricocheting bullet sounds improve PowerPoint presentations.
  - x0x0 12y ago
    So everyone should use it is what you're saying? I'm a star fade man myself: use it every couple of slides to keep things interesting.
    - jmulho 12y ago
      They've improved star fade, if that's possible... You keep scrolling down until you are certain that there is nothing left to see and then, suddenly... star fade!
- Iftheshoefits 12y ago
  This presentation made me leave the page before the first graph, because bits would only start to appear half cut-off at the top of my window as I scrolled down. I'm using the latest version of out-of-the-box Firefox on a desktop, not some gimpy "browser" on a tiny phone or IE6 or heaps of functionality-destroying add-ons.
enchufadoo 12y ago
I really like the Javascript Graphics used in this page to show statistics, anyone knows the library name if any?
- shijie 12y ago
  Taking a quick look at the source, it looks like they're using Timeline Lite from Greensock http://greensock.com/timelinelite http://greensock.com/timelinelite
  - enchufadoo 12y ago
    Thank you.
arcticfox 12y ago
Looking at a different pivot to the question, Allen Downey gives a good theoretical reason for the decline in times and projects 2041 as the year for the 2-hr marathon. Also, his original projection was made in 2011, so there are three years of data to compare against, which is interesting. http://allendowney.blogspot.com/2014/09/two-hour-marathon-in-2041.html http://allendowney.blogspot.com/2014/09/two-hour-marathon-in...
andy_ppp 12y ago
Great article; it got me wondering how much the oxygen weighs that an elite runner would use in the course of a marathon...
- yzzxy 12y ago
  For the Berlin track (Because it's level and close to sea level), and the average elite: 1.00 atm * 8.1L = n * 0.0821 * 331.8K n = 0.30 mol, @ 32.00 g/mol = 9.5 grams 02
neves 12y ago
Fantastic article, but the imperial measures are a PITA. Kills the flow of reading to stop at each paragraph to translate the Fahrenheit degrees, the inches, the feet and the miles to reasonable measures.
- alkonaut 12y ago
  This. Runners world mag is available everywhere around the world. Their website certainly is too. How about spendig 30seconds less on the animation and add a toggle for rest-of-world units instead of imperial?
dorfsmay 12y ago
> VO2 max (a measure of aerobic fitness) Note that even though we used to be told that we could all increase our VO2 max through trainning, it turns out that only people with a specific set of genes can do so.
- irv 12y ago
  in the sense that there is a personal ceiling for you, yes. but if you've never trained at elite level, then you can almost certainly improve it up to your (personal) ceiling.
rrrrob 12y ago
Surprised no-one linked to sportsscientists.com: http://sportsscientists.com/2010/08/the-sub-2-hour-marathon-who-and-when/ http://sportsscientists.com/2010/08/the-sub-2-hour-marathon-... A line of thought that's particularly interesting there is that a 2h marathon has implications for 10000m and half marathon speeds, which make it seem quite a bit further off.
KobaQ 12y ago
Unfortunately this article misses the third of the three components to improve endurance performance, which is lactate production rate (indicator for fat burning: the lower the more energy is produced by burning fat). Two athletes with the same VO2max and efficiency can have vastly different performances in a marathon. The body's VO2max potential can be used by solely burning carbs, which supply is limited (about 2000 kcal) whereas fat supply is practically unlimited (1 kg has about 7000 kcal. As a marathon requires more energy than is available as stored carbs, the ability to burn fat is a major factor in marathon performance.
- andor 12y ago
  lactate production rate (indicator for fat burning The body's VO2max potential can be used by solely burning carbs Actually you mixed them both up. In aerobic (with oxygen) exercise, you mostly burn fat. In anaerobic exercise, you burn glucose and glycogen and produce lactic acid through lactic acid fermentation. The important metric for anaerobic performance is not acid production rate, but acid tolerance of the muscles, because high acid levels lead to fatigue. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anaerobic_exercise http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anaerobic_exercise
  - KobaQ 12y ago
    To clarify my context: For a given effort, the body always uses anaerobic and aerobic systems. The higher the fraction of the energy from the anaerobic system, the higher the lactate production rate. The lower the lactate production rate, the more energy comes from burning fat. Lactate can be further used to create ATP, but this process needs oxygen as well. Hence, a good VO2max helps to get rid of lactate, which was created in the anaerobic process. When measuring the lactate threshold by solely the lactate concentration, it's difficult to distinct between high production / high reduction and low production rates. Good VO2max can conceal weak fat burning abilities. Therefore often the lactate production rate by a given effort (typically maximum effort) is used as indicator for the fat burning capability. (Hope that makes sense, English is not my native language :-) ...)
chrismcb 12y ago
This article was painful to read. I had to scroll then wait as the page slowly faded in. I gave up after a couple of pages. Too painful
polskibus 12y ago
The track should be downhill?
progress 12y ago
What will it take for old people to stop writing in weird degree units so the rest of us don't have to convert it?
progress 12y ago
What will it take for old people to stop writing in weird degree units so the rest of us don't have to convert it?
ck2 12y ago
I know we like nice round numbers like "2 hours" but anything remotely close to 2 hours is an insane, all-out pace as any runner knows. I doubt most cities have people who could run a half marathon at that pace. The best half-marathons are still around 59 minutes, now you want to double that with no performance penalty. It is going to take an incredibly genetically gifted person with a lifetime of training to do it. Basically the Usain Bolt of marathons. What I like is that in the half-marathon, women are only 5 minutes behind men. I am more interested when the first woman will run a one hour half-marathon.
bayesianhorse 12y ago
For some people? You need to be reborn with the right physiology and anatomy. Seriously. Some people are not made to run 2 hour marathons, or acquired some insuries or problems which makes reaching this goal either futile or even counterproductive, depending on why you are setting this goal.
diimdeep 12y ago
... data graphics were mainly devices for showing the obvious to the ignorant, which led to two fruitless paths. The graphics had to be alive, communicatively dynamic, overdecorated and exaggerated (otherwise, the dullards would fall asleep) The main task of graphical analysis was to detect and denounce deception (because the dullards could not protect themselves) Well, they hit the first one.
leighmcculloch 12y ago
2 hours of running.
thomasfl 12y ago
The new journalism is scroll effects and animated charts.

339 points by neonkiwi 12y ago

pgpcolby 12y ago

2 hours

vblord 12y ago
lol. I was totally going to say that!

pgpcolby 12y ago

2 hours

neonkiwi 12y ago

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.

incision 12y ago
>'...the content itself is worth reading.' It sure looks that way and I'm normally pretty tolerant of design flourishes, but I find this simply unbearable. Still, I really wanted to read this, but neither Pocket, Readability nor Instapaper are able to pull more than a few paragraphs of usable text out of it. The design isn't just bad or annoying it's hostile.
- kazinator 12y ago
  In addition to my observation that disabling JavaScript from runnersworld.com stops all the effects while evidently showing all the content nicely, I'd like to add that the page renders very nicely in the print view of the FireFox add-on known as "Print Edit". "Print Edit" lets you trim out superfluous junk from the document, and then print it or save a copy.
kazinator 12y ago
Your comment caught my attention, because I don't have any problem with the display of the content. Then, I immediately realized: I do not have Javascript enabled from runnersworld, thanks to the NoScript Firefox extension. I temporarily turned it on, and saw the annoyances. The static view without JS is just fine: the graphs and their labels are all there; nothing moves when you scroll.
stereopump 12y ago
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.
rconti 12y ago
Huh. works great for me in Safari on OS X - and normally I'm the first to complain about poor site behavior (particularly animated gifs which Safari is terrible with).

plorkyeran 12y ago

This is an impressive amount of effort put into making the content unreadable. I sort of get what they're going for with the fade-in of content as you scroll down (although it's distracting as hell for actually reading rather than just looking at it), but what would possess someone to think that fading out text as I scroll down was a good idea? Crazily enough I like to be able to read more than two sentences without scrolling. I don't expect a site to use my monitor's full width, but I sure do expect it to use the full height.

jordanpg 12y ago
Maybe it's time to update this for the second decade of the 21st century: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/design_hell http://theoatmeal.com/comics/design_hell
- MBlume 12y ago
  See also: http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/
gaius 12y ago
Digital Presentation by Daniel Fuehrer There you go.
sliverstorm 12y ago
If they could just implement it in a lightweight fashion, I might be able to put up with it. But glitzy UI seems to routinely overload nearly every machine I use, which makes it 10x worse. Thanks, you not only made the UI worse, but now it stutters, my fans spin up, and my browser (sometimes) freezes. Progress!

espinchi 12y ago

Here's the hypothetical scenario that the report describes in the end. I've found reading the analysis after this story makes it an even better read: The road is so flat and straight, you can see them coming from a mile away. Six runners flow in arrowhead formation around the Canadian city of Saskatoon. The early November air is still and dry, the sky overcast, and the temperature hovers a bit above freezing, just as predicted. All in their early 20s, they’ve been training together for this moment for years; only in the last month did their coach select which three will go for the record. The remaining three form the front of the arrowhead, blocking the wind and enduring the mental effort of controlling the pace. Should one of them cross the finish line in two hours—or faster—all six will share equally in the $50 million jackpot promised by the heirs to the Hoka One One fortune. The pot of money is up for grabs, for any runner, anywhere in the world. The chase is on. So, will they make it? And what year is this? We’ve cut the distance to the sub-two marathon in half since 1998, but it will get progressively harder to trim the remaining seconds. Still, the physiologists tell us that it’s not impossible, meaning it is possible. I’m saying the year is...2075—and they make it

x0x0 12y ago
The whole article is beyond stupid. It's impossible to seriously discuss athletic records in 2014 and not mention drugs. No discussion of steroids, blood doping, hgh, nothing. For context, the major marathons just increased their drug penalties [1]. The second they get serious about testing they'll discover they have the exact same problem as bicycle racing. [1] http://www.bmw-berlin-marathon.com/en/news-and-media/news/2013/02/22/world-marathon-majors-introduces-tougher-antidoping-penalties-for-elite-athletes.html http://www.bmw-berlin-marathon.com/en/news-and-media/news/20... curun1r: steroids are useful for the exact same reason in the tour de france: decreased training recovery times, joint protection, etc. See eg nordic skiing [2]. You don't take the same doses as bodybuilders do because your goal isn't hypertrophy, but it still helps. Or see this quote [3] To boost their strength is not the sole reason athletes turn to steroids, Yesalis adds. "They have been taken for at least 45 years by endurance athletes to recover from workouts rapidly. With steroids, a marathon runner can run longer, a swimmer can do more laps and a cyclist can spend more time pedaling." In sports where endurance is everything, the ability to last longer during workouts and competitions confers a definite advantage. Read more at: http://phys.org/news71508517.html#jCp Also -- and I missed this mention amidst the scrolling -- while the article mentions epo, it proceeds to discount epo, and avoids any other drugs Doping with EPO or blood transfusions is one way of boosting an already-high VO2 max—and it’s possible that cheating may have contributed to the drop in the marathon record, and could even be the “secret” that allows runners to approach sub-two in the future. But Radcliffe’s numbers offer a reminder that such tactics aren’t necessary to achieve boundary-breaking performances: Her VO2 max was already exceptional when she was a teenager, and it stayed at a relatively constant level throughout her career. Steroids and other drugs help, as demonstrated by baseball, basketball, football, hockey, powerlifting, olympic lifting, bodybuilding, tour-de-france cycling, time-trial cycling, cross-country skiing, nordic skiing, judo, boxing, and mma. Every athletic endeavor that has been seriously tested has found record-breakers using steroids. The point isn't that having an off-the-scale vo2 max isn't required. That's table stakes. Steroids plus other drugs take that exceptional vo2 max and turn it inhuman. [2] http://www.steroids.info/2012/10/09/documentary-looks-at-steroids-in-finnish-cross-country-skiing/ http://www.steroids.info/2012/10/09/documentary-looks-at-ste... [3] http://phys.org/news71508517.html http://phys.org/news71508517.html

qwerta 12y ago

Data would suggest that 2-hour marathon record was already broken, but not recorded.

abuehrle 12y ago
Can you please elaborate? Genuinely curious.
- valarauca1 12y ago
  At the project rate of decline that their model suggests. The 2 hour mark should have been broken by now.
  - rtkwe 12y ago
    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.
- qwerta 12y ago
  People have to train and city road is not best of surfaces. So it is very possible that somewhere someone already ran faster than 2 hours, just did not care to record it or announce it.
  - justinpaulson 12y ago
    I find it pretty hard to believe that someone would maintain the level of fitness required to run a sub-2 hour marathon (a level which no recorded human has ever achieved despite devoting their lives to the sport) and not even track it.
  - neonkiwi 12y ago
    I'm not a runner, but I know many. Training for a marathon involves running fast, and it involves running far, but typically not at the same time. I don't know anyone who runs a marathon distance in order to train for a marathon, you save it for race day because it takes a lot out of you. The article also talks about drafting and the role of 'pace bunnies' in setting a record. For those reasons, I don't think someone has gone out on a 42.2k run and broken the 2 hour mark.

outside1234 12y ago

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.

mabbo 12y ago
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?
- outside1234 12y ago
  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-Enhancing/dp/1582437157 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.
  - TwoBit 12y ago
    That reporter was an idiot. His entire experiment was qualitative instead of quantitative. How did he know that his performance improved? Because he reported that he felt like he was going faster. Useless.
    - jerf 12y ago
      Are you seriously going to defend the proposition that the placebo effect is that large? Science requires us to be more careful in our thinking than we are naturally inclined towards. It does not require us to pretend we have a lobotomy, nor does it require that we pretend that we must seriously entertain the hypothesis that large doses of steroids have no effect.

deleted 12y ago

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Someone1234 12y ago

Does anyone have a mirror of this article on a readable page? Or a site I can run it through so it is viewable for humans?

ryanwhitney 12y ago
Turn off Javascript for the page. Everything loads instantly, no more animation. The amount of work that went into making this pretty-good layout unreadable is insane.
- Ecio78 12y ago
  Not sure if I'm particularly lucky with my PC, but everything is smooth and nice and I really enjoyed the effects on this page, and I appreciate their effort to use more modern technique than a plain static article.
- Someone1234 12y ago
  Thanks, that is a huge improvement. There is still a large amount of completely useless whitespace, I guess that is there to enable the obnoxious animation malarkey... This site should be used in schools to teach future web developers what not to make.
deleted 12y ago
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rcavezza 12y ago

I'm consistently surprised by what the human body is able to achieve. If you've never heard of ultra marathon runners, you should check out this episode of radiolab. This lady runs for days on end in ultramarathons. http://www.radiolab.org/story/122291-in-running/ http://www.radiolab.org/story/122291-in-running/ It's intriguing that she suffered brain trauma and there's a part of her brain that doesn't function as expected. I expect there will be a marathon runner with a very specific brain trauma. The trauma will give him an unfair advantage to run a sub two hour marathon.

deleted 12y ago
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x0x0 12y ago
If you find ultras interesting, watch a documentary called _Running on the Sun_ (trailer [1]). It's about the badwater 135: a 135 mi course run in 120F weather through Death Valley with 13k cumulative feet of elevation gain [2]. The runners are insane. Current course records are just below 23 hours. [1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-e4bOLAuXg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-e4bOLAuXg [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Badwater_Ultramarathon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Badwater_Ultramarathon
- signa11 12y ago
  yeah badwater gets a lot of mention in the classic "born to run" book as well. i f you can spare a day or three, highly recommended.

anon4 12y ago

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?

gnarbarian 12y ago
That sounds like a great idea for a bookmarklet.
- ArtB 12y ago
  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.
  - scrollaway 12y ago
    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.
  - aardvark179 12y ago
    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.
    - thinkpad20 12y ago
      I don't think that's a major issue. It should be straighforward to disambiguate: make separate units for imperial pint, liquid pint, dry pint, etc. If this is cumbersome, provide an option to set aliases for these in a meta tag, for example. If the writer of the document is sophisticated enough to be using these tags, they should be sophisticated enough to look up what the proper name is for the unit they're using.

raverbashing 12y ago

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.

sheltgor 12y ago
Always found that strange as well. I've always loved being a runner in Seattle because its generally cool, cloudy, and often light rain. To me that's the perfect weather for a run since it prevents you from overheating or dehydrating as quickly, and, in my experience, the sun tires you out much quicker. I've always been confused about the fact that you see by far the most people out running on a hot, sunny day. Every one of them seems to be sweating bullets.
- sp332 12y ago
  A lot of people aren't out running to run as fast or as far as possible. They're just out to enjoy the weather.
- bduerst 12y ago
  A good rule of thumb is to assume that the temperature is going to feel 10 degrees (F) warmer when you're running or doing extended aerobic exercises outside.
b_emery 12y ago
*catabolism: the breakdown of complex molecules in living organisms to form simpler ones, together with the release of energy; destructive metabolism. Incredible.
- Florin_Andrei 12y ago
  meta = ana + cata Creation and destruction. Build up of tissue, and burning of energy stores.
12y ago

tokenadult 12y ago

I especially like this paragraph from the story: "Kenyans and Ethiopians have dominated the marathon since 1999; in fact, of the 100 fastest marathoners in history, 59 are from Kenya and 31 are from neighboring Ethiopia. Is it genes or environment—nature or nurture—that is responsible for this overwhelming domination? The answer doesn’t actually matter when it comes to who will run the first sub-two marathon. The success of East African runners reveals key traits that the eventual record-setter will possess, wherever he happens to be born." Yes, no matter where the runner who first runs a sub-two-hour marathon is born, from whatever group of ancestors, and where the runner trains, the runner will have to have certain characteristics to run that fast for that long. The article then proceeds to detail those characteristics. I used to turn off a lot of Javascript on webpages, but I'm actually managing to read this article reasonably well despite the appalling usability it has with Javascript turned on. The article is definitely worth a read, despite the annoying default screen presentation.

revelation 12y ago
A lot of the success of Kenyans and Ethiopians is probably down to the economics of running (which is to say, it is an easily accessible sport to even the poor) and the feedback loop of other successful Kenyans. Kimetto, the recently crowned world marathon record holder, was a subsistence farmer just years ago (http://www.runnersworld.com/elite-runners/from-poverty-to-podium http://www.runnersworld.com/elite-runners/from-poverty-to-po...). There are simply no western school kids growing up thinking distance running is a viable career path for them (and given what we make the kids do for exercise in school, we couldn't spot a talent anyway). Contrast this to other extreme endurance sports such as pro cycling, where there are basically no Kenyans, Ethiopians or Africans at all to be found. Theres a high cost to entry and it requires infrastructure to train.
- infinitone 12y ago
  You make it sound like the Africans are the only ones racing. There are plenty of Euro/Asian/American runners competing for it and probably had much better infrastructure and training counsel than their African counterparts. Yet still, the Africans dominate. By definition then, its definitely more than just 'economics' and certainly more to do genes/physique/etc.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

JustSomeNobody 12y ago

Can we get the name of the person who designed that page so that we can blackball him?

trhway 12y ago

with regard to Berlin, weather, etc... - my meager experience of recreational runner matches it exactly - the best environment to run has been near Baltic Sea during Fall, soft, cool, almost mist air which cools you off and is absorbed by lungs without strain. The article doesn't mention humidity - it shouldn't be too heavy, yet dry air wouldn't work that well with lungs.

roneesh 12y ago

No need to read the article, we know exactly what it will take: someone to run 13.1mph for two hours.

Htsthbjig 12y ago

Berlin, Dubai, Rotterdam, Frankfurt, Chicago, and London. In 4 of those cities they have no idea what a degree Fahrenheit is. It is a good idea to be able to choose between different units. Most of the world does not use imperial units is something that lots of people forget.

x0x0 12y ago
The article is in an american magazine targeting an american audience.
rconti 12y ago
You sure don't think much of the intelligence of the average German, Dutch, or... Emir..ati... person.

Uhhrrr 12y ago

Geez - just run downhill. Problem solved. EDIT: OK, now that I actually read the article, it turns out the Boston Marathon is ineligible for records for just this reason - it's overall downhill. With that attitude, why not just require galoshes while you're at it?

x0x0 12y ago
those courses are ineligible for records
amaks 12y ago
Actually running marathon distance downhill is very hard on quads, so for Boston people specifically train running downhill. In fact, for any marathon event, training course usually closely resembles the event (e.g. hills, downhill, level sections).

yarone 12y ago

Is there software that makes it easy to put together a presentation / design like this? (e.g. wysiwyg / point-and-click)

leeoniya 12y ago
i genuinely hope there isn't
jmulho 12y ago
Yes, but it will improve your presentations in much the same way that screeching car tire and ricocheting bullet sounds improve PowerPoint presentations.
- x0x0 12y ago
  So everyone should use it is what you're saying? I'm a star fade man myself: use it every couple of slides to keep things interesting.
  - jmulho 12y ago
    They've improved star fade, if that's possible... You keep scrolling down until you are certain that there is nothing left to see and then, suddenly... star fade!
Iftheshoefits 12y ago
This presentation made me leave the page before the first graph, because bits would only start to appear half cut-off at the top of my window as I scrolled down. I'm using the latest version of out-of-the-box Firefox on a desktop, not some gimpy "browser" on a tiny phone or IE6 or heaps of functionality-destroying add-ons.

enchufadoo 12y ago

I really like the Javascript Graphics used in this page to show statistics, anyone knows the library name if any?

shijie 12y ago
Taking a quick look at the source, it looks like they're using Timeline Lite from Greensock http://greensock.com/timelinelite http://greensock.com/timelinelite
- enchufadoo 12y ago
  Thank you.

arcticfox 12y ago

Looking at a different pivot to the question, Allen Downey gives a good theoretical reason for the decline in times and projects 2041 as the year for the 2-hr marathon. Also, his original projection was made in 2011, so there are three years of data to compare against, which is interesting. http://allendowney.blogspot.com/2014/09/two-hour-marathon-in-2041.html http://allendowney.blogspot.com/2014/09/two-hour-marathon-in...

andy_ppp 12y ago

Great article; it got me wondering how much the oxygen weighs that an elite runner would use in the course of a marathon...

yzzxy 12y ago
For the Berlin track (Because it's level and close to sea level), and the average elite: 1.00 atm * 8.1L = n * 0.0821 * 331.8K n = 0.30 mol, @ 32.00 g/mol = 9.5 grams 02

neves 12y ago

Fantastic article, but the imperial measures are a PITA. Kills the flow of reading to stop at each paragraph to translate the Fahrenheit degrees, the inches, the feet and the miles to reasonable measures.

alkonaut 12y ago
This. Runners world mag is available everywhere around the world. Their website certainly is too. How about spendig 30seconds less on the animation and add a toggle for rest-of-world units instead of imperial?

dorfsmay 12y ago

> VO2 max (a measure of aerobic fitness) Note that even though we used to be told that we could all increase our VO2 max through trainning, it turns out that only people with a specific set of genes can do so.

irv 12y ago
in the sense that there is a personal ceiling for you, yes. but if you've never trained at elite level, then you can almost certainly improve it up to your (personal) ceiling.

rrrrob 12y ago

Surprised no-one linked to sportsscientists.com: http://sportsscientists.com/2010/08/the-sub-2-hour-marathon-who-and-when/ http://sportsscientists.com/2010/08/the-sub-2-hour-marathon-... A line of thought that's particularly interesting there is that a 2h marathon has implications for 10000m and half marathon speeds, which make it seem quite a bit further off.

KobaQ 12y ago

Unfortunately this article misses the third of the three components to improve endurance performance, which is lactate production rate (indicator for fat burning: the lower the more energy is produced by burning fat). Two athletes with the same VO2max and efficiency can have vastly different performances in a marathon. The body's VO2max potential can be used by solely burning carbs, which supply is limited (about 2000 kcal) whereas fat supply is practically unlimited (1 kg has about 7000 kcal. As a marathon requires more energy than is available as stored carbs, the ability to burn fat is a major factor in marathon performance.

andor 12y ago
lactate production rate (indicator for fat burning The body's VO2max potential can be used by solely burning carbs Actually you mixed them both up. In aerobic (with oxygen) exercise, you mostly burn fat. In anaerobic exercise, you burn glucose and glycogen and produce lactic acid through lactic acid fermentation. The important metric for anaerobic performance is not acid production rate, but acid tolerance of the muscles, because high acid levels lead to fatigue. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anaerobic_exercise http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anaerobic_exercise
- KobaQ 12y ago
  To clarify my context: For a given effort, the body always uses anaerobic and aerobic systems. The higher the fraction of the energy from the anaerobic system, the higher the lactate production rate. The lower the lactate production rate, the more energy comes from burning fat. Lactate can be further used to create ATP, but this process needs oxygen as well. Hence, a good VO2max helps to get rid of lactate, which was created in the anaerobic process. When measuring the lactate threshold by solely the lactate concentration, it's difficult to distinct between high production / high reduction and low production rates. Good VO2max can conceal weak fat burning abilities. Therefore often the lactate production rate by a given effort (typically maximum effort) is used as indicator for the fat burning capability. (Hope that makes sense, English is not my native language :-) ...)

chrismcb 12y ago

This article was painful to read. I had to scroll then wait as the page slowly faded in. I gave up after a couple of pages. Too painful

polskibus 12y ago

The track should be downhill?

progress 12y ago

What will it take for old people to stop writing in weird degree units so the rest of us don't have to convert it?

progress 12y ago

What will it take for old people to stop writing in weird degree units so the rest of us don't have to convert it?

ck2 12y ago

I know we like nice round numbers like "2 hours" but anything remotely close to 2 hours is an insane, all-out pace as any runner knows. I doubt most cities have people who could run a half marathon at that pace. The best half-marathons are still around 59 minutes, now you want to double that with no performance penalty. It is going to take an incredibly genetically gifted person with a lifetime of training to do it. Basically the Usain Bolt of marathons. What I like is that in the half-marathon, women are only 5 minutes behind men. I am more interested when the first woman will run a one hour half-marathon.

bayesianhorse 12y ago

For some people? You need to be reborn with the right physiology and anatomy. Seriously. Some people are not made to run 2 hour marathons, or acquired some insuries or problems which makes reaching this goal either futile or even counterproductive, depending on why you are setting this goal.

diimdeep 12y ago

... data graphics were mainly devices for showing the obvious to the ignorant, which led to two fruitless paths. The graphics had to be alive, communicatively dynamic, overdecorated and exaggerated (otherwise, the dullards would fall asleep) The main task of graphical analysis was to detect and denounce deception (because the dullards could not protect themselves) Well, they hit the first one.

leighmcculloch 12y ago

2 hours of running.

thomasfl 12y ago

The new journalism is scroll effects and animated charts.