Welcome to the Movement Movement, the podcast for people who want the truth about having a healthy, happy, strong body. Remember your body was meant to move. Now here's your host, Stephen Sashin. Running a marathon in less than two hours is one of the most amazing things ever and now that Eliot Kipchogi has done it, other people are going to do it too, right?
No, I don't think so. And we're going to talk about that on today's episode of the Movement Movement, the podcast for people who want to know the truth about what it takes to have a happy, strong body starting with the feet first because those things at the end of your legs are your foundation. They're made to bend and move and flex and feel and that's what's natural and we're all about creating a movement, movement, helping natural movement become the obvious, better, healthy choice the way natural food is. And if you want to be part of our community and discover what it takes to run, to walk, to dance, to hike, to lift weights, whatever it is, enjoyably and healthily by getting rid of the mythology, the propaganda and sometimes the outright lies about what it takes to do that, welcome.
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In other words, if you want to be part of the tribe, please subscribe. So let's jump into this. Eliot Kipchogi ran a marathon in one hour, 59 minutes, 40 seconds recently. Unbelievable feet running at slightly over 13 miles per hour for a 26.2 mile race.
Now I know some people are going to think that I'm being Debbie Downer when I evaluate this thing, but literally this is all I'm doing is taking a look at this and really evaluating the way people are thinking and talking more than what Kipchogi accomplished. Because look, running a marathon super fast is an impressive feat. I think people give it undue credit though or undue importance compared to other athletic feats. Speaking as a sprinter, my people, if you will, there's a very small number of people who run 100 meters in under 10 seconds proportionally, way fewer of them than people who run super fast marathons.
But most people don't really consider the 100 meters like an impressive feat or running a sub-10, a super impressive feat versus the number of people who view fast marathons as super impressive. And I think it's because people basically see the sprints as just a genetic freak show and they see the marathons as something that, you know, if they were slightly different, if they trained a little harder, if they worked a little better, it's kind of on the scale of something almost accomplishable. It makes more sense of just running longer rather than just running really, really fast and putting out all that power. Of course, it's not true, but there are fewer number of people against sprinters who run sub-10 than there are really good marathons.
So it's just an interesting thing. Now, that said, let's just talk about the one most common statement I hear people talking about in terms of Kip Choggy's feet. Now that he's broken two hours, other people are going to do it too. It's just like when Roger Banister broke the four-hour mile record.
Except, no, it's not. It's nothing like that for a couple reasons. And let's discuss them. So one is, let me back up and talk about Roger Banister's record.
People talking about breaking the four-hour mile as if it was a psychological thing. Like no one thought it was possible, but once someone proved it was possible, then other people could do it. Same thing with the two-hour marathon. Not true with the mile.
It's not like it was a psychological thing. People hadn't figured out the right way to train and run a mile race around a track in a way that allowed you to get to a sub-four minute mile. And there was a lot of other people who were working on it who did it right after Banister did because it was just a matter of time until one of those guys did. And Roger just happened to be the first.
It really wasn't a psychological thing. People like to say, but now there's high school kids doing it. Well, yeah, but again, not because of psychology, but because of two things. One, training, the improvement in training.
Two, the improvement in materials, especially tracks, not even so much shoes, it really tracks. And a third, just a larger collection of human beings who are trying to do this. And so the cream rises to the top and you get more good people who are making this attempt and therefore more people are able to do it. Same thing with running a sub-10 second hundred actually.
There's just more people trying to do it. And so there's more opportunity to make that happen. The second thing that makes this completely different than Roger Banister's race is that Banister ran a race. He was running under normal conditions and Kichouge was running under completely abnormal conditions.
And this is an important thing that we're going to talk about. So there's a reason that the International Athletic Federation is not viewing this as a world record and simply because it was done under these really, really extreme conditions where if you don't know, the course was basically just a straight back and forth with basically no change in elevation, little turn at the end and a really long stretch of just running straight. The first part though is that there was a pacing vehicle that was projecting lines on the road where six or seven paces, one, two, three, four, five, six, six paces were five of them were in a V shape in front of Kichouge so that they could not only keep him at the right pace but also create a draft basically make it so that he didn't have to break the wind. And yes, I said Kichouge didn't have to break wind during this race.
More accurately, they were making it so that he didn't have to deal with the wind resistance that you would otherwise have when you're running the faster. You run the more wind resistance becomes a factor and keeping you from running faster. So they were creating a wind buffer and maybe the vehicle was helping them create the wind buffer as well. So the answers were rotating in and out.
So they were staying super fresh as he continued running. There's actually one guy behind him that kind of motivated him to move like it's weird when you have someone chasing you. You want to go. So there was that component.
So strange course, unusual pacing. And then here's the part that I find the funniest. So this is again, this is a guy who ran a 201-39 and now ran 4.6 seconds per mile faster. And he was wearing these magic special Nike shoes and Nike wants you to think that it's the shoes.
Think about that for a second. Which you think is going to make a bigger difference in 4.5 seconds per mile drafting with paces on a flat course with practically no turns in a relation change or magic shoes. Yep, not the magic shoes. I've mentioned it before that the endurance running coach Phil Maffetone has written a book called 159 and his theory about what it's going to take for someone to break a two-hour marathon is a similar thing, relatively flat course, but he thinks it's going to be someone barefoot.
And actually the similarity between barefoot and the Nike shoe is actually pretty high because the feels idea is that someone barefoot is A, going to have the lightest shoe possible, none, and B, have the best or the least amount of energy suck, which is how much foam you have underneath you sucking energy out of you. Shoe companies like to call it energy return. There's no such thing as energy return. There's just how much energy suck there is.
Barefoot, very little energy suck in that Nike shoe, very little energy suck. Quick tangent. The International Athletic Federation is now testing the shoe to see if it provides some unusual, like almost performance enhancing benefits. I'm not saying it's true.
The following thing I'm going to say is true. But why are they investigating this? Is it because Nike is asking them to because they want to see if they can argue that it does give you performance enhancing benefits as a marketing and PR play? I don't know.
Maybe, maybe not. But come on, let's be realistic again, 4.6 seconds per mile over the race under unusual circumstances. Is it really the shoes? One of the things that people really don't like to talk about, and I'm not making any assertions.
I'm not making any claims. Again, all I'm trying to do is have a conversation about reality in this situation. When Nike was sponsoring Kichogae to run a Subtour marathon the first time they tried, there was actually two other people in that run, and they had horrible races, did not do very well at all. So again, is it the shoes or not the shoes?
I would go for, of course, not the shoes. But there was something else that happened that people brought up during that race or that run that they didn't bring up so much during this one, and I think it's relevant for both. And that is, no one did any drug testing of any sort. Now again, I'm not saying Kichogae was taking anything.
I don't know. In fact, I don't really care. But it is interesting that in the time between the Nike sponsored version of the Subtour marathon and the current version of the Subtour marathon, what has come out is that Nike was engaged in a very deliberate campaign to push the limits of what you could do for performance enhancing compounds that weren't technically illegal. So the fact that there was no oversight and no evaluation for that run or this run is certainly interesting.
And again, 4.6 seconds per mile over 26.2 miles. Very, very small amount of difference, and there's lots of little things that can help make people feel like they're going to be able to do that. So once again, I don't want to minimize this, but I want to engage in the conversation. I'd like people to be able to talk about things like this without knee jerk or sponsor.
Like, you're just trying to minimize the incredible feat. No, incredible feat. Totally. You're just trying to debunk everything.
No, no, no. I just am looking at this and saying, you know, what does it really mean for everybody, both other high-performance athletes and the rest of us? And how are people like Nike with their shoe taking advantage of this in ways that are just doing what the movement podcast is all about, debunking the mythology of the propaganda and sometimes the lies that have been explicitly coming out from the big footwear companies for the years. When I've been debating people from large footwear companies, and if you haven't seen it yet, or if I think I mentioned it, if you think of each about a zero shoes dot com slash ACSM, you'll see a panel discussion that I was on that included a guy from Brooks and a guy from Adidas who were talking about how they were trying to improve performance and reduce injuries with their shoes.
And I and Irene Davis from Harvard just basically asked a simple question. Where's your proof? And without the proof, then everything they're claiming is suspect. And again, I'm not even saying that it's wrong.
It just needs to be investigated. I mean, for the first 99.995% of recorded human history, people were running quite successfully in either nothing or footwear, frankly close to zero shoes. It's just something to protect your foot, something to hold that protection onto your foot. The question is why haven't things gotten massively better since the advent of the modern athletic shoe with a bunch of padding, point of toes, elevated heel, things that don't let your feet move, and the answer is well, they really haven't as a result of that.
And so my question is why not? And why is it that those of us promoting natural movement are asked to prove things that the running shoe companies are not things like if you use your feet, that's better for you because they can stay strong when you use them. And if you immobilize them, they get weak and that's not good for you. Why do we have to prove the obvious when the large companies are not required seemingly to make incredible statements about their products for which they have no backup whatsoever?
Anyway, I hope this engenders the conversation. Congratulations to Kipchoge, however and whatever you did, an impressive feat, absolutely. And I'm really looking forward to what's next. Look, if during a regular marathon, we find out that suddenly a bunch of people in whatever footwear, I don't even care, are suddenly breaking two hours, I will take back everything that I just said and say it was totally psychological and once we knew that it was somehow possible for any human being in any way, then here we go.
But even if that happens, it'll be really interesting to take a look and see what other factors are going on. They're going on behind the scenes because look, there's a lot of incentive, a.k.a. money backing up this idea that what allowed this incredible thing to happen is some magic footwear, some from some big shoe company. So love to hear what you think, let's have the conversation, wherever you want to have it on our website at jointhemovementmovement.com or on YouTube or on Facebook or Instagram if you don't know where to find us on all those channels, go to jointhemovementmovement.com where you'll find links to all those places that interact.
And again, please spread the word, share, like, hit the bell if you're on YouTube. If you have any questions or comments or anyone that you think should be on the show, drop an email to me at moveatjointhemovementmovement.com. As always, if you want to be part of the tribe, subscribe, but more importantly, go out, enjoy life and live life, feet first. You've been listening to the Movement Movement Podcast with Host Steven Sashan.
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