Is It Possible to Run a Marathon in Under 2 Hours? | Breaking2

Ever since 490 BC, when Thea deputies ran the 26 miles from Marathon to Athens to declare victory over the Persians and promptly died, humans have been asking themselves, "How fast can we run this distance?"

It's a question that has motivated us for thousands of years and never more than in modern times. No sport is growing faster than running, and marathons in particular have gained 47% more participants in the last decade alone. One milestone has intrigued hyper-elite runners and trainers as we've come closer and closer to it: Is it possible to cover 26.2 miles in under two hours?

It sounds crazy, but it might be possible. Scientists have identified three physiological elements that allow elite runners to leave others in their dust: oxygen consumption, lactate threshold, and running efficiency.

The first, oxygen consumption or utilization, is the reason why many runners train at high altitudes, or those born in the mountains seem to have an advantage when it comes to long distances. By training where the air is thin, these runners are boosting their red blood cell production, which allows the blood to carry more oxygen so they can run farther without losing their breath.

Lactate threshold is a fancy way of describing the point at which muscles begin to fatigue and fail. Resistance and interval training, which build stronger muscles, can readily improve a runner's threshold.

But the third element, running efficiency, is a bit more difficult to define and harder yet to improve with training. Think of it like gas mileage in a car. A runner's efficiency or economy is how much energy she expends relative to how fast she goes. Improving efficiency comes with finding the right technique, which we've been tweaking for over two million years.

Our bodies have evolved long legs, short toes, and muscular rear ends as an adaptation for running long distances, mostly to wear down prey over time. In the words of the Boss, you could say, "Baby, we were born to run."

But not all techniques are created equal. For example, researchers compared injury rates between runners who land on the ball of the foot versus those who hit the ground heel first. Because of the vastly different ways that these strike forces are absorbed and distributed, rear foot strikers were 2.3 times more likely to become injured than the forefoot strikers.

And it's not like we're still chasing down antelope with spears. Modern human life involves lots of sitting down, as well as a sort of false sense of support when we run in big cushy shoes. If we're ever going to break two hours, we need to rethink the precise skills and techniques that will allow our bodies to reach their maximum potential, both physiologically and psychologically.

In fact, it's this piece of a puzzle, a head game, that might finally get us past this threshold. So much time and energy has been expended sorting out how to minimize fatigue to the body. What about the endurance required to conquer mental fatigue? How can we train ourselves to push further, to believe we can do something impossible?

It's a question most of us can leave to the elite competitors and scientists committed to the cause of breaking world records. In the meantime, just get out and enjoy what your body has evolved so well to do: going for a run.