Super shoes. Most shoes have carbon plates in them now, they act as a spring, storing energy and propelling athletes forwards.
Better understanding of fuelling. Most athletes are taking between 100-120g carbs (sugar) per hour. Bicarbonate of soda has also been effective.
Better planning tools. Athletes look at elevation, headwind, tailwind and will plan a strategy around going harder into the hard stuff and knowing when they can back off and rest.
And to be honest, probably a metric tonne of PEDs (performance enhancing drugs) - unfortunately this is very common across all sports at the top level.
This seems unlikely to be true, although it is repeated in every article I read about carbon plated shoes. The people that study them in a lab environment seem to disagree. See some of the papers here:
https://www.wouterhoogkamer.com/science2
However, I agree wholeheartedly with the overall points in your post!
I’m guessing like most things of this nature, you’re likely to have super-responders, responders and non-responders?
Three athletes broke the men's world record. One athlete broke the women's world record, and three were in the all time top 5. An Irish record was also broken, likely other countries too that I'm not familiar with.
Not to take anything away from the achievements. Incredible running.
Not so. She broke a record for a female-only-pacer marathon time. The women's world record was much, much faster.
However, because marathon are often mixed gender and the best male runners are significantly faster than the best female runners, it is possible for a woman to be paced from the gun to the tape by a male runner. For this reason, there are separate records for the women's marathon for women's only events.
[0] This is one of the things that made Kipchoge's original sub 2 result not record-eligible.
She broke the thing that the IAAF have gone back and forth on calling "the world record". It's the relevant record for this event - there was no more chance of her beating the man-paced record than of beating the men's record or the Le Mans lap record.
Very few mere mortals could run that fast for even 100m.
https://www.athletic.net/team/770/track-and-field-outdoor/20...
* of course one mile is hardly comparable to the marathon that pros are able to sustain such speeds over...
That works out to roughly a 16.7-second 100m. While certainly not crawling, that would be a fairly average pace for a fairly fit middle- to early-high-schooler with a bit of practice.
Yes that’s insane to maintain for a marathon, but it’s not even remotely out of reach for 100m for most relatively-fit people at some point in their lives.
Also bear in mind running a single mile under 4 mins was considered impossible for a long time.
Was there perfect conditions.or something?
Insane you could run 1:59:41 and not win!
Sabastian Sawe 1:59:30
Yomif Kejelcha 1:59:41
Jacob Kiplimo 2:00:28
The previous official record was Kelvin Kiptum's time of 2:00:35 in 2023. Eliud Kipchoge did 1:59:40 in 2019, but that wasn't record-eligible as it was held under controlled conditions. Source: The article.
It does sound like the course and the weather made it more likely to happen. And technical advances in shoe composition.
> The leading men went through halfway in 60 minutes and 29 seconds: fast but not exceptionally so. But it turned out that Sawe was merely warming up.
Between 30 and 35 kilometres, Sawe and Kejelcha ran a stunning 13:54 for 5km to see off Kiplimo. Yet, staggeringly, more was to come as the pair covered kilometres 35 to 40 in 13:42. To put this into context, that time is two seconds faster than the 5km parkrun world record, set by the Irish international Nick Griggs.
It was only after a 24th mile, run in 4:12, that Kejelcha wilted. But still Sawe kept going. Astonishingly, he crossed the line having run the second half in just over 59 minutes.
“Before 41 kilometres, I’m enjoying, I’m relaxed,” said Kejelcha, who had won silver over 10,000m at last year’s world championships.
“My body is all great. At exactly 41 kilometres, my body stopped. I tried to push, but my legs were done.
Sawe, though, powered on to set the fastest official marathon time in history. For good measure, it was also 10 seconds faster than Eliud Kipchoge’s unofficial 26.2 mile best, set in Vienna in 2019.
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2026/apr/26/sabastian-sawe...
This is a nice video of the last 10 mins of the historic marathon race finish
Endurance sports are quite accessible and don't require that much time, effort, or talent to get way better than the vast majority of people, it's just consistency.
FWIW, that now includes me, as a 62 year old. I can hit 6:30 pace for 400m, but find it almost impossible to get under 10:0x for a mile. And that's even after 6 months of training for a 50 mile trail race.
London is a fast course. Let’s see what happens in Chicago and Berlin. If it was primarily tech that did it, we should see the record fall again.
5km - 14:14 10km - 28:35 15km - 43:10 20km - 57:21 Half - 60:29 25km - 71:41 30km - 1:26:03 35km - 1:39:57 40km - 1:53:39 Finish - 1:59:30
Yomif Kejelcha also ran sub-two, clocking 1:59:41 on his debut marathon
You have to feel for Kejelcha - breaking 2h marathon and not even winning the race!
It would be interesting to adjust this speed to account for the insane advancements in shoe technology over the last decade. Could it be as simple as measuring the delta in median marathon performance? Then look backwards to, say, 1996 and see what the technology-adjusted 2:00 mark is.
There's been lots of research into shoes though, so you might be able to work something out. For instance Jack Daniels (the running coach, not the beverage!) found that adding 100 grams to a running shoe increased aerobic effort by around 1%.
Sub-2hr marathon, beat the previous world record before Sunday, on your first try, and you don't win! Bad timing...
Prize money for London Marathon 2026 - https://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/38880592/london-marathon-2026...
Looks like first place male gets US$330K. Second place will get US$180K.
Divide by 2 to get the approximate hourly rate. :)
The popularity of running waxes and wanes - and the performance of the median runner varies with popularity.
Back in the 1980s the average half marathon finishing time was 1 hour 40 minutes - whereas today it's a little above 2 hours because there are a lot more people particpating.
Also it must be an crazy feeling to be Kejelcha, the guy who came in 2nd place. It would have been a world record, except for Sawe!
That's not me being sarcastic. I never, ever thought this would happen
Besides weather, there are loads of factors in the performance: shoes, clothes, food, etc. So basically every record gets an asterisk?
There is no rule for marathons.
I thought there were scientists on here...
Don’t forget that two people actually ran under the two hour mark.
Obviously, barring wind, which is why some marathon courses are not eligible for world records.
It should be.
By contrast, hail/rain and wind will negatively impact almost everyone, which is why talking about "a bad weather day" makes more sense.
https://marathonhandbook.com/large-scale-marathon-study-iden...
I just said it needs an asterisk, not withholding anything. What if someone runs one second slower in higher humidity and temperature. Now that I would applaud.
Edit: I was thinking in km/h and mixed it up. Sorry.
Maurten spent months working with Sawe and other runners getting their gut capacity trained so they could absorb and burn 100 carbs per hour[0][1]
> The Maurten research team was embedded with Sawe’s team in Kenya for 32 days across six trips between last and this April. They were training his gut to absorb that load by mimicking race-day protocol in training. The hydrogel technology they have developed over the past 10 years now allows athletes to absorb 90–120 grams of carbs per hour without GI distress.
Second is the shoes. Adidas Adizero weigh 96 grams[2] with new foam tech and new carbon plates
Nike and INEOS spent millions over years to get Kipchoge to a sub-2 in artificial conditions, and now the elite end of the field are knocking that barrier out in race conditions. Unreal.
Running tech and training have been revolutionized in the past few years.
[0] https://marathonhandbook.com/sebastian-sawe-arrives-in-londo...
[1] https://www.instagram.com/p/DXmvAUvkWaq/
[2] https://www.runnersworld.com/uk/gear/shoes/a71129333/sabasti...
edit: correct :s/calories/carbs thanks
burning a hundred calories an hour is trivial. Most people will burn 100 calories per mile when walking or running, and more if moving as fast as these athletes, and many, many humans can do this for far, far longer than 2 hours.
It's the absorbtion that's the challenge. Maurten is not somehow alone in the particular stuff they've developed - ultra runners are generally shifting up into the 90-120 gram/hr range (or beyond!), using a variety of different companies' products. The gut training protocols for this are widely discussed in the world of running for almost any distance above a half marathon.
GP left out the units but is clearly talking about grams ("absorb ... 100 carbs per hour"), not calories (no one needs training to absorb 25g/hr). Carbs are 4 kcal/g. 100g of carb (400 kcal) an hour isn't replacement level for even casual athletic efforts, but it does mitigate the loss of glycogen in muscle somewhat.
It was confusing when the running industry switched from calories to grams of carbs, but that's all anyone talks about now.
"In the aerobic exercise domain up to ~100% of maximal oxygen uptake (VO2max), CHO is the dominant fuel, as CHO-based oxidative metabolism can be activated quickly, provide all of the fuel at high aerobic power outputs (> 85-90% VO2max) and is a more efficient fuel (kcal/L O2 used) when compared to fat."
https://www.gssiweb.org/sports-science-exchange/article/regu...
1 food calorie as listed on a food label is enough to heat 1kg of water by 1c
I’m sure someone will happily sell them to you if you enjoy wasting money.