Is it possible for Haile Gebrselassie to break the 2 hour barrier?

By fozzyfoster

Introduction

Haile Gebrselassie from Ethiopia is one of the greatest marathon runners of all time. He set the current world record of 2 hours 3 minutes and 59 seconds at the 2008 Berlin Marathon. Recently he announced his retirement, after dropping out of the 2010 New York Marathon with an injury. He later reversed his decision following a letter from Brendan Foster.

“My announcement in New York was my first reaction after a disappointing race. When my knee is better again I will start focusing on my next race.”

His decision reversal could mean we will see him run on the streets of London at the 2012 Olympic Games!

As a sports engineer I have to ask the following questions;

1) Could Haile or anybody else run the marathon in under 2 hours at the 2012 Olympics?

2) Is it physically possible to run a marathon under 2 hours?

In this blog article I am going to explore these questions using historic performance statistics.

The two hour barrier

Humans often look at seemingly unreachable targets and describe them as barriers. A few examples of this are the sound barrier first broken in manned flight by Chuck Yeager in 1947, the 10 second barrier in the 100 metres first broken by Jim Hines in the 1968 Mexico Olympics, and the 4 minute mile barrier broken by Roger Bannister in 1954. There was a time when the general consensus was that these barriers were impossible to break.

Could the 2 hour marathon be similar to these barriers, which are now simply considered to be milestones?

My gut instinct suggests no, however as a scientist I am compelled to look at the historical evidence.

marathonperformance-1.JPG

Figure 1: The top marathon and mean of the top 25 marathon performance times for males

Figure 1 show the marathon performance times against year. The fastest time each year is plotted in blue and the mean of the top 25 times each year are plotted in green. Haile Gebrselassie’s current record is shown on the graph as the red dot. Marathon times have decreased since 1921, indicating an increase in performance. The mean results (green) show a drop in performance during the Second World War but a rapid increase soon after. In fact 1948 to 1970 was a period of massive performance improvement in both the fastest time each year and the mean of the top 25 times each year.

The 2 hours barrier is shown on the graph as a red line. The barrier is currently 3 minutes 59 seconds away from Haile Gebrselassie’s record. Using data from 1948 onwards an exponential decay curve was plotted through the mean of the top 25 results. Regression analysis was used to predict a limit based on the top 25 data. This limit is plotted on the graph with a purple dashed line and is approximately 2 hours 4 minutes and 43 seconds.

The predicted limit of the mean of the top 25 was adjusted to predict the limit for a top performance. I took the mean percentage difference between the mean of the top 25 and the top performance time each year for data from 1948. This figure came out to be 2%. Therefore, the limit of top performance was taken as 98% of the limit for the top 25 performances. The top performance limit was 2 hours 1 minutes 48 seconds and is shown on the graph with the gold dotted line.

Haile Gebrselassie current world record is still someway off the predicted human limit. However, the predicted limit is still a further 1 minute 48 seconds away from the 2 hour barrier!

The historical evidence suggests that it is unlikely that we will break the two hour barrier. However this is not the first time that a limit to marathon performance has become apparent. We can once again look at historical performance figures to see when this has happened before and suggest methods for possibly breaking the 2 hour marathon barrier.

What caused the large increases in marathon performance?

What caused the massive increase in performance from 1948 onwards? One possible reason could be the influx of East African athletes on to the scene. Figure 2 shows the number of runners in the top 25 representing African countries.

Africanrunnernumbers.JPG

Figure 2:  The number of runners representing African countries in the top 25 list for marathon running

Surprisingly there were very few African runners in the top 25 in the early 1950s (neglecting runners of African origin representing other countries), and it seems that the massive drop in the fastest marathon time was down to a British man Jim Peters. The massive drop in performance time from 1948 to 1970 could be due to improvements in sports science and technology, such as training methods, better nutritional knowledge, better planned tracks and possibly drugs.

African runners did not make a significant mark on the top 25 list until the 1980s. What is interesting here is that the marathon times seem to reach a plateau or exponential limit around the late 1970s. The influx of African runners around the late 1970s and early 1980s, caused another much smaller step change in performance, which then leads on to another exponential decay curve up until the present day.

What will it take to break the 2 hour barrier?

The top performances appear to be close to reaching the theoretical limit (gold line) predicted by the exponential curve. This theoretical limit is above the 2 hour barrier by 2 minutes and 13 seconds. Marathon times below this theoretical limit are likely to require external interventions. External interventions could include, improvements in training methods, running shoe technology, drugs and the introduction of new groups of people to the competing population.

Performance enhancing drugs are banned. Therefore, we are unlikely to see an increase in the performance limit as a result of drugs. What about better training methods or more efficient running shoes? The historical evidence suggests that improvements as a result of technology have reached a limit. It is unlikely that any significant improvements will be made in these areas, without the invention of some revolutionary new technology or training methodology.

The only viable way, if it is at all possible to break the 2 hour marathon limit, is through the expansion of the global population who are provided the opportunity to compete. There are lesser developed countries, islands and tribes which have never been given the chance to compete at the Olympic Games. For example, Tribes such as the Tarahumara, indigenous to Mexico and renowned for their long distance running prowess. If given the opportunity to compete on the world stage Tarahumara athletes could potentially break the 2 hour barrier.

This is comparable to the 1970s, when competitors from East African countries started influencing marathon performance. The marathon looked as though it had peaked and performances were levelling off. However, the influx of East African runners has increased marathon performances up until the present day. We could actually be seeing something similar to what is occurring in sprinting, where performance has increased rapidly over the last few years. Could this be down to Jamaican dominance? Only time will inevitably tell whether true global competition will improve performance further still, in the marathon and all other athletic events.

Final word

The historical evidence suggests that Haile Gebrselassie, or any other runner from the current crop, are unlikely to break the 2 hour barrier at the 2012 Olympics. Breaking the 2 hour barrier is likely to require an intervention such as a radically new training technique, new technology or an influx of new athletes in to the current talent pool. The timescale for breaking this limit is therefore unknown, and possibly infinite.

Saying this, don’t rule Haile out just yet, anything is possible and predicting the future based on statistics alone is only ever going to be a “best guess”. All the best to Haile Gebrselassie and his training team, I and many other would love to see you break the 2 hour barrier at at the London 2012 Olympics!

15 Responses

  2. Rob

    Hi Leon,
    Another way of breaking the 2hour barrier might be by including athletes with Cheetah prosthetic legs, these might enable runners to achieve these milestones? I don’t know how well they do for long distance runs.
    Cheers, interesting article
    Rob

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    1. leonfoster

      Thanks for your comment Rob, it might take just that, some radical new technology such as prosthetic legs to allow an athlete to run faster than the 2 hour barrier in the marathon. Would that athlete still classed be as a human runner, or a part human part machine?

      With the current Cheetah prosthetic legs, my gut instinct is telling me they would be a disadvantage in the marathon mainly because of the comfort issues with running with prosthetic legs for 26 miles, such as impact and friction issues on the knee joints or the spine. This would also be an issue in training! There also might be an issue with negotiating a marathon course which will be run inevitably on an undulating surface. This could also cause a problem for a runner with Cheetah prosthetic legs.

      I am not a physiologist so hopefully someone else will be able to answer your question in more detail!

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  3. John

    What will it take to break the 2 hour barrier? Perhaps a “Bolt style” marathon runner coming on the marathon scene is required. His improvement of the world record from 9.74 to 9.58 in a couple of years is the equivalent improvement of the previous 16 years from the rest of the world’s best 100m runners. He has shown that the human race is capable of great leaps forward. His talk of expecting to run the 100m in a time of 9.4 seconds before the end of his career is of particular importance – this would be a 3.5% improvement on the world record through his career. Another quite recent athlete who had an equivalent effect on his discipline through his career is Sergey Bubka who improved the pole vault world record from 5.91 to 6.14 through his career – an improvement of over 3.5%. Indeed nobody has got near to his mark in the last 16 years since he retired, showing what a remarkable athlete he was.
    What if the Marathon time was reduced by the same margin? Reducing the current marathon best of 2:03:59.28 by 3.5% would give a time of 1:59:39! Perhaps we are a marathon running equivalent of Usain Bolt or Sergey Bubka away from the 2 hour barrier. It may be a long time before we see such a talent, but such extraordinary athletes have been seen before.

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    1. leonfoster

      Thanks for your comment John, I do agree with you it will take a marathon runner of Bolt’s/Bubka’s athletic prowess to break the 2 hour barrier. This person could be out their now, but lying undiscovered in the remotes parts of the world!

      The recent Jamaican dominance in the sprint events and the emergence of Usain Bolt could be similar influence to that of the East African runner introduction in the 1980 to the long distance events as discussed in the blog.

      I think it is very difficult to compare sports performances using just a percentage improvement in performance figures. How does a 3.5% increase in the height jumped in the pole vault compare to a 3.5% in drop in performance time in the 100 metres? Also is this comparable to a 3.5% drop in marathon time, considering the marathon is significantly longer than the 100 metres?

      Gauging actual human athletic improvement i.e. which athletic performance is the better between different athletic sports is a long standing challenge and something I want to get my head around!

      One example of this is Jan Zelezny world record throw of 98.48m in the javelin. This is still approximately 5.5% better than the next best throw ever and this record has also not been bettered for coming on 14 years now. Does this mean that Zelezny is possibly a better athlete than Bolt/Bubka by 2%, and what does this even mean?

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    2. Sleepy

      Other straight athietlcs Olympic/World Championship races, the 100m and the sprint hurdles, for example, have strict following-wind conditions.Could something similar and appropriate regarding wind not be applied to straight’ marathons, along with the regulation regarding maximum permited elevation drop? Did marathon times not used to be referred to as best times’ rather than world records’, for the very reason of course differences?The fastest mile times have been run on downhill straight courses, but they don’t feature in the record books nor should non-standard marathons.

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  4. Tad

    While the mean percentage difference between the mean of the top 25 and the best performance has been 2% over time the yearly percentage difference seems to be quite clearly trending downward. Perhaps due to more homogeneous application of training, diet, etc as well as having more of the potential top 25 runners in the world actually participating in running. This seems to argue for a limit perhaps closer to 99% of the current record or 2:02:45 I would think. Thoughts?

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  5. leonfoster

    Hi Tad, thanks for your comment. You are right there it does look as though the percentage difference between the mean of the top 25 and the top time is falling. I have quickly made another graph showing the percentage difference between the top time and mean of the top 25 each year.

    As you say there could be many reasons for this fall from 1948, another reason could be perhaps the continued globalisation of sport and increased competition between individual athletes, meaning that that not one outstanding athlete stands out of the crowd? It would be interesting to see if this is happening in all athletic sports!

    The percentage difference seems to have increased over the past 10 years. This could be down to individual attempts at the marathon world record such as Halie at the Berlin marathon.

    Attempting to link this analysis with work that I have already carried out on the mean of the top 25, I used this percentage difference figure of 2%. As you rightly pointed out there is some flaws with using this figure and in future analysis I may have to rethink this method. One way we could avoid this it by just looking at the top times each year and do our exponential regression analysis based upon this data set. However I wanted to avoid this as using mean data of say the top 25 gives a better indication of overall human performance each year and this is what my current work is based around.

    As for the predicted limit of 99%, 2:02:45 also seems a reasonable figure. Using the 2% difference figure and the lower bound of my exponential limit, I was trying to get across that even in the best case scenario the 2 hour barrier is still nearly 2 minutes away and with your more conservative % difference the barrier would be even further away!

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  6. David James

    Hi Leon;

    A great blog post once again. In terms of what Rob mentioned about prosthetic legs I have a few comments….

    It is not currently possible to run distances anywhere near as long as a marathon with prosthetic running blades. The fundamental issue is the potential for huge tissue damage between the remaining stump and the prosthetic socket. Furthermore, the amputee would also have to be bilateral (both legs) to benefit from the reduced energy cost of running with carbon fibre blades.

    However, in the near future we will be able to attach prosthetics directly to bone thereby eliminating the problems of tissue damage. When this become widespread (it’s already happening) it will only be a matter of time before a ‘so called’ disabled athlete smashes the 2 hour barrier. Bilateral amputees running with carbon blades use at least 25% less energy than non-disabled runners. 1h30 here we come!

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