The two hour marathon is a hot topic, following on from a BBC radio four documentary which asked whether it would ever be achieved, I thought I’d shoot a quick video to illustrate the speed necessary to complete a marathon in 2 hours. Previously we’ve covered the subject ourselves in one of Leon Foster’s posts, and the Science of Sport blog has looked marathon’s in detail several times. I hope this video illustrates the kind of sustained effort necessary to achieve this awesome feat.
Simon Choppin
That is pretty fast!
it would be interesting to look at the stride frequency and length for the different speeds. and then look at the number of strides for the whole marathon!
“The Sheffield Bullet”!! Love it JK!
Why is the 2-hour marathon labeled 20.8 km/h? The course length is 42.2 km, which gives an average of 21.6 km/h. Is there an assumption that the first kilometers are run much faster?
A question I have is: what percentage of total opposing forces is air resistance?
Very well spotted, I now have to admit I rather lazily took 26 miles as the marathon length (41.6 km) when doing the filming as I didn’t have the exact number to hand. I didn’t want to lie on film so what you see is the speed as we set it. However, if I was going to try and cover my own tracks I’d say that the random variations in speed given by the treadmill would put his speed at around 20.8 km/h +- 1 km/h which would put him in the bound for a 2 Hour finish. Failing that, a sprint finish might be enough!
Thanks for reading
Very interesting article in the Independent.
http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/general/athletics/sprint-is-on-to-run-first-sub-twohour-marathon-2269658.html