1:59:40，他重新定义人类极限1:59:40: The Day Kipchoge Redefined Human Limits

"You have to believe it: no human is limited."

1:59:40! 42.195 kilometers! An average pace of 2 minutes 50 seconds per kilometer!

On 2019.10.12, the world witnessed the greatest moment in marathon history. In the best of times, we watched the greatest of things unfold.

What does running a marathon under two hours actually mean?

It means holding a pace of 2:50 per kilometer. It means running 100 meters every 17 seconds, evenly, the whole way. It means a single lap of the track in just 1 minute 8 seconds — for more than 100 laps in a row. Anyone who has ever run on a track probably gets it: the speed at which Kipchoge runs a marathon is one an ordinary person might not catch even at a full sprint.

Put it another way: from Beijing's South Third Ring Road to beyond the North Fifth Ring is 22 kilometers, and by car the navigation says roughly an hour (because it's always jammed). The man starts running, you hail a cab — and the two of you arrive neck and neck.

No Human Is Limited

Yesterday the marathon went sub-2, and everyone's talking about the limits of the human body. First, a few beginner questions:

What is pace? Pace is the time it takes you to run one kilometer.

What is a pacer? A pacer is someone on the marathon course who can run to a set standard time. Take a 3-hour pacer: follow this person and you'll finish the marathon in 3 hours.

Pace matters enormously. Everyone has to find the pace that fits their own fitness. A marathon, in the end, is about moving forward at an even rhythm. Surging and sagging, chopping and changing — that's the cardinal sin, and it burns more energy. So let's look at how steady his pace was:

• 1–5km: 2:48-2:48-2:52-2:50-2:50
• 6–10km: 2:51-2:48-2:50-2:50-2:48
• 11–15km: 2:52-2:48-2:52-2:50-2:50
• 16–20km: 2:50-2:50-2:50-2:48-2:52
• 21–25km: 2:48-2:52-2:50-2:50-2:50
• 26–30km: 2:50-2:50-2:50-2:48-2:52
• 31–35km: 2:48-2:52-2:50-2:50-2:50
• 36–40km: 2:50-2:50-2:50-2:50-2:50
• 41–42.195km: 2:49-3:14

This is brutally hard — any slip wipes out all your earlier work. Kipchoge's dream team of 41 pacers were world-class in their own right: a best marathon time of 2:04, a best half time of 58m:42, an average height of 1.74 meters, an average weight of 58 kilograms. These pacers were continental champions, world champions, national record holders, Olympic finalists, and all-around athletes who were several of those at once.

Worth noting: this time the sponsor, INEOS, kitted out Kipchoge with the single strongest 41-person pacing dream team on the planet. Most of them were Black athletes; there were plenty of white athletes from Europe too, but the only pacer from Asia was Japan's Kota Murayama. Kipchoge had many Black pacers leading him and a few white ones, but only one yellow pacer — only one.

Japan's Kota Murayama is the national 10,000-meter record holder (27:29.69); at the Rio Olympics he contested both the 5,000 and the 10,000 meters. His twin brother is Kenta Murayama, who just finished ninth at the Berlin Marathon.

On March 24 this year, at the Xuzhou International Marathon (also a selection race for the world championships marathon), Tibet's Dorje won the men's full marathon in 2 hours 10 minutes 31 seconds — the best Chinese result in nearly 11 years, meeting the Tokyo Olympics qualifying standard of 2 hours 11 minutes 30 seconds. Chinese track and field people, having seen the international practice of arranging pacers in stages, used that strategy at this Xuzhou race too: several Black athletes from Africa led in staggered legs, and only then did Dorje run such a limit-pushing result. But without the underlying strength, a 2:11:30 can't be helped either — a full 10 minutes off the world's top level in the men's marathon. Note: that's the limit result we produced under the conditions of staged pacing; in normal competition, a Chinese runner going under 2 hours 20 minutes is already excellent. Watching Kipchoge break the 2-hour barrier and set a new human limit for the full marathon, we feel all the more keenly how far behind Chinese men's marathon running is.

Two years ago, with the "Breaking2" project, the outside world doubted whether he could pull it off, calling it all but impossible to bring a marathon time down from 2:02:57 to 1:59:59. And yet, though he ultimately fell short, he missed it by only 26 seconds — enough to make people believe a sub-2-hour marathon was possible. A year later, at the Berlin Marathon, he lowered the world record by 78 seconds in official competition: 2:01:39, a result that stunned the world.

Isn't the meaning of life to burn yourself up for an ideal? For Kipchoge, "no human is limited" was never just something you say. On the marathon course he keeps pushing against his own limits, and what he passes on is a spirit, a force — encouraging more people to persist, to break through their own limits. That spirit, that force, isn't necessarily urging you to run a marathon; more than anything it's inspiring ordinary people to face life head-on, and to stop putting a ceiling on their own lives. Humanity always needs the people who gaze up at the stars, and in today's marathon world, Kipchoge is that person.

The King of the Marathon — A "Monastic" Life of 30,000 Meters a Day

For all of 2019, after winning the London Marathon at the end of April, Kipchoge "shut his doors to visitors," entered no world majors, and devoted himself fully to preparing for the "1:59 Challenge." Over the past five months he poured everything into it — eating, sleeping, training — nearly every single thing done in service of going sub-2.

• He built a meticulous training plan. The first phase focused on physical recovery, and he gave up the Berlin Marathon, which he'd likely have won.
• The second phase ramped into high intensity, with weekly mileage equivalent to five marathons.
• He trained six days a week, reuniting with his family — his wife, two daughters, and a son — only on weekends.
• He trained at a simple camp in his hometown. His diet was very plain, mostly grains and enough meat to keep his body recovering.
• He loves to read, and he likes to blog too — he writes well, jotting down his reflections on daily training life; you can read them on the event's official site.
• In 2017 he took a run at "1:59" once and fell 25 seconds short; he shed tears.
• In today's result, his pace for every 1,000 meters held steady between 2:50 and 2:52. He improved the marathon result by 0.3%.
• As a teammate put it: "A man as humble and disciplined as he is will definitely finish what he sets out to do." (Source: the official documentary INEOS 159.)

World champion, Olympic champion, world record holder — at 35, Kipchoge has every honor a distance runner can hold. You could say he's been robed in gold, made his name, and won trophies until his hands are full.

But look across his career and it was never smooth sailing. Kipchoge came to the marathon the roundabout way. Before switching over, he specialized in the 5,000 meters but didn't achieve much on the biggest stages. In 2003, at just 19, he beat El Guerrouj and Bekele (this year's Berlin Marathon champion) to win the 5,000-meter world title. But what met him after that was more than a decade of setbacks: he never could win Olympic gold (bronze at the 2004 Games, silver at the 2008 Games), and never won gold at the world championships again. At the 2012 London Olympics he didn't even make the national team — and from then on he formally shifted to road racing.

2012: In September, Kipchoge formally debuted on the roads, making his first appearance at the Lille Half Marathon in France, where he ran 59min25s for third place. A month later, at the Half Marathon World Championships, he ran 1:01:52 for sixth.

2013: In April, he made his full-marathon debut at the Hamburg Marathon, running 2:05:30 to break the course record and take the win in one stroke; after this race his name began to spread, and the major series started eagerly inviting him. In September, at the Berlin Marathon, Kipchoge opened his majors journey with a 2:04:05 — at the time the fifth-fastest in history, and ordinarily a winning result. But that race went down in the books too: Kipsang ran 2:03:23 to break the world record, handing Kipchoge his first defeat — and to this day, the only one.

2014: Starting in 2014, Kipchoge and his team settled on a fixed pattern: only two races a year. In April, the Rotterdam Marathon, 2:05:00 for the win. In October, the Chicago Marathon, 2:04:11 for his third title.

2015: His April debut at the London Marathon, winning in 02:04:42, avenging himself on Kipsang, who came in 5 seconds behind. (What followed was a London Marathon four-peat, and Kipchoge made his own bit of history: ten races, ten wins.) In September, the Berlin Marathon, 02:04:00 for the win and a personal best.

2016: His second London Marathon in 2016, facing a three-man siege from Kipsang, Kimetto, and Bekele, Kipchoge ran clear of the field in 2:03:05, just 8 seconds off the world record. In August, at the Rio Olympics, in heat topping 30 degrees, Kipchoge realized his gold-medal dream.

Since 2014, over five years, he hadn't tasted defeat. Across the 12 races of his career he won 11 (the sub-2 aside), a terrifying win rate of 91.67%.

Appendix: Kipchoge's marathon career

• April 21, 2013 — Hamburg Marathon — 2:05:30 — Champion
• September 29, 2013 — Berlin Marathon — 2:04:05 — Runner-up
• April 13, 2014 — Rotterdam Marathon — 2:05:00 — Champion
• October 12, 2014 — Chicago Marathon — 2:04:11 — Champion
• April 26, 2015 — London Marathon — 2:04:42 — Champion
• September 27, 2015 — Berlin Marathon — 2:04:00 — Champion
• April 24, 2016 — London Marathon — 2:03:05 — Champion
• August 21, 2016 — Rio Olympics — 2:08:44 — Champion
• May 6, 2017 — "Breaking2" Challenge — 2:00:25
• September 24, 2017 — Berlin Marathon — 2:03:32 — Champion
• April 22, 2018 — London Marathon — 2:04:17 — Champion
• September 16, 2018 — Berlin Marathon — 2:01:39 — Champion (world record)
• April 28, 2019 — London Marathon — 2:02:37 — Champion, course record
• October 12, 2019 — "1:59 Challenge" — 1:59:40

Why go sub-2? Some say it's nothing but commercial marketing, some say it's using running as a stunt. Kipchoge said: "This is about breaking history — like the first man on the moon." The sponsor of this challenge, the brand INEOS, offered their own interpretation: they drew an analogy between Kipchoge's feat today and three other great breakthroughs — one being Roger Bannister breaking the 4-minute barrier for the mile in 1954, another being Usain Bolt setting the 100-meter world record of 9.58 seconds in 2009. And one more: Neil Armstrong first setting foot on the moon in 1969. If it can be compared to humanity's first moon landing, you can imagine just how daunting a sub-2 marathon looks to the public.

Midlife Crisis, or Surpassing Yourself

By ordinary logic, a sport this long and this grueling ought to draw mostly hot-blooded teenagers, burning off hormones they've got no other outlet for. But that's not how it is. Data from the 2017 Beijing Marathon: among finishers, 4,762 were aged 20–29; 10,759 were 30–39; 9,482 were 40–49; and 3,362 were 50 and over. The average finisher's age was 39.

Yes, you read that right — the backbone of the marathon is actually the middle-aged army of 30- to 49-year-olds. They're neither old-timers nor young bucks: Jiang Ziya hadn't started fishing yet at this age, and Jesus was already dead by it, while most people grinding it out in the city look pretty similar — watching time rush past like a flood with no way to hold it back, watching themselves turn into the very fossil they despised and scorned in their teens. So everyone faces the same problem: career and family tangled together, the old above and the young below, mortgages and car loans and healthcare and education, pressures on every side. Since life can't be started over from scratch — new stretching drills, retrained vocals, another go at the whole thing — then if you want to escape the self-doubt and the cycle of it all, sometimes you need to find some activity that proves yourself, that lets you feel your own existence.

And the marathon happens to be the best vehicle for it. Before your first marathon, you'll doubt whether you have what it takes to endure the sport. And after finishing your first, you'll discover: life is like driving a car — there are gears you've simply never used. Running won't work miracles, but it can help you, for a stretch of time, focus inward, reflect, and learn how to manage your own life. Go into running and grasp that life is a long-distance run — not necessarily about surpassing anyone else's standard of judgment, but about being able to hold on to the end. Stand on the marathon start line and you've already beaten yourself. Cross the marathon finish line and you've surpassed yourself. The happiness this sport can give you — bit by bit, you'll make it a way of living, a part of your life, even something like a faith. I've felt the joy this sport brings me, and I hope you feel it too.

A Final Word

As I always say: a lot of people, when they take part in the marathon, forget more or less that the whole thing exists to commemorate a man who dropped dead from running. The marathon has never really been a fashionable sport — what's fashionable is always the people themselves; the sport is in fact deeply classical, a you-reap-what-you-sow kind of pursuit. And to my mind, the marathon is a sport about restraint: restraining the urge to slack off, restraining the urge to chase results beyond your ability, restraining the endless need to answer the outside world and returning, instead, to yourself. The beauty of sport is failing over and over, getting up over and over, and moving toward victory. Humility is the mindset; winning is the conviction.

I hope everyone who loves it stays clear of injury and enjoys every bit of the happiness it brings.

(Figure in original: the finishing-line video.)