Ed Caesar knows more about the two-hour marathon than most. The British author spent four years researching his 2015 book Two Hours: The Quest to Run the Impossible Marathon, reaching a consensus with the experts he interviewed that the feat would happen "some time around the next 20 years".
That's why he was taken aback by the timeline for Nike's secret project, dubbed Breaking2, to train the first sub-two-hour marathon runner.
Asked by Wired magazine to cover Breaking2, Caesar figured that the sports apparel giant was planning to make running history by 2025, maybe 2020. Instead, the project's race attempt will occur next northern-hemisphere spring.
"It made no sense to me," Caesar said. "I just had so many questions: how they were doing it, who is involved, how long are they going to do it?"
The two-hour marathon is running's Mount Everest, a once seemingly unattainable goal that runners have been aiming to conquer. Enough have come close that experts believe it's a matter of when – not if – a marathoner can cover 42.2 kilometres in under two hours. Still, few believed it could happen as quickly as Nike's ambitious projection.
"Many consider this feat impossible," the company said in a news release this week. "However, that challenge is exactly what drives Nike; the impossible is an opportunity to envision the future of sport."
Nike's project began in 2013 and is led by a 20-person team that includes designers, engineers, coaches, nutritionists, psychologists and physiologists. The race will likely aim to eliminate environmental factors and include pacers to help the runners – a plan that has been referred to as a "moonshot marathon" by runners and coaches.
Rio Olympics marathon gold medallist Eliud Kipchoge of Kenya, 32; Lelisa Desisa, 26, of Ethiopia; and Zersenay Tadese, the 34-year-old Eritrean world record-holder in the half-marathon (58 minutes 23 seconds), have signed up for the project. The specific date and location of the race will be revealed next year.
"I know one day [two hours] will be broken," Tadese told Runner's World through an interpreter. "I want to be a part of it."
The world record in the marathon stands at two hours, two minutes and 57 seconds, set by Dennis Kimetto, of Kenya, at the 2014 Berlin Marathon. To fully appreciate that time, Kimetto averaged 4:41.6 per mile and required a speed of just under 21km/h.
Towards the end of his book, Caesar details the complexities of a moonshot marathon.
It would require athletes who choose to forgo competing in lucrative races, a company with plenty of financial muscle, a window of a few days of potentially ideal running weather (windless and chilly) and a string of pacers to help the runners along the course.
At Boston, I ran like 2:09 10 times. Why? Because it's so hard to take off seconds – not minutes, but seconds
Meb Keflizighi
These are ideas Nike could make a reality, Caesar realised as he toured the Nike headquarters last month in Beaverton, Oregon.
"I was very impressed by the seriousness in their approach to this," Caesar said. "Whether or not they succeed is one thing, but they're taking it seriously as something academic and practical to achieve."
In 1991 Michael Joyner, an expert in human performance at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, published a paper in the Journal of Applied Physiology stating it might be physiologically possible for a 1:57:58 marathon runner.
Joyner, 58, wrote in Sports Illustrated earlier this year that, if lucky, the sub-two-hour marathon would happen in his lifetime.
Some have been even more optimistic.
David Martin, a statistician and marathon historian, told Runner's World in 2012 that sub-two would occur in 2015. Doug Casa, an American sports scientist, told Caesar he believed it would happen within a decade.
But to others, dropping nearly three minutes off the world record in such a short time is difficult to fathom.
Olympian Meb Keflizighi, one of America's top marathon runners, won the silver medal at the 2004 Athens Olympics and ran a personal best time of 2:08:37 at the 2014 Boston Marathon. The 41-year-old estimated he was in shape to run in the 2:05 range during his prime and questioned if runners today were ready to break the two-hour barrier. Of the three Nike runners, Kipchoge has the fastest marathon time of 2:03:05, set this year at the London Marathon.
"There should be nobody at the elite level that should [run a] three-minute [personal record]," Keflizighi said. "At Boston, I ran like 2:09 10 times. Why? Because it's so hard to take off seconds – not minutes, but seconds."
Nike understands the doubt and points to 1954 when Roger Bannister became the first man to clock under four minutes in the mile. It was an athletic achievement that was once thought to be humanly impossible. Nike is hoping this race will be a similar moment.
"I think it's a long shot, but I think it's not impossible," Caesar said.
"I don't know how you would phrase it as a fraction or as an odds, but I don't think it's impossible that they'll do it."
Washington Post