I followed this untill the end.. from the house to the car mpaka mun'getho. It was worth every single minute

It’s coming soon. I honestly think if we have Bekele and Eliud pushing each other in the same race, it could happen. Bekele nearly broke Eliud’s record last month in Berlin missing it by only 2 seconds. This happened after he ran a poor first half of the marathon, that half was really bad that at one point he was third trailing the leaders badly and almost falling apart. If he’d run a seamless race, leading from start to finish and staying consistent, he would have shattered Eliud’s record and maybe run upper 2:00. Now, with them racing against each other (hopefully in Berlin soon) and each not wanting to relinquish the top dog honors, things could get very interesting.....of course with Eliud winning. (I have to be patriotic here).

Anything is possible in athletics. Nobody ever imagined that a human being could run 800m in 1:40 and David Rudisha did it. Nobody thought anybody would break Ben Johnson’s steroid laden 100m record back in 1988 and we’ve since had about 6 or so guys go under 9.70. Same thing with Michael Johnson’s ridiculous 400m record that stood for like 20 years until Van Niekerk lowered it last year. Bekele and Kipchoge have lately been doing 2:01 consistently and it’s just a matter of time, maybe the next 2 years that one of them runs 2:00 and after that 1:59 will be right around the corner. Records are made to be broken in athletics. The only records that I think are relatively safe are Usain Bolt’s 9:58 in 100m and 19:19 in the 200. These will take decades to break because they are just unbelievably tough to beat. Anything else is fair game. 1:59 will happen within 5 years.

There was a time when everybody was saying that a sub 2:05 marathon was impossible and then Kimetto and Kipsang came along and ran 2:04s and 2:03s and then the Desisas, Bekeles and Kipchoges rewrote the history books with 2:02s and lately 2:01s. The natural progression will be 2:00 then 1:59s. Maybe even a 1:58 out of nowhere, who knows.

My thinking on this is different and I will explain why. I believe we will continue to see better times in the shorter and middle distances and the records in the longer distances may stay longer. This is because one of the most essential ingredients for nurturing long distance running is poverty.

All the current crop of long distance runners from Haile Gabresselassie, Bekele, Tergat, Kipsang, Makau, Kimetto and Kipchoge got their early start running tens of kilometres to school long before they ever became athletes. They were not starting from zero when they started to train to be athletes but were picking up on a long tenure of natural conditioning and tenacity. Marathon running is a little different from the other shorter races in a very distinctive way, it is long. Very loooooong.

In this type of running physical fitness is only half the requirement. The other half which I think is much harder to train for is "kuvumilia maumivu". For a long period of the race especially in the second half you are just suffering and the most successful athletes are the one who are able to persevere through pain for the longest time. If you have watched one of the Ineos 159 videos where they interview Kipchoge's massage therapist this is one of the things he says about Kipchoge, that he is able to sustain pain for the longest time.

You can train to suffer pain but you cannot train long enough. Poverty provides the earliest and longest training session in suffering. The whole world is becoming richer and those conditions are disappearing.

I would really be very interested if someone did a study on the children of Gabresselasie, Tergat, Bekele and Kipchoge and followed them over time to see what their personal bests are compared to their fathers.

The IAAF now says that the new record is FAKE and WILL NOT BE RECOGNISED. That the race was rigged and did not meet the basic requirements of a marathon race. That kipchoge also received illegal energy drinks during the race.

https://www.nation.co.ke...976-9ys8xhz/index.html#

Are IAAF idlers?

You are among the idlers because this was obvious from the beginning, that was not an IAAF event by all accounts.

The fact that he didn't means he wouldn't have. Don't you see?

I had to come out and laugh at this.

The 1.59 event has even been termed as a stunt, a marketing gimmick and even fake news. That the whole event was meaningless and useless to the real athletic world.