How long before we break the two-hour barrier in the men's marathon?
What can you do with 99 seconds? Check your e-mail? Fire off a tweet? Walk 100 metres?
For current men’s marathon world-record holder, Kenyan Eliud Kipchoge, 99 seconds is all that stands between him and the sub two-hour (or “sub-2”) marathon run.
Breaking the two-hour barrier in the men’s marathon could be the defining moment of Kipchoge’s illustrious career.
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But how close is he? How hard is dropping 99 seconds, really?
To find out, in a study published today in Medicine and Science of Sports and Exercise, I crunched the data on all male and female marathon world record times since 1950.
The barrier broken
Kipchoge could break the sub-2 barrier tomorrow, but it is very very unlikely: there’s just a 2% chance of it ever happening, to be precise.
The more likely answer is that we will have to wait until May 2032 to see someone – most likely not Kipchoge – go sub-2 in an official event. By that time, the chance of someone going sub-2 increases to 10%.
But we may have to be even more patient: 2054 sees the probability of a sub-2 marathon rising to 25%.
The reason for the shifting date is that...