(Try the pace on a treadmill if you are very fit, you might last two minutes.) But for at least two decades-as the marathon has professionalized, and the world record dropped to within a few minutes of two hours-there has been a debate about if, or when, the mark could be broken. Running a marathon in less than two hours requires an outlandish average speed of a little more than thirteen miles per hour. And that race was shorter than it is now, at around twenty-five miles. At the first Olympic marathon, in Athens in 1896, only one man broke three hours. For most of the history of the sport, the “sub-two” existed in the realm of science fiction.
Just as the race to break the sub-four-minute mile engrossed the public in the nineteen-fifties, so the sub-two-hour marathon has beguiled contemporary students of running. If nothing else, the event will look beautiful: “Swan Lake” meets “Chariots of Fire.”
Kipchoge, wearing white, will be surrounded by interchanging teams of black-clad pacers, who will run in a counterintuitive open-V-shaped formation, to protect him from the head wind.
The time trial will take place on an avenue in Vienna’s Prater park, which for centuries was a hunting ground for Austrian emperors and princes. On Saturday, Eliud Kipchoge, the best marathon runner of his generation, will attempt to become the first person to complete twenty-six miles and three hundred and eighty-five yards in less than two hours.
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