Sub-Two-Hour Marathon Run
On 12 October 2019, Kenyan runner Eliud Kipchoge covered 42.195 kilometers in 1 hour, 59 minutes and about 40 seconds on a course in Vienna's Prater park, becoming the first person known to run a marathon in under two hours. Because the run was a staged exhibition rather than a standard race, it was not ratified as a world record, but it was widely celebrated as a landmark of human endurance and a symbol of what sports science and elite training can achieve.
The two-hour mark had long been treated as a kind of sound barrier for distance running. The official marathon world record fell steadily through the twentieth century, and by the 2010s it stood just above two hours and two minutes. A sub-two-hour run would require an average pace of roughly 21 kilometers per hour for more than two hours. Some physiologists argued it was theoretically possible; others doubted it would happen for decades. Kipchoge, an Olympic champion from Kenya's Rift Valley, a region famed for producing distance runners, had become the sport's dominant marathoner and took up the challenge.
Kipchoge had already come close in 2017, when Nike's Breaking2 project in Monza, Italy, saw him run about 2:00:25. In 2019 the effort was organized by the chemical company INEOS and was named the INEOS 1:59 Challenge. The Vienna course was a flat, mostly straight stretch with few turns, chosen for its mild conditions. Kipchoge was supported by a rotating group of pacemakers, many of them accomplished runners, who ran in a precise formation to shield him from the wind. A pace car projected laser markers onto the road to guide them, and attendants handed him drinks without his slowing down. He also wore prototype carbon-plated shoes from Nike.
Those very aids are why the time did not count as an official record. Rules governing record-eligible races bar rotating pacemakers, pacers who join mid-race, and similar assistance. Kipchoge himself had set the official marathon record of 2:01:39 in Berlin in 2018, and he lowered it again in later years before his mark was surpassed by others.
The run's legacy is both athletic and technological. It prompted debate about how much of the improvement came from the runner and how much from engineering, and the discussion over advanced footwear led governing bodies to set limits on shoe design. For the public, the image of Kipchoge crossing the line, arms raised, became a lasting emblem of ambition. He often summed up his outlook with the phrase "no human is limited," which became closely tied to the achievement.