Can the sub-two hour marathon ever happen?

Since Haile Gebrselassie hacked the best part of half-a-minute from the marathon world record with his 2:03:59 run in Berlin on Sunday many have speculated that the first sub-two hour marathon is on the horizon. spikesmag.com dusted down its contacts book to speak to four members of the athletics community on the subject and this is what they said…

Tim Hutchings – British TV commentator and former World cross country silver medallist
“I’m not one of the people who believes it [the first sub-two hour marathon] is within easy reach – it’s still four minutes away. If you take a look at how long it has taken the last four minutes [of the world record] to be lowered it has taken about 25 years and the next four minutes is going to be a much more difficult four minutes.
"Even taking into account Samuel Wanjiru [the 21-year-old Olympic marathon champion from Kenya] who might push the world record down by another minute or two you have to think even 2:02 would be astonishing from where the record is now. I’m not one who believes the first sub-two hour marathon is going to be knocked off in the next ten years.
"People will say Gebrselassie has broken it by nearly a minute in the last year, I say, okay, but they aren’t too many Gebrselassie’s about. I just can’t see it happening in the next 25 years.”

Eamonn Martin – 1993 London Marathon winner and the last Brit to win the race
“I think the first sub-two hour marathon is still some way off. For that to happen the world half-marathon time needs to be way, way under what it is now. I don’t think the world half-marathon record [it stands at 58:33] is that quick compared to the marathon world record. You need that record to get down to around 55 minutes to then allow a top athlete to be able to go through halfway in a marathon feeling comfortable enough to run sub-two hours.
"The course is also a big factor. Berlin is set up in such a way that there are no 90-degree turns. It makes a big difference [on time] the athletes do not have to go wide or go across cobbles as they used to in the London Marathon. I’m not sure how much more Berlin can do to improve the course.
"Even if [Kenenisa] Bekele [the Olympic 5000m and 10,000m champion] takes to the marathon I only believe he will lower it to 2:03 something. It’s a nice thing to talk about but personally I don’t think a sub-two hour marathon will happen in my lifetime.”

Mark Milde – Berlin Marathon race director
“I believe it is more in the distant, rather than, the near future. A couple of runners are capable of getting close but I don’t know whether they are capable of taking this world record down. I am not sure how long it has taken the world record to drop by four minutes? Since the 60s or 70s? I predict that Kenenisa Bekele, should he run in the marathon, can take it down to 2:02. I don’t see a sub-two hours in the near future. I think Samuel Wanjiru and Martin Lel can also lower the record. There are other guys, too, like Patrick Makau and [Kenenisa] Bekele (whenever he makes the transition to the marathon) who are capable. It’s pretty difficult to say how much faster Haile Gebrselassie can go? We had very good conditions in Berlin but not ideal. I was on the bike with the leaders [in Berlin] and I had the feeling I was riding into a headwind.”

Dr Charles Pedlar – Exercise physiologist at the English Institute of Sport
“The best way to assess whether we’ve reached a limit is look at record trends. A friend of mine did a study in 2005, which looked at world records and what he found was there was almost an S-shaped progression to world records over the years. Firstly, there was a gradual improvement and then maybe 20 or 30 years ago – when sport went professional and athletes devoted more time and effort to sport – you’ve got this rapid improvement and then it starts to level out again. If you look at males vs females, the male curve seems to have levelled out more than the female and that may be due to the fact female participation in marathons has increased so much more recent years. For example Paula Radcliffe’s world record was quite a large step forward and there is probably no reason why it can’t be broken again.
"But there are still opportunities for a Haile Gebrselassie-type figure to come along with that background of training and I see no reason why [the men’s world marathon record] cannot be broken again. I would say a two-hour marathon is perfectly possible but it might take a while to drift towards that point. Maybe another ten years.”

It has actually taken 24 years for the men’s world record to have been lowered by more than four minutes. See below list of the world marathon progression:

Steve Jones (Great Britain) 2:08:05 – Chicago 1984
Carlos Lopes (Portugal) 2:07:12 – Rotterdam 1985
Belayneh Dinsamo (Ethiopia) 2:06:50 – Rotterdam 1988
Ronaldo da Costa (Brazil) 2:06:05 -  Berlin 1998
Khalid Khannouchi (USA) 2:05:42 – Chicago 2002
Khalid Khannouchi (USA) 2:05:38 – Chicago 2003
Paul Tergat (Kenya) 2:04:55 – Berlin 2003
Haile Gebrselassie (Ethiopia) 2:04:26 – Berlin 2007
Haile Gebrselassie (Ethiopia) 2:03:59 – Berlin 2008