Can marathoners break the magical two hour barrier?
May 6 is a special day for some running fans. It's the anniversary of the day that Roger Bannister first broke the four-minute mile, 63 years ago.
It's not surprising that May 6 was also chosen as the date to try to break another running 'milestone.'
Nike is sponsoring what they're calling the 'Breaking 2' race: an attempt to do a near-impossible feat: running a full marathon in under two hours. The current record is 2:02:57, set by Kenyan runner Dennis Kimetto at the 2014 Berlin Marathon. That's a huge time margin in marathon terms.
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Dr. Wouter Hoogkamer thinks science can make a big difference. He's a marathoner himself, but he's also worked out what it might take to break the two-hour barrier in a recently published paper in Sports Medicine: How Biomechanical Improvements in Running Economy Could Break the 2-hour Marathon Barrier.
