For all of my life it has been a mythic barrier. 

For all your life it has been a mythic barrier. 

In the same way we cannot fly... In the same way we cannot leap over buildings... many thought it simply impossible. Physiologically, there simply has to be a limit. 

Was this it? Or, with the perfect conditions, the perfect new nutrition, the perfect shoes, and the perfect athlete, would someone do it? Would a human-being run a competitive marathon and the break the two-hour barrier? 

There is good reason that in all sporting competitions, the sub-2 has stood as such a seductive record. Running is as primal as sporting competition gets. True caveman stuff. There is no sport with a lower barrier to entry. It’s not like lacrosse or ice hockey or cricket, anyone who is physically able to put one leg before the other can theoretically compete. 

Before this week’s London marathon, an Ethiopian runner called Yomif Kejelcha was asked by reporters what kind of time he wanted to run. He was an elite and experienced middle-distance runner, but he’d never run a competitive marathon in his life. He knew he’d be fast. He figured he’d try and stick with the front group. But that was where his ambition ended. 

The rest, of course is history. At the start of the race, the world marathon record was two hours and 35 seconds. Fluid, graceful, strong, Yomif Kejelcha didn’t just beat the time. He didn’t scrape in by a second or two. He ran the course a full 54 seconds faster. Extraordinary. 

And yet, he didn’t win.  

Between the first-ever race over an official marathon distance in London in 1908, and the first ever sub-2-hour time, it took 42,979 days or 3,713,385,600 seconds. For the second sub-2-hour time, it took eleven.  

Having run a time that for many was unthinkable just two hours earlier, having paced the vast majority of the course with the London Marathon defending champion, Yomif Kejelcha ran across the finish line eleven seconds later. The fastest debut in marathon history. A time that would’ve shattered the world record. And yet only good enough for silver. Sometimes proving yourself wrong, still means losing the race.   

Despite it all, Yomif seemed positively philosophical.   

“I'm not upset. I'm not angry. I'm very, very happy because I broke two hours.” he said.  

But it was a striking response from a competitor condemned to the history books as the Buzz Aldrin of marathon running. 

I cannot say I would have been so gracious. And there, I think, is the lesson for all of us about the benchmarks against which we compare ourselves. In what appeared from the outside to be the ultimate moment of sporting cruelty, Yomif Kejelcha chose to compare himself to the clock not the man.  

And at the end of the day, of the two of us, he’s the one running a sub-2.