Until this past Sunday, nobody had run an official marathon in under 2 hours (someone did this in 2019, but it wasn't following official marathon rules). But, in Sunday's London Marathon, both the first and second place men's winners did it. Besides talent, part of it was incremental advances in training, nutrition, and technology (they both wore the new Adidas Adizero Adios Pro Evo 3, which are very light weight, cost $500, and are designed to last only 1 race). Also, they were lucky with the weather.
But, now, we are probably going to see more people run sub-2 hour marathons.
Fun fact: the first modern marathon record was set in 1908 by American Johnny Hayes. If he had run on Sunday, his record-setting time of 2h 55m 18s would have meant that he would have finished outside the top 2000 finishers.
I guess this is another example of how Alan Weiss says you can't coast because plateaus erode.
