Anyone who watched the 2020 Tokyo Olympics marathon cannot have failed to notice the smile with which Eliud Kipchoge crossed the finish line.
It is said that the true greatness of great personalities is to make what is actually very difficult-or exhausting-seem simple. Kipchoge is not to be outdone: he, too, makes the marathon, that is, one of the most important and trying endeavors known to human nature, seem like a joy and a pleasant thing.
Since we are talking about the fastest man in the world, at least relative to endurance racing, it is only natural that science has taken an interest in studying him, to understand what makes him such a superhuman human being. Outside discusses this in a lengthy article explaining why he is The Goat, i.e., “Greatest Of All Time.” What makes him so invincible and unique? Is there a magic formula that can be applied to other human beings by replicating it?
Things are never that simple, but some explanation science has managed to give.
Training
Kipchoge, as far as is known, trains like all marathon runners, that is, accumulating about 120 miles per week. Obviously mileage matters to a point because it is equally important how it is covered, however, there is a common trait among the distances traveled by those who train at high levels and that is that they do, precisely, between 100 and 120 miles every 7 days.
Another interesting fact is that in training Kipchoge never covers distances greater than 80 percent of a marathon, that is, his long runs are at most 33-34 kilometers.
The triad
The optimal running model for the marathon, that is, the set of factors that define, at least theoretically, the best configuration an athlete must have to perform at his or her best in endurance races dates back to a 1991 scientific paper by Michael Joyner: he was the one who 30 years ago predicted that humans could run a marathon in 1:57:58. Today, three decades later, we know that that time-which seemed absurd and irrational when it was made public-is not so improbable: Kipchoge himself came close to it though not in an official race in October 2019, stopping the clock at 1h 59′ 40″.
What are these factors? These are the lactacid threshold (the higher it is, the more the athlete is able to endure prolonged exertion without producing lactic acid, which he or she cannot dispose of), VO2 max and gesture economy, that is, the efficiency of running technique. The combination of these three factors-especially when they are measurable with very high values-decree the power of an or an athlete.
And if you think about it, beyond obscure values such as lactacid threshold and VO2 max, Kipchoge’s running efficiency is obvious: just look at how elegantly he runs and how his every gesture is governed by a dance that expresses only the movement necessary to go at maximum speed, without wasting any energy.
A new factor
In addition to these factors that have been known for decades, a new one has emerged recently, partly because Kipchoge himself is able to express it at unprecedented levels: this is critical speed or CS (Critical Speed). We are not talking about maximum speed but about that particular kind of effort (which then translates into speed) that an athlete is able to sustain without going overboard and unloading. Kipchoge’s is so high that basically in the races he has run and won he has never touched it, and he proved it in Tokyo as well, especially in comparison to the other competitors: by the time he started to accelerate between the 30th and 35th kilometers the rest of the group had already touched their critical speed and were slowing down (or struggling to stay on the regimes they had maintained up to that point) while Kipchoge still had – literally – extra gears.
Resistance to muscle fatigue
Another factor that Kipchoge evidently has in massive form is his resistance to muscle fatigue: in other words, his ability to keep his muscles from reaching the fatigue limit is higher than other athletes, thus making his running efficient always and for a long time. What allows him to bear the strain better? According to Joyner it could be the prevalence of fast muscle fibers, which he is able to use better than others-having even evidently more of them-while avoiding reaching his limit.
Height
Size matters, you know, and in this case having a small height is an advantage for several reasons: smaller marathon runners have more biomechanically efficient physiques because blood can get to every muscle, fatiguing the heart less (because it has to pump it proportionately less, having to run shorter distances), and heat exchange is just as optimal, since every region of the body is fully flushed.
At this point you may be wondering how tall Kipchoge is: 167 centimeters. An excellent height, now it is understood.
Leg stiffness
This is somewhat counterintuitive: the perfection of the athletic gesture depends in fact also on how rigid the force distribution system is. In other words, Kipchoge’s ability to discharge energy to the ground and receive energy to leap forward is related to the stiffness of his legs in relation to the economy of the athletic gesture. To understand it better, imagine that this particular leg movement is exaggerated and that, upon touching the ground, the foot bounces exaggeratedly lifting the ankle and then up, up to the knee. The more the athlete can find the balance between impact and the ability of the legs to contain it by turning it into propulsive energy, the smoother the movement and the more efficient the run.
We are not talking about logs instead of legs, you may have guessed; rather, we are talking about the rigidity necessary and sufficient to not dissipate the energy back from the impact of the foot on the road, to use it in a propulsive form.
At this point it will also be easy for you to imagine that … Kipchoge can do it perfectly, chettelodicoaffà.
The marathon runner’s mind
Eventually comes the power of the mind, and it is not last because it is less important. It’s already been mentioned how much Kipchoge makes his effort look like a no-brainer: after all, look at him, he’s even laughing at the ending, he’s certainly having fun!
In reality, we are talking about an athlete with exceptional physical gifts but who would never have reached the levels he expressed without being used and supported by an overpowering head. Like that which he can boast, even in his apparent human modesty.
They say of him that he has a calmness comparable to that of Yoda, indeed they say he even resembles it. That smile of his, once again, seems to represent some form of Zen awareness, of llumination. Could it be that in his training and exploration of human limits that he has been doing for years now, he has really seen and understood something that is precluded to many humans? Physically Kipchoge is probably the best that a human body can currently express in the marathon, but the suspicion that he is also so because of his mental strength is not negligible, in fact: it is practically a certainty.