He understands that racing is the thing, not impressive Instagram workouts. At the same time, he has said that he rarely extends himself beyond 80 percent in training. Few dare to do less, and no one has climbed the Olympic Marathon podium proclaiming, “I owe it all to my 150-mile weeks.” The great ones find the squeaky-tight balance between just enough and over the top.Īs far as we know, Kipchoge trains long and hard, probably around 120 miles per week. Their training is relatively similar, with almost everyone logging 100 to 120 miles per week. We runners are obsessed with training, because it makes a huge difference in the performance of beginning and intermediate runners. Training: Does It Make a Significant Difference? Here’s a review of their thinking, and observations from a few others. Heck, we don’t even know if he’s grimacing in pain at the end of his marathons, or smiling because he has read studies claiming that a smile helps you run better.Įven the researchers most familiar with marathon physiology and Kipchoge himself can only marvel at his seemingly-ageless achievements while they enumerate some of the factors - from VO2 max to muscle fibers to biomechanics - that may underlie such greatness. There’s no simple answer and no single ingredient. The truth is, no one can fully explicate why Kipchoge is the GOAT. Instead, experts now acknowledge that elite performance is a “multifactorial” phenomenon - meaning that it’s somewhere between extremely complicated and completely unknowable. Surely they would soon be able to identify specific genes linked to everything from sprint performance to marathon records. They assumed that the Human Genome Project had opened a previously-closed door. Three decades ago, sports geneticists like Claude Bouchard of the Heritage Family Study believed the answer was close at hand. That leaves one endlessly intriguing question: Why? Why is Kipchoge so much better than everyone else? How do you argue against a guy who has won back-to-back Olympic golds, holds the official marathon world record (2:01:39), and has covered 26.2 miles in an “exhibition race” in 1:59:40? There’s no longer any question that he’s the Greatest Of All Time (GOAT) at the distance. With his seemingly effortless victory in the Olympic Marathon steambath in Japan, Eliud Kipchoge ended the debate.

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