Sonia O’Sullivan: Intense training bringing faster marathon times, but at what cost?

Only two weeks on from trying to get my head around what on earth is happening on the fast side of marathon running, there it goes and happens again.

This time it’s the turn of the men. There was talk of a course record in the Chicago Marathon last Sunday, less so a world record. Only it didn’t disappoint on that front, Kelvin Kiptum taking advantage of the near-perfect running conditions to break through fresh boundaries yet again.

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This time last year no one in the athletics world could have imagined Kiptum would soon be the new marathon man in town. This time last year he’d never even run a marathon.

Now, with his 2:00:35 win last Sunday, the 23-year-old Kenyan holds the world record, surpassing the mark set last year by fellow countryman Eliud Kipchoge, considered by many to be the greatest marathon runner of all time.

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In the process, Kiptum edged ever closer to the two-hour barrier, which has only been broken once by Kipchoge at a Nike promotion event four years ago in Vienna, which, due to a raft of pacemaking aids was illegal for record purposes.

That barrier may only be a matter of time now for Kiptum. That’s if he can maintain his extreme level of training which has earned him such levels of success in 10 months. That started in Valencia last December, where he won in 2:01:53, the fastest debut in marathon history, before improving to 2:01:25 in London last April, also beating Kipchoge’s course record.

Now he’s improved the world record by 34 seconds, and he is, in distance terms, just over 200m short of crashing through the two-hour barrier in a proper-run race.

There’s always some sense of wonder whenever records are broken; but maybe the sudden regularity, the pace at which records are tumbling, is taking away from the awe that once surrounded such a performance.

Not long after Kiptum crossed the finish line in Chicago (in fact just over 13 minutes later) Sifan Hassan came sprinting home in the women’s race, her final 400m probably on par with some of the final laps of her more recent track races at the World Championships in Budapest.

Two weeks previously, in Berlin, Tigst Assefa, the 26-year-old from Ethiopia, took over two minutes off the women’s world record, winning in 2:11:53. At one point Hassan was inside that world record pace, still finishing in with a Chicago course record of 2:13:44, a time which until two Sundays ago would have been a new world record for women.

There is one notable difference between Kiptum and Hassan: just six weeks before, Hassan competed in a treble of track finals at the World Championships, even if all the while she already had the Chicago Marathon at the back of her mind.

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Hassan, Ethiopian-born and a Dutch citizen since 2013, doesn’t appear to have fallen in love with the marathon distance just yet, but she does love to race. Even more so, she loves to win, and sees her ability to tolerate the marathon distance and pace as an opportunity for her to achieve more success in the years ahead.

The biggest distraction for her in Budapest was knowing that her rivals were set on the world record come the marathon in Chicago, a task she also kept herself focused on, just not realising that the goalposts would move again only two weeks before she lined up.

It’s certainly not the most traditional or recommended preparation for a marathon. Once Sifan achieved her success of winning double Olympic gold over 5,000m and 10,000m at the Tokyo Olympics, while also picking up a bronze medal over 1,500m, it certainly seemed possible.

There was a huge pressure lifted from her, knowing she was double Olympic champion, while attempting that rare Olympic treble.

In Budapest, over seven days, she ran three 1,500m races, two over 5,000m and a 10,000m final. It wasn’t without drama as she fell in the final metres of the 10,000m, then came back determined to get a medal over 1,500m, running 3:56.0 to just edge out Ciara Mageean for the bronze medal, the marathon being well over 26 times that distance. She was then outsprinted in the 5,000m by 1,500m specialist Faith Kipyegon.

I’m not sure if she had chosen just one event if the results would’ve been much different, just maybe less dramatic.

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Kiptum, meanwhile, is a marathon specialist; three marathons, three wins under his belt, and a career average of 2:01:18. Still, as the weeks pass by, the statistics are moving further off the charts and into previously incomprehensible territory.

It’s not just about running and racing any more. There are other unquantifiable factors that muddy the water, the era of super shoes obviously, and the simplicity and romanticism that once came with running is getting further away.

That throws up more questions than answers. There were some details of Kiptum’s training floating around on the various running websites shared by his coaching adviser Gervais Hakizimana, a former steeplechaser from Rwanda.

He explained that Kiptum runs up to 300km per week at times during his marathon build-ups, which would indicate running close to a marathon every day.

This doesn’t appear to be fully prescribed by his coach, who worries that Kiptum seems to come from the school of further and faster is better. He just might wear himself out if he continues to train at high pace and high volume.

What Kiptum and Hassan both share is this training mentality of run, eat, sleep, repeat. There is certainly some truth to the old saying ‘to be a better runner you need to run more’.

Only at what cost?

I can certainly relate to this as a developing athlete, when 100 miles (160km) a week seemed to be the Holy Grail that athletes aimed for. Depending on your mentality, when you topped that number you either kept clocking more miles or hit a plateau for a short while, allowing yourself to get better at running 100 miles per week before ramping up to the next level to push yourself on to an even higher level of racing.

In the world of athletics where event specificity is increasing all the time, only the absolute best of the best can even attempt spreading their efforts across the range required from 1,500m to 5,000m to 10,000m to the marathon.

Hassan is certainly proving that is possible, setting herself these targets that seem insane, while at the same time attracting the interest of more athletics fans. She certainly adds character and drama, and every sport needs that.