the times | Saturday November 14 2020 1GM 43
News
On a grey Vienna day in October last
year, the runner Eliud Kipchoge began
a marathon. When, faster than anyone
had dared hope, he crossed the finish
line the digital clock froze to mark the
moment: it read 1:59:40.
Kipchoge had become the first man
to run 26.2 miles in under two hours.
Now scientists have found out how he
did it. For almost 120 minutes, their
calculations show, his body balanced
energy output and oxygen intake with
exquisite precision so that he stayed
just below his physical limit.
Tests on Kipchoge have found that
his secret lies not just in being physical-
ly fit. He, along with the 15 other elite
athletes in the trial, also seem to know
just how far they can push their bodies.
“There are three numbers we think
are important,” Andrew Jones, a physi-
ologist from Exeter University, said.
“One is the maximum rate of oxygen
you can take in and use per minute. You
can think of that as the capacity of the
engine. The other is, as with cars, how
economically you move. The third is
where the red line is.”
Amateur marathon runners talk
about “hitting the wall”, the point at
which aerobic respiration stops and
their muscles start to work without
oxygen, rapidly inducing fatigue.
When Professor Jones tested the
runners on a track he found that they
were able to intuitively stay just below
this level almost indefinitely.
“Most of us kind of know
where this threshold is,”
he said. “If you went
out for a jog, and
gradually got
faster, you could
reach a certain
speed and think
‘that’s OK, I can keep
going at that’. If you go
slightly above it, you think
‘hang on, that’s a bit much’.
These guys have an even
more acutely defined sense
Secret revealed of
runner who broke
2-hour marathon
of where that [line] is.” They also had
the peculiarity, unlike in normal
runners, that these key metrics did not
seem to drop over time. “In most of us,
these numbers deteriorate,” Professor
Jones said. “In these elite runners they
don’t fall to anything like the same
extent.”
This made it all the more surprising
that the key metric often used to assess
athletes — oxygen uptake — was not,
taken in isolation, obviously outstand-
ing. Rather, Professor Jones and his
colleagues explained in a paper in the
Journal of Applied Physiology it was
what they did with it that seemed to
make the difference.
“They are really economical. If you
look at how much energy they use to
operate at speed, it’s much lower.” Even
so, the oxygen uptake, or VO2 max,
would still be impressive by most
standards.
“If I took someone off the street and
exercised them to exhaustion, their
maximum oxygen uptake might be two
litres per minute,” he said. “These guys
are operating at twice that. The
intensity these guys can run at for two
hours is twice as high as most people
can reach in a minute.”
The study was performed as part of a
concerted project to break the two-
hour marathon, which came to
fruition that day in Vienna.
Kipchoge, 36, was already the
world record-holder when he
crossed that finishing line —
and although his sub two-
hour time did not meet the
official criteria to be counted,
it was proof of principle
that the feat, long
thought unattainable,
could be achieved.
Professor Jones said
as inspirational as this
was for amateur runners,
blessed neither with the pecu-
liar balance of genetic luck and
the decades of training, there is
little of practical value to take
from the findings. “Kipchoge has
taken marathon running to a new
dimension. All we can do is
marvel at it.”Tom Whipple Science Editor
Eliud Kipchoge stayed just
below his physical limit
said that Kaide was
steering young people
his age away from
grooming and
exploitation by gangs.
“He’s a fantastic
young person with a
genuine drive to make
a positive change.
“He’s a role model
for people to look up to
and think we can like
rap music but if we
don’t like the lyrics we
can change them.
“Or we can follow
people that are
speaking about
positivity rather than
killing, shooting,
womanising and all the
rest of it.”[music] has,
like, rude
words talking
about stabbing
and killing,” he
said.
“I change it
into positive
vibes so younger
kids my age can
listen to it.”
He is an
ambassador for
Switch Up, an
anti-knife crime
charity that
mentors young
people and tries
to steer them away
from crime.
Marcellus Baz, the
founder of the charity,A
ten-year-old
boy has
notched up
thousands of
views on YouTube by
taking on drill artists
and calling for an end
to knife crime with his
positive take on rap
music (Neil Johnston
writes).
Kaide Valerga, from
Bulwell in Nottingham,
has been praised by
charities working
against gangs for his
songs.
The pupil at Bulwell
St Mary's C of E
Primary School, who
goes under the name
Kaide Cool Kid, aims
to spread “good vibes”
by performing in front
of children at risk of
carrying knives.
He began rapping
after realising that
most drill music was
not suitable for his age
group and wanted to
produce tracks that
were “not about
stabbing and killing”.
Kaide has already
written a five-track LP,
appeared on BBC
Newsround and Blue
Peter, and performed
in front of young
people in Nottingham.
His lyrics include:
“Why would I roll with
a knife when I could
jump on beats like a
hurdler?” and “Whenthis music works, Mum
gets diamonds and
pearls”.
This week he said
that he wanted drill
music to be positive
instead of focusing on
violence. “A lot of drillRapper, 10, takes
on knife crime
thismusicworksM[m
li
w
a
a
sain
v
k
lia S a c m pt tKaide Valerga began
rapping in the hope of
producing drill music
that was “not about
killing and stabbing”