{"id":389,"date":"2016-08-23T00:07:34","date_gmt":"2016-08-23T00:07:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.blogs.hss.ed.ac.uk\/sport-matters\/?p=389"},"modified":"2016-08-23T00:07:34","modified_gmt":"2016-08-23T00:07:34","slug":"two-hour-marathon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.blogs.hss.ed.ac.uk\/sport-matters\/2016\/08\/23\/two-hour-marathon\/","title":{"rendered":"The Two Hour Marathon: Who is it for?"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Michael Crawley\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Athletes<\/a>

Athletes relaxing after training<\/p><\/div>\n

In a two-part series in the New York times entitled \u2018Man vs Marathon,\u2019 http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2016\/05\/15\/sports\/two-hour-marathon-yannis-pitsiladis.html?_r=0<\/a>Jer\u00e9 Longman has taken a thorough look at Janos Pitsiladis\u2019 project to accelerate the process which will, almost certainly, eventually lead to a human being running the arbitrary distance of 26.2 miles in a nice even two hours.<\/p>\n

In the article, Pitsiladis says that the most likely candidate to achieve this feat would be an Ethiopian or Kenyan athlete with a hard, rural upbringing, and that the best way for them to run that fast for that long would be for them to minimise the amount of weight on their feet, probably running barefoot or with merely \u2018a film that covers the bottom of the foot.\u2019<\/p>\n

I read the first article whilst I was staying at a rural training camp in Gondar, Ethiopia, where I am doing anthropological fieldwork with aspiring young Ethiopian runners. They happen to fit Pitsiladis\u2019 model: they come from remote rural areas and spent much of their childhood and adolescence running barefoot or in cheap plastic sandals.<\/p>\n

\"Athletes<\/a>

Athletes training at the camp at Gondar,<\/p><\/div>\n

I read the second article sitting at the side of a field in nearby Debre Tabor with some of the young distance runners from the camp, waiting for the start of the \u2018cultural sports festival,\u2019 where people from the nine different regional states in Ethiopia came together to compete in horse riding, gena (resembling hockey with rough hewn wooden sticks and fewer rules) and tigel, a form of Ethiopian wrestling.<\/p>\n

We were sitting at the side of the field for the second time that day, having been told at the first-proposed start time of nine in the morning that people didn\u2019t feel like it quite yet and we should come back at three in the afternoon. At three thirty, there was still no sign of any action. The runners had put on traditional Amhara clothing for the occasion and didn\u2019t seem concerned. \u2018This is cultural sport, Mike. This is the good life, no-one is in a hurry.\u2019<\/p>\n

And running, I ask. Is that the good life too? \u2018Sort of,\u2019 I\u2019m told. \u2018But running is always about condition, every day worrying about condition, condition, condition.\u2019<\/p>\n

This seems to be a good time to ask them about the possibility of a two-hour marathon one day; is there a way for them to work even harder, to go even faster? \u2018Two hours in the marathon?\u2019 my friend Telahun* replies, before relaying the question for the others. \u2018Yikabadal,\u2019 they murmur together: \u2018this is heavy\u2026\u2019 Telahun thinks for a while then adds, respectfully \u2018maybe for Kenenisa,\u2019 (Bekele, world record holder at 5,000m and 10,000m) he says, \u2018but the Kenenisa of six or seven years ago.\u2019<\/p>\n

He then asks the question which Pitsiladis\u2019 research seems to have missed, \u2018why is this man so obsessed with that anyway? Aren\u2019t we running fast enough already?\u2019<\/p>\n

I tell them that the project is looking for 30 million dollars of investment and they raise their eyebrows. Running clubs in Ethiopia pay modest salaries to their athletes of around 100 dollars a month. \u2018So he\u2019ll start a club with good salaries?\u2019 Telahun asks. I\u2019m not so sure about that, I tell them.<\/p>\n

The irony is that the sub-2 hour project is focusing on cutting edge science to shave the remaining 177 seconds from the marathon world record. The project epitomises modernity\u2019s project to keep pushing forwards, and to accelerate at all costs. And yet the life that Pitsiladis demands of his subjects is the opposite of this. His ideal candidate should avoid footwear at all costs. They should live off the land. Preferably they should live a life that enables them to practise discomfort, and they should have to walk long distances as well as run hard.<\/p>\n

On our way back from a training session the other day we waited for an auto rickshaw to give us a ride back to the camp. A middle aged woman pushed in front of us in the queue, eying our tracksuits and saying, \u2018you\u2019re sportsmen, you can go on foot!\u2019 No doubt Pitsiladis would agree. \u2018Do you think she realises we got up four hours ago, at 5am, and that we\u2019ve run 22 kilometers this morning?\u2019 one of the athletes asked me.<\/p>\n

When I asked my sub-agent friend Gebre about Pitsiladis\u2019 project he told me that he thought it might be possible, but that you\u2019d need to have a special training camp focused exclusively on that goal. \u2018You\u2019d have to lock them in,\u2019 he told me, \u2018and only let them out to fly to races. And after the race they\u2019d need to be straight back on the plane and back to the training camp.\u2019<\/p>\n

He explained that most runners who run fast marathons and win good prize money want to enjoy life in the city a little bit. \u2018They\u2019ll buy a car, and drive back to Bekoji (the small town where much of Pitsiladis\u2019 research is based), and then it\u2019s finished for the two hour marathon for them,\u2019 he told me.<\/p>\n

But is there really anything wrong with these young men wanting to live their lives a little bit? One of the main problems with marketing distance running is that coverage fails to bring out the personalities of the athletes. Forcing an even more Spartan approach to training is hardly likely to solve this problem. Having become good friends with some Ethiopian marathon runners over the last year, this is a real shame for the sport.<\/p>\n

My worry is that the obsession with the two hour marathon will lead to races where a phalanx of identically-dressed pacemakers attempt to escort one exceptionally talented athlete to a world record. The most exciting marathons in recent years, though, have been the duals, the tactical victories and the upsets; Wanjiru vs Kebede in Chicago 2010, Stephen Kiprotich\u2019s Olympic title in 2012 or Meb Keflezighi\u2019s 2014 Boston win. And given the problems with performance enhancing drugs both Kenya and Ethiopia are currently facing, now may not be the time to obsess over the watch. The athletes in Gondar were sceptical about the possibility until I mentioned drugs. \u2018Well, yeah, with doping of course it\u2019s possible,\u2019 they said, \u2018with doping you can run like a car.\u2019<\/p>\n

\"Training<\/a>

Training in Addis Ababa.<\/p><\/div>\n

It is important to think about who the two hour marathon is for. At one point in the interview with Pitsiladis he talks about testing new and eccentric training theories, stating, \u2018it may not work but let\u2019s try it and see what happens\u2019 and says he is a \u2018risky person.\u2019<\/p>\n

This attitude is fine if we\u2019re talking about an experiment in a lab, but these are young men from poor backgrounds whose livelihoods depend on their running. Are scientists taking risks with other people\u2019s bodies? These athletes have hopes, dreams and often families and other dependents to support. They are not merely expendible sources of research data. Perhaps we ought to spend more time asking them what kind of sport they want to be involved in<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Michael Crawley is an Edinburgh University \u00a0PhD student in International Development, studying the links between distance running and development in Ethiopia. Here he reflects on the much talked about two-hour marathon, using interviews with young runners in Ethiopia.<\/strong><\/p>\n

* The athletes\u2019 names are changed to protect their anonymity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Michael Crawley\u00a0 In a two-part series in the New York times entitled \u2018Man vs Marathon,\u2019 http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2016\/05\/15\/sports\/two-hour-marathon-yannis-pitsiladis.html?_r=0Jer\u00e9 Longman has taken a thorough look at Janos Pitsiladis\u2019 project to accelerate the process which will, almost certainly, eventually lead to a human … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":143,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,8,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-389","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-development","category-dialogue","category-evidence"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blogs.hss.ed.ac.uk\/sport-matters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blogs.hss.ed.ac.uk\/sport-matters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blogs.hss.ed.ac.uk\/sport-matters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogs.hss.ed.ac.uk\/sport-matters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/143"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogs.hss.ed.ac.uk\/sport-matters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=389"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogs.hss.ed.ac.uk\/sport-matters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":417,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogs.hss.ed.ac.uk\/sport-matters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389\/revisions\/417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blogs.hss.ed.ac.uk\/sport-matters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogs.hss.ed.ac.uk\/sport-matters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogs.hss.ed.ac.uk\/sport-matters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}