With 15 wins from 17 marathon attempts and two Olympic gold medals, the world has become used to witnessing Kenyan marathon king Eliud Kipchoge embody his catchphrase "Impossible is Nothing" over the 42.195 km marathon distance.
However, even for an athlete of his calibre, his performance at the 2022 Berlin Marathon on Sunday 25 September was nothing short of remarkable.
Running at an average speed of 21.02 km/h or 2 minutes 52 seconds per km, Kipchoge finished the race in 2:01:09, shaving a full 30 seconds off of his previous world record. His average pace per 5km was clocked at a jaw-dropping 14:21.4.
Kipchoge has of course run faster, dipping under the legendary two-hour mark during the 2019 Ineos 1:59 Challenge, where he set the quickest time in history when he ended the race in 1:59:40. However, the conditions under which that race was run - with laser pace guides and 41 rotating human pacemakers - mean the 2019 attempt was never ratified as an official world record.
In the 2022 Berlin Marathon, Kipchoge had none of those aids at his disposal, yet still came close to once again breaking the two-hour mark in a race that saw him pass the 20km mark two seconds ahead of his time during the Ineos 1:59 Challenge. By the halfway point, his time of 59:51 in Berlin was close to a minute faster than the pace of his own previous official world record of 2:01:39 set on the same course in 2018.
After the race, Kipchoge admitted that he had been planning on racing the first half marathon in “60:50, 60:40” but changed his mind when he realised how fast he was running.
“I thought my legs were running actually very fast, and I thought, oh let me just try to run two hours flat,” he said after beating second-placed Mark Korir to the line by over five full minutes.
However, a gradual decrease in speed over the final half marathon caused the two-time Olympic champion to just miss out on the two-hour mark while still setting a new world record in the process.
“We went too fast,” he said matter-of-factly of the first half of the race. “It takes energy from the muscles.”
READ MORE: Eliud Kipchoge breaks marathon world record
2022 Berlin Marathon vs. Ineos 1:59 Challenge
Kipchoge got off to a blistering start in both the 2022 Berlin Marathon and the Ineos 1:59 Challenge, however it is interesting to see just how close the splits of his marathon world record are to his sub-two-hour race.
The first five kilometres in the 2022 Berlin Marathon were run in 14 minutes and 14 seconds, just four seconds slower than his time in the Ineos 1:59 Challenge.
However, from there the splits got even faster.
Kipchoge’s next 5km at the Berlin Marathon was completed in 14:09 - a second faster than his pace in the Ineos Challenge, and with a third 5km run at 14:10 and a fourth 5k split of 14:12, Kipchoge reached the 20km mark in a time of 00:56:45, two seconds faster than the Ineos 1:59 Challenge.
It was just after the halfway mark in the Berlin Marathon that Kipchoge began to drift away from his Ineos 1:59 Challenge pace. His time between 20 and 25km was 14:23, compared to 14:12 in 2019. And while the Ineos 1:59 Challenge saw him post identical splits of 14:12 at 25, 30 and 35km, Kipchoge’s delivered times of 14:32 at 30km and 14:30 at 35km in the Berlin Marathon, leaving him a total 47 seconds off of the 2019 pace at that stage of the race.
Between kilometres 35 and 40, Kipchoge was averaging 02:57 per kilometre, compared to his early race averages of 02:50, and his 40km split of 14:43 was 33 seconds slower than his best 5k during the race.
However, with a final burst, his pace increased over the final 2.195km of the race, as he posted an average time of 2:52 per kilometre, just two seconds slower than his fastest average kilometre times in the race.
Kipchoge’s average speed at the Berlin Marathon was 21.02 km/h compared to the 21.2 km/h speed he maintained during his Ineos 1:59 Challenge run. However, without any outside aids to help him in his quest, it’s difficult to argue against this Berlin Marathon 2022 run being the greatest of his already legendary career.
