Time to map out a plan for Villa's future
- Says blogger Matthew Turvey
Where are the limits of human endurance?
Friday 15th April 2011, 8:13AM BST.
As the London Marathon rolls around again, it has got me thinking again about when the world will witness the first sub-two hour marathon, writes Hannah Webster.
There was a good feature on the subject on the BBC website earlier this week, demonstrating that opinion is divided as to whether the feat is possible. I sit firmly in the camp that says it is.
I think it’s a way off, probably not in this generation of athletes, but I solidly believe someone will do it, and I am in premature awe of whoever achieves it. All the different factors which contribute to an athlete’s performance on the day are just too complicated for anyone to pin point a marathon time and say that will be the end of world records. And that’s just not the way the sport works anyway. It’s wonderful to witness athletes putting everything they have into a race and shaving those precious seconds and minutes off a world record.
I’m anxious to find out what Paula Radcliffe has in her for the 2012 Olympic Marathon. She says she thinks she has another world record in her, and that would be great to see on home soil.
I read in Runner’s World a few months ago that if you take Paula Radcliffe’s women’s marathon world record of 2:15.25, and analyse it proportionately against Haile Gebrselassie’s men’s record of 2.03.59, one could deduce that Radcliffe would have beaten Gebrselassie’s time if she was male.
Some people will take nothing from this and say it is pointless, parallel-universe type talk, but I believe it shows that ultimately the best performances in the sport are down to the individual athletes and their approach. If it was just down to the limits of human endurance, Paula Radcliffe would have logically been slower or Haile would have been faster.
Simply put, records are there to be broken.
Good luck to everyone running the London Marathon, I shall be watching from the comfort of my living room, but I’m rooting for you all.
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