Breaking 2
Last year, Nike hosted a big publicity stunt to try to get the first human ever to run 26.2 miles in sub-2 hours. It didn't work, despite all of the advantages given to the runner. I'm sure that one day, somebody out there will break achieve that goal and a 2-hour marathon will be like a 4-minute mile - something extremely difficult to do, but doable. That 2-hour number is completely arbitrary, but it sounds so good. So good, in fact, that Strava hosted a competition (event? challenge? it's own publicity stunt?) to get people to do a half marathon in under 2-hours. When this event kicked off, I was in the middle of my marathon training plan and I had a 16-mile run planned, which was at a pace that put me sub-2 for the first 13.1 miles of the run. What I soon discovered was that the entire activity, regardless of how much longer it was than 13.1 miles, had to be sub-2 hours. So my 2:02:49 16-mile run did not trigger the Strava badge for me. Obviously the marathon I