It Only Took 2,515 Years, but the Two Hour Marathon Has Finally Fallen

I’m a big fan of human superlatives. It’s fun to note when people have demonstrably managed to do something that no one has ever done before—like the Artemis II astronauts now being able to say, without question, that they traveled further away from the Earth than anyone has ever traveled in the past. This kind of achievement is particularly notable when it’s one that people have been trying to notch for more than two and a half millennia. So yeah, a human being running a sub-two hour marathon race? Sorry, make that two people achieving this feat previously thought impossible, in the same race? I may not care a bit about endurance running as a sport, but I’m in awe of the combination of effort, training, determination and scientific aid that has brought us to this point. You read a headline like this one and think that maybe humanity just might make it after all, if we can pull this off.

That said, the “marathon” as we know it is a modern phenomenon, one that merely has ancient (and largely mythological) roots. The road race, measuring 26.22 miles, commemorates the apocryphal run of a messenger named Pheidippides, who was said to have run from the location of the Greek vs. Persian battle of Marathon to Athens to relay the news of a Greek victory. Ironically, the historical record suggests the real-life Pheidippides actually may have made a far more impressive run, from Athens to Sparta to request aid before the battle, traveling a distance of 150 miles over the course of two days. But the mark of 26.22 miles ended up slipping into oral histories over the years until it became the more famous legend, cited by French philogist Michel Bréal when he proposed it as one of the original modern Olympic events at the 1896 Olympics in Athens. By 1921, the distance had become standardized, and ever since that date, the idea of a two-hour marathon has stood as one of the ultimate, theoretical sports milestones. For the record, that first marathon in 1896 was less than 25 miles in length, and the winning runner took 2:58:50 to run it.

Some 130 years later, two men just did 26.22 miles in less than 2 hours, both in the London Marathon this weekend. The absolute dudes in question were Ethiopia’s Yomif Kejelcha–who was running his first ever official marathon (!!!)–who finished in 1:59:41, and the new global record holder for an official marathon, Kenya’s Sabastian Sawe, who finished in an incredible 1:59:30. That’s another thing that no one really would have expected, that the two-hour mark would be not only eclipsed but well and truly obliterated. We’re in entirely uncharted territory now! Also, may we spare a moment of empathy for Kejelcha, a man who managed to do something that no one on Earth had ever done before, only to still finish second anyway? Talk about the wrong competitor to draw on your big day.

As astonishing as Roger Bannister breaking the 4-minute mile!

Not only did Kenyan Sabastian Sawe of Kenya run a 1:59:30 marathon to win the London Marathon, Ethiopia’s Yomif Kejelcha ran 1:59.41 for 2nd – 2 runners at once become the first to break 2-hours in a marathon.
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— Abbey Rhodes (@abbeyr28.bsky.social) Apr 26, 2026 at 9:30 PM

Now, before the anal-retentive runners pipe up: Yes, there was one previous instance of what was theoretically a sub-two-hour marathon on the books. That time was recorded in 2019 by Eliud Kipchoge, the man widely regarded as perhaps the best marathon runner of all time, but it was achieved in an unsanctioned race that was built as a publicity stunt to give Kipchoge every possible advantage. Those efforts to help Kipchoge included dozens of pace setters, a custom marathon course and laser guiding to show him exactly what pace to maintain, in a stunt that was basically intended to demonstrate whether the sub-two-hour marathon would be theoretically possible. Kipchoge’s successful time of 1:59:40 proved that it was, but no one had actually come close to doing it in an official marathon race until now … and Sawe’s time of 1:59:30 is incredibly another 10 seconds faster than even Kipchoge’s was! This would certainly seem to be indisputably the fastest marathon any human has ever run, under any circumstances. It’s an average speed of 13.16 mph, or roughly a mile every 4 minutes and 33 seconds.

Which obviously begs the question: How did not just one but two men achieve this? Well, in short, they were standing on the backs of giants–the runners who have steadily whittled down the world record time from roughly 6 minutes more than two hours at the turn of the millennium, to the previous world record of 2:00:35 set by Kenya’s Kelvin Kiptum in 2023, who tragically passed away in an auto accident in Africa merely months later. Crucially, all were aided in particular by the advancement of sneaker/running shoe technology.

The importance of the shoes can’t be stressed enough, in addition to advancements in factors such as training and diet. In fact, both Sawe and Kejelcha in this race were wearing a brand new shoe even lighter than previous iterations, the $500 Adizero Adios Pro Evo 3 from Adidas. These shoes, weighing a mere 3.42 ounces—about as much as a deck of cards—build on previous breakthroughs in what runners refer to as “energy return” technology, in which a springy base of the shoe reflects an ever-greater amount of exertion from the runner, lessening their own energy expenditure. This allows the marathon runner to expend slightly less effort in each step, thereby raising their speed to the point that such a breakthrough was finally possible. It’s the kind of incremental improvement that means everything over the course of 26.22 miles. The winner of the women’s London Marathon, Ethiopia’s Tigst Assefa, was also wearing the same shoes, and finished in 2:15:41. There’s no doubt it’s a big deal for Adidas, on the business front.

Adidas shares climb after Sawe makes marathon history in Adidas shoes reut.rs/4ebGZYi

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— Reuters (@reuters.com) Apr 27, 2026 at 3:45 AM

This is not to make light of the human achievement of breaking through a barrier that for a century seemed positively unassailable. Every generation of competitive runner in history has always worn the best possible gear available to them, which makes accusations that new shoe technology constitutes “mechanical doping” seem particularly pointless to me, and the same as insisting that baseball or football players should be forced to wear 1800s equipment. As long as they’re not wearing secretly wheeled shoes, let the guys run!

And indeed, rather than trying to find some kind of fault in the achievement, we should all bask in it. The sub-two-hour marathon was once considered a fantasy, not something to be seriously considered by serious athletes. Now it’s reality, thanks to the right combination of gumption and brilliance in engineering. Just imagine what unassailable hills we still might climb.