Kelvin Kiptum Marathon World Record – Chicago – with Nike & Garmin

What Kelvin Kiptum lacks in race experience he exudes in world records. He’s only raced 3 marathons but has one World Record plus the 3rd and 6th fastest ever times. He is reported to self-train.

Key Point: The 23-year-old became the only person in history to legally run a marathon in less than 2 hours and 1 minute, clocking an incredible 2:00:35 on the 8 October Chicago marathon.

Distraction: Eluid Kipchoge ran faster than 2 hours in non-legal race conditions.

What Running Shoes Did Kelvin Kiptum Wear for his Chicago Marathon World Record?

It seems that he was wearing a prototype pair of Nike shoes called Nike Dev163, however, these will probably soon be released for us to buy labelled as Nike Air Zoom AlphaFly NEXT% 3.

Like its predecessors, this shoe will feature carbon plates and/or rods in the midsole plus a super-plush Pebax foam from Arkema that has good energy return properties.

What Sports Watch Did Kelvin Kiptum wear for his Chicago Marathon World Record?

It’s notoriously difficult to discover what watches the Pros are wearing. It often turns out to be a vintage Garmin from 1935, or similar. This time around, I have to say that Mr Kiptum has done tech proud. He seems to be wearing a fairly modern and possibly fairly chunky Garmin. I can’t quite tell which from the image above as they all look very similar.

The watch appears to have slightly longer lugs than I would expect from a Garmin Forerunner and 3 silver buttons on the right side, or is one of them red? The Strap also looks Garmin-like and I would be tempted to say it might even be a Fenix but that would make no sense as a Fenix would be ‘too heavy’.

My Use of Super Shoes

As an anecdote, I would argue that many of these new super shoes WILL make you faster. I wore my Nike AlphaFly NEXT%2 shoes for the first time at a parkrun on Saturday. OK, it’s not quite the same as one of the world’s leading road races but I got a very respectable time for myself which was about 15 seconds better than I’d expected and, incidentally, one of my best-ever age-group percentage results. Have I been training hard, focussed on 5K for months on end and following an AI-crafted, adaptive training plan?…err, no. I just got through a bout of COVID-19 and ran a few random duathlon/triathlons in recent weeks. I’m reasonably sure that the shoes gave me the edge. I was faster than when I wore some adidas super shoes (Prime X 2.0) a month ago but I can’t say if the Nike’s were faster than adidas as I’ve got a little bit fitter over that period which could account for the difference.

If I compare my AlphaFly shoes to VaporFly, I would say that AlphaFly FEEL slower than VaporFly to me and the way I run. However, on recent evidence, I might be wrong.

But those are my personal opinions and anecdotes. If we look at some science a similar picture emerges. This scientific research paper showed 3 clear winners, including AlphaFly 2, that were at least one per cent better than the best of the rest.

Results: VO₂ (ml‧kg^-1‧min^-1; % change from AHS) was significantly different across shoes. HRX (51.67±2.07) and BHE2 (51.42±1.72) did not differ from AHS (51.71±2.02). While SEP (50.93±1.82; -1.48±0.72%) and NBRC (50.99±1.83; -1.37±0.78%) were statistically better than AHS, they were inferior to NAF (50.13±1.86; -3.03±1.48%), NVF2 (50.29±1.72; -2.72±1.02%), and AMS (50.39±1.71; -2.52±1.08%).

Men’s Marathon World Record Progression

A more competitive post-1965 era saw decent but relatively infrequent falls in the record. This general state of improvement perhaps continued until just after 2010 but it’s hard to definitely say if the most recent improvements are down to technology or simply two exceptional athletes.

Take Out

It’s good we finally have proof that vaguely modern tech makes you faster. Although genetics, training and other things might help too 😉

Assuming Kiptum’s time is ratified and everything else is good with the attempt, there must be a decent chance that he will turn out to be the greatest long-distance runner of all time.

Similarly, the AlphaFly 3 shoes and other generations of super shoes will likely make us mere mortals faster still. My suspicion is that new shoe technologies, developed within IAF limits, will soon stop delivering notable gains over what came before. We will probably see a legitimate Sub2 marathon in the next ten years but surely progression beyond that will only see much smaller improvements. Then again, why should 2 hours, 120 minutes or 7200 seconds be a special limit to humankind’s running abilities?

Tigist Assefa wears adidas Pro EVO supershoes in Marathon record plus an old Garmin

Some Science: This shows that AlphaFly is the fastest

Science: Nike Alphafly is fastest running shoe…

this is a vaguely entertaining read on my VaporFly shoes

Nike ZoomX Vaporfly Next% 2 Review – Next 2 Percent