Why are we seeing run records being shattered at the Ironman World Championship?
It was another year of record-setting run splits in Nice and Kona
Heading into this year’s Ironman World Championship in Nice there was lots of talk about Patrick Lange (pictured above) and how fast he would run the marathon. With two 2:30 marathons at the end of full distance races over the previous year, many were wondering if the German could possibly break the 2:30 barrier on the flat Nice run course.
A few weeks later, at the pre-race press conference, Anne Haug was asked if she could run under 2:50 and set a new Kona run record.
“There’s a lot of potential here to run sub-2:50,” the German 2019 Kona champ said. “It all depends how the race evolves. If you jump off the bike a bit fresher than normal, then it’s possible.”
It’s been another banner year for marathon run records, both in running and triathlon events. Kenyan Kelvin Kiptum set a new world record of 2:00:35 at the Chicago Marathon in October, while Ethiopia’s Tigst Assefa ran 2:11:53 to set the women’s world record at the Berlin Marathon in September. On the triathlon front, Lange ripped through a 2:30:27 marathon split at Challenge Roth last June. Haug ran a 2:44:45 marathon on the same day, but that’s actually slower than Chrissie Wellington’s 2:44:35 from Roth in 2011. (Scarily enough, Kristin Moeller has the fastest marathon time recorded at an Ironman – 2:41:57 at Ironman UK in 2011.)
If you talk to athletes about the fast marathon splits that are becoming the norm at Ironman and other full-distance races, many will attribute the faster times to the new carbon-plate shoes that have become the norm for the top athletes. Kona champ Lucy Charles-Barclay was actually involved with the development of the Asics Metaspeed Sky Plus.
The carbon-plate shoes put your foot in an optimal position to power forward, but that plate is typically embedded in special foam that provides extra spring and cushioning. You get a bit more bounce out of each stride, and your legs don’t tire as much due to the impact. That’s especially noticeable over the final stages of the marathon.
Nice challenge
Despite the technical advantages of the new shoes, heading into the race in Nice it seemed unrealistic to expect that Lange would be able to match the 2:30 marathon he ran in Roth or in winning Ironman Israel last year. The challenging Nice bike course would take too much out of the legs, most pundits thought.
In the end the two-time Kona champ ran his way to second, completing his medal collection at the Ironaman World Championship (he took the bronze in 2016 to go along with his wins in 2017 and 2018), running the fastest marathon ever at a world championship – 2:32:41. (That’s almost four minutes faster than Gustav Iden ran to win in Kona last year.)
I did try to point out to Lange that he wasn’t far off the 2:30 mark, but he would have none of it.
“2:41 is a big chunk of time at that level,” he said. “I was fading over the last little bit, and to be honest, when I was starting the run, that bike course really stung my legs.”
“I was really happy with the run – for me, I couldn’t go any faster,” he did concede. “I extracted the maximum, because those guys really made me push all the way. I’m happy. I don’t see a 2:30 is possible on that run course after that bike.”
Kona record
Haug used the near-perfect race conditions in Kona to her full advantage, setting a new run course record of 2:48:23 to also complete her medal collection, taking silver to go along with her gold from 2019 and three bronze medals from 2018, 2021 (the race took place in St. George in 2022) and 2022 (Kona). Haug wore the Nike Air Zoom Alphafly Next% shoes. While she had a watch on, she didn’t pay much attention to it during the race.
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“I never look at the time, I always run by feeling,” Haug said. When she did check her time, she actually got worried that she’d gone out too fast. “In the beginning I thought, ‘Oh, I’m really quick,’ so I tried to hold myself back a bit and not to overdo it. You really have to be conservative in the beginning to make it through the marathon.”
Lucy Charles-Barclay set a new course record in Kona (8:24:31) and, while she was almost nine minutes slower than Haug, she and her Asics Metaspeed Sky Plus shoes put together her fastest run split ever – 2:57:38. It was the fourth-fastest run split of the day and more than enough to earn her the win.
This story originally appeared in the Nov. issue of Triathlon Magazine
