Ten days ago, Kenya’s Ruth Chepngetich smashed the world record in the marathon. In Chicago, she ran a time of 2.09.56 bettering Assefa’s 2.11.53 by almost 2 minutes.
Since then, so many people have raised concerns. You can read it all over the internet. People question whether Ruth is clean, or even state very bluntly that this is so clearly a case of doping, that it should be considered criminal.
Several people have asked me for my opinion. Do I think this world record is clean? And what to think about the fact that the women’s world record has been lowered from 2.14.04 down to 2.09.56 in the last 13 months?
Well, in a case like this I prefer not to react instantly, but to let it sink in a bit. Take some time to reflect about it. Because I was also shocked. I was watching Chicago, and when Ruth passed half way in 1.04.16 (just 14 seconds above her personal best), I thought that was the perfect recipe for a disastrous second half. Surely she would pay the price for that blistering first half and finish slower than her own personal best of 2.14.18. Right? But when that didn’t happen and she completely smashed the world record, I didn’t know what to think of it.
Okay, so now that I’ve had some time to think about, here’s my take.
Improvement
First of all, I totally understand the concerns. Generally, elite runners don’t improve their marathon time with more than 4 minutes, in their 15th (or so) marathon. Most elite runners run their personal best in their 5th to 8th marathon. I ran my own personal best of 2.12.08 in my 6th marathon. It’s not uncommon to improve a bit later in your career. But not with 4 minutes. That is, pretty much, unheard of.
And she did not just improve herself with 4 minutes, she also did that in a very unconventional way: by starting extremely fast, with the first 5km in 15.00 and the first half marathon very close to her personal best. Probably she could have run faster if she had been a little more conservative in the first half.
Big gap with fellow competitors
Apart from her big improvement, what also shocked me is the fact that Ruth was nearly eight minutes ahead of someone like Irine Cheptai. Irine is from Iten and I’ve known her for the last 10 years. She is a world champion herself (in cross country) and ran her fastest marathon ever in Chicago, finishing 3rd in 2.17.51. I don’t think I have seen someone winning a world major marathon, eight minutes ahead of number 3.
Secondly, the gap with the rest of the world. So far, only 5 women have run under Paula Radcliffe’s previous world record of 2.15.25, yet the fastest of them is 5 ½ minutes faster. So that begs the questions: how come there are not more women running between 2.15 and 2.10? More about that later.
The Kenyan doping problem
Apart from that, we also know that Kenya has a doping problem. Kenyans also know it. Back in 2000 when I first came to Kenya, and in the years that followed, Kenyan runners would feel sorry for those wazungu (white people) who took vitamins or other supplements. I remember telling a Kenyan runner that I took an iron tablet every day, and he was like: Why? Just eat a lot of sukuma (kale, the favorite vegetable of most Kenyans) and you will be fine.
But from a mentality of believing in training, resting and eating healthy, many Kenyans have gone to a mentality of ‘if you want to be elite you have to dope’. As Eliud Kipchoge pointed out recently, many athletes don’t have patience anymore. They want to make a lot of money and are ready to take a ‘short-cut’ to the top.
Of course, in public most Kenyans are like the NATO: if you attack one of us, you attack all of us. They are not happy when Ruth Chepngetich is being questioned and when people insinuate that she might be doping, so they jump to her defense. But between each other, most Kenyan runners also don’t trust the performances of many fellow country men and women. That’s just how it is.
There is doping control here, but they are having a very hard job. Imagine dealing with a talent pool of around 10,000 runners, with hundreds of them being part of the world top, and thousands of them being close to that. There is so much talent here, and they can’t all get tested on a regular basis.
Currently 106 Kenyans are banned due to a doping offence, and a total of about 260 Kenyans have been banned since 2017. So if a Kenyan smashes the world record, by breaking her own personal best with more than 4 minutes, while she has already been on a world class level for the last 5 years, then yes, that deserves to be questioned.
The super shoes
However, I would definitely not go as far as saying that this is ‘100% doping’. There is a lot of doubt, and it’s justified, but we are living in a time of breaking records. Why? Because of the super shoes.
The new generation of shoes with carbon plates and special foam, that first came on the market in 2017, seem to have a very significant effect on runners’ performances. The shoes improve our performance in three different ways:
Running becomes more efficient. Scientific tests, comparing the old shoes (let’s call them the BC shoes, before carbon) with the carbon plated shoes, have shown that runners consume less oxygen at the same speed, while using the carbon shoes. That leads directly to an improved performance.
The shoes absorb a lot of the impact and thereby prevent muscle damage. By doing this, they enable marathon runners to be more aggressive in the beginning, because the fear of breaking down in the last 5-7km of the race is no longer there. When I was running marathons, it was common that you could not walk down the stairs the day after the race. Your legs would be totally screwed up for a week. That is no longer the case. And that has a direct impact on marathon times.
Due to reason number 2, elite runners can now train harder than before. Because the shoes absorb the impact, doing a 40km longrun feels the same way a 35km longrun used to feel. And an athlete who could handle 200km of running per week, can now handle 220 – 240km per week.
So to summarize: there is an instant effect on your running performance (reason 1). There is also a second instant effect, more specific for marathon running (reason 2). And there is a long term effect (reason 3) that leads to better performances over the years.
You might ask me; But coach Hugo, these type of shoes have been on the market for the last seven years, so surely they can’t explain the performance of Ruth Chepngetich now?
But the problem with the new generation shoes is; maybe they can. Why? Because the little research that has been done so far, shows that the differences in running economy between one shoe and the other shoe can be HUGE, as big as 15%. Even between two shoes of the same brand! And the effects are not the same for every runner.
Scientist have tested runners, wearing different shoes, and the results were pretty shocking. Runner A would get a lot more efficient on shoe X, but performed bad on shoe Y, while runner B would benefit a lot from shoe Y, and do poorly on shoe X. And runner C would do much better on both. It was not a case of a certain shoe, or a certain brand being universally better than others, but of one type of shoe working better for certain athletes and another type of shoe working better for other athletes. According to Knopp et all putting on a different shoe, could mean anything from a 10% drawback to a 14% improvement in running economy.
What does it mean in terms of performance? It could mean that you put on a new running shoe, which gives you a (for example) 5% improved running economy, which improves your marathon performance with 3%. If your personal best is 2h14.00, and you improve that with 3%, that means you will now run 2.09.59. Only by putting on new running shoes. Just think about that!
Ruth Chepngetich was wearing a new version of the Nike Alphafly, which (apparently) she had never used in races before. So this is where the doubt comes from. We can all accuse her of doping, but we have to at least admit that there might be another explanation. In a way I find it easier to believe that someone has a super shoe that works well for them, than that someone has some kind of super doping that the rest of the athletes have not discovered yet. Because let’s be honest, even when Ruth is on drugs, she would not be the only one. Doping alone can’t explain everything.
And this is my biggest problem with the new generation of shoes. The impact they can have on running performances is so extreme, while at the same time not equal for everyone. If Irine Cheptai puts on the same shoes as Ruth Chepngetich, she might not benefit at all. Because the effect of the shoe depends on different factors, such as stride frequency, whether you land on the forefoot, or more on the heel, the weight of the runner, and so on.
Women’s marathon running still has to catch up
And there is something else. Until August 2023, the fastest woman ever in the world had run 2.14.04. That was broken in September last year (to 2.11.53) which was a shock – and now it’s broken again. Many people have a hard time dealing with this reality. A time of 2.09 was, until just 13 months ago, so far away from what any woman had ever done before, that it’s easy to dismiss it and say that it can’t be true.
And of course, until today only 5 women have run faster than Paula Radcliffe’s previous world record of 2.15.25. That makes it easier to think that this small group of women must be doing something illegal – even though running a time of 2.11 right now, could be equal to Paula Radcliffe running 2.15, but then with super shoes.
However, I believe women are still underperforming on the marathon. Right now, we should have 20 to 40 women running between 2.10 and 2.14, rather than just Chepngetich, Assefa and Sifan Hassan.
Let’s take a look at some of the data and results.
Paula Radcliffe ran her world record back in 2003, so that is 21 years ago. In the same year, Paul Tergat broke the world record for the men and set it at 2.04.55 (I happened to run in Berlin that day, and finished 11 minutes behind Tergat). Since then, a total of 96 men have run faster than 2.04.55 with the fastest (Kiptum) running 4 minutes and 20 seconds faster. So why did only 5 women break Radcliffe’s record?
We can also see that Radcliffe’s best ever half marathon (67.47) is now number 107 in the world, meaning that 106 women have run faster than her. Why didn’t at least half of them run faster on the marathon as well? Especially since we know that the super shoes are more effective on the marathon, than on any other distance. And most likely also more effective for women than for men (see the article from Joel Mason).
Let’s take a look at the three fastest marathon men: Kelvin Kiptum, Eliud Kipchoge, and Kenenisa Bekele. We can compare their best marathon times, with their best half marathon times, and then we see that they ran their marathon as 2 x their half marathon personal best, plus an added 2.19 – 3.11 minutes. For example, Eliud Kipchoge ran 59.25 on his fastest ever half marathon. Multiply that with two, add 2’19” and you get his best marathon time of 2.01.09
There are good reasons to argue that women will have a smaller gap between their half marathon and full marathon times, but for now let’s assume they can have at least the same as the 3 top men; an average of 2’47”. This would mean that a woman who can run 65.00 on the half marathon, assuming she is a good marathoner, should be able to run 2.12.47 on the marathon. So far 16 women have run under 65.00, and that does not include Hassan and Assefa. A total of 48 women have run under 66 min on the half marathon – for me these are all potential 2.14 (or faster) marathoners.
In other words; I strongly believe there is a huge potential among the women. So why didn’t they run faster yet? I’m not very sure, but one reason could be that many women are more conservative in the way they approach races. Kenyan men tend to go out hard, even in training, with the motto ‘if I die, I die’. Kenyan women are generally more careful, running as a group, with the motto ‘let’s go together, then in the end we see who can win’. If more women would have the mentality of Chepngetich, or say a little less extreme (for example, run the first half marathon just 1 min and 30 seconds above their personal best) we might see a lot more sub 2.14 performances.
A changing culture
Another reason why I think there is a lot more potential on the women’s side is this. Until 2005 or 2010, Kenyan female runners had to kind of fight against their culture. Women were still considered to take care of all house hold duties. They weren’t given the same chances and opportunities when it comes to sport. Professional sport was something considered for men, and most men didn’t like to support their wife’s running career. The man was supposed to bring the money home, not his wife.
Take a look at the development of the world records on the marathon. On the men’s side, we see East African runners from as early as 1964 (Abebe Bikila) while on the women’s side it took until 1998 (Tecla Loroupe) before the world record was first in the hands of an East African. In the half marathon it took women even longer (Susan Chepkemei in 2001).
The first time I came to Iten was in the year 2000. Since then I came for 4-6 weeks every year (until I permanently moved here in 2007). In the beginning of this century, you would see a couple of female Kenyan runners, but they were very few. Many of them would just try to follow a group of men and didn’t have good guidance on how to train.
This has completely changed now. If I have to estimate it, I would say we have gone from a ratio of 1:10 to 1:2 (number of female versus male runners). And what’s more, many men started supporting their wife’s careers. They realize that it’s hard to make it as a male runner, since the competition is so tough, so they do everything they can to support their wife.
This is the reason why I think that when it comes to women’s marathon running, we have seen nothing yet. Whether Ruth’s record will be broken soon, I’m not sure, but I think there are a couple of women who can come very close, and lots of women who can run under 2.14
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When writing this article, I used the following articles:
Mason J, Starc L, Morin JB Can the recent sex-specific evolutions in elite running performances be attributed to advanced footwear technology? Frontiers in Sport and Active Living Sec Elite sports and Performance Enhancement, Volume 6 – 2024
Joubert DP, Jones GP. A comparison of running economy across seven highly cushioned racing shoes with carbon-fibre plates. Footwear Science, Volume 14, 2022 – issue 2 https://doi.org/10.1080/19424280.2022.2038691
Knopp M. et al. Variability in Running Economy of Kenyan World-Class and European Amateur Male Runners with Advanced Footwear Running Technology: Experimental and Meta-analysis Results. Sports Med 2023 Jun;53(6):1255-1271.
Very good. I would like to add that Ruth was now using Maurten which makes a difference and that her form has improved since last year, see expert analysis here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwO3oZ7Ymao&t=49s By my estimate subtracting those and the shoe benefit would make her a bit slower thanPaula.