A few months later the Tumbleator was unveiled for the first time at the Chicago Marathon, where a fresh batch of runners got a first-hand feel for Kipchoge’s pace – for 200m, which was long enough. He first shattered the world record at the 2018 Berlin Marathon when he finished in 2:01:39. The giant treadmill was not originally associated with one particular athlete, but it did not take long for it to be tied to Kipchoge, for the simple reason that the 38-year-old was so often faster than everyone else. The fallout was literal and predictable: the Tumbleator welcomed weekend warriors on to its springy surface before spitting most of them out the back as it ramped up its speed, sending them into the safe embrace of padded gymnastics mats. That worked out to about 20km/h, or 13mph, a sprint for most mortals. Either would bring you the full 42.195km at world-record pace.īut perhaps the most inventive way to contextualise Kipchoge’s marathon tempo comes via an enormous treadmill, equipped with flexible matting and carbon-fibre rods, which was originally designed for use on television gameshows and for film stunt work. Or you could attempt to run a 4:37 mile, then do another 25 of them. Well, ahead of this weekend’s London Marathon, you could head to your local track and try to run a 400m lap, which is roughly equivalent to a quarter-mile, in about 69 seconds – and run an additional 104 laps at that speed. And the world record for the marathon is two hours, one minute and nine seconds.Īnyone remotely familiar with the marathon – and all 26.219m of its muscle-searing masochism – can appreciate that Eliud Kipchoge’s record for the distance, set last September when he won the Berlin Marathon for the fourth time, is fast. Earth is about 150 million kilometres from the sun.

The human body, for example, is made up of about 40 trillion cells. Some numbers are difficult to comprehend.

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