Setting the Stage

Eliud Kipchoge almost did it, man. He was “that” close. When I first read the press releases and the news media hoopla about Nike’s “Breaking2” project I was skeptical. Why artificially set up all of the right parameters – course, equipment, pacers (including Bernie [blank] Lagat!) to see if a guy could go 1:59:59 or faster for 26.21876 miles (oops, sorry…the marathon is a metric distance; 42.195 kilometers)?

Just to see if it could be done. To see if technology and teamwork can knock down another “seemingly impossible” physiological barrier.

How many people in our community toil away, putting one foot in front of the other each day? Maybe it’s “not the Olympics,” as one guy put it to me some years back when I commented about the relative quality of an event. But what each of you do with your training groups, your club social runs and your events is not much different than what Nike did here. We set the stage for people to break their own barriers. Every day. Every weekend.

Do it well. Because there’s somebody out there who needs to kick a barrier in the butt.