One of the funny little details in Eliud Kipchoge’s attempts to run a sub-two-hour-marathon was the electric pace cars. In Nike’s Breaking2 race in 2017, they used a Tesla. In the INEOS 1:59 Challenge, where Kipchoge actually broke the barrier, it was an Audi e-tron equipped with a specially built cruise control that was accurate to within less than a meter over the entire marathon distance. “There will be no emissions out of the back to upset any of the runners,” one of the INEOS engineers boasted before the race.
Was this just window-dressing, like the strips of aerodynamic tape that the Breaking2 runners pasted to their calves? Or does a bit of exhaust in the air actually slow you down? A few studies over the years have attempted to answer this question, but the results have been unclear, in part because it’s difficult to get accurate readings of air quality on the racecourse itself. But a new study from a research team at Brown University, led by Elvira Fleury and Joseph Braun, offers a more definitive answer: it matters.
The Problem with Particulate Matter
Fleury and Braun used a…
