Five years ago, when Eliud Kipchoge became the first person to dip under 2:02 in an official marathon, I wrote a column crammed with superlatives about his “stunning” and “ridiculous” and “crazily incomprehensible” run. I marveled at the 78 seconds he’d sliced off the world record. And I pondered whether Kipchoge was a unique generational talent, a man ahead of his time, or whether his performance presaged a broader shift in marathon running standards.
Watching Kelvin Kiptum crack the 2:01 barrier in Chicago on Sunday morning was a somewhat different experience. Mercifully, unlike the Berlin marathon, I didn’t have to wake up in the middle of the night to watch it happen. But despite a full night of sleep, some of the wide-eyed wonder was missing. After all, we’d just seen Tigst Assefa demolish the women’s world record by more than two minutes in Berlin a few weeks earlier, and even that shiny new record was already under threat in Chicago from Sifan Hassan, who ended up notching the second-fastest time in history. Epoch-making, once-in-a-lifetime performances ain’t what they used to be.
Of…
