Nike Breaking2 project
So, a regular marathon takes around 2 hours to complete. Breaking2 was a project by Nike to break the two-hour barrier for the marathon.
This project was announced by Nike in December of 2016 and the company organized a team of 3 elite runners who trained for this private race. They were,
- Eliud Kipchoge from Kenya 🇰🇪
- Zersenay Tadese from Eritrea 🇪🇷
- Lelisa Desisa from Ethiopia 🇪🇹
At that time, Kipchoge was the defending Olympic champion, having won the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio, and Zersenay held half marathon World Record.
In addition, Nike brought in 30 of the world’s best runners to serve as pacers for this race.
The venue chosen for this race was the Monza automobile racetrack in Italy.
Now for the sneaker
For the attempt, Nike developed a new running shoe called the Nike Vaporfly Elite. The shoe consisted of the Nike ZoomX midsole.
The shoe was a finely-tuned racer built to the Breaking2 runners exact specifications.
According to Nike, the Vaporfly Elite is “Ultra-lightweight and Ultra-responsive”.
Get The Sneakulture’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
The Breaking2 Zoom Series also includes a few other pairs of shoes.
- Nike Zoom Vaporfly 4%
- Nike Zoom Fly
- Nike Air Zoom Pegasus 34
The Race
The race began at 5:45 am on Sunday, May 6th 2017. The temperature was about 54°F (12°C) with some light rain.
In order to break the 2 hour barrier, a pace of 4:34.5 per mile (2:50 min/km) was required.
In order to achieve this, the racers followed behind a team of 6 pacers who were in a triangular formation and we’re themself following a vehicle that displayed a clock of the race time and a green laser to display where the lead pacer should be at all times.
16km in Desisa fell off pace followed by Tadese around 20km.
Kipchoge remained on pace through 25km and was only 1 second off pace at 30km.
Kipchoge finished the race in 2:00:25 and not being able to break the 2 hour barrier.
At the time of the race the world record of the marathon was 2:02:57. Even though Kipchoge beat this time by more than 2 minutes, it did not count as an official world record by IAAF standards due to several reasons. One being, the use of pacers who entered the race.
After the race was completed, Nike partnered with National Geographic to release a documentary of the Breaking2 project. It’s on YouTube, you could check it out through this link.
https://youtu.be/V2ZLG-Fij_4
Inspired by the Breaking2, Kevin Hart set out to break his own barrier: to run his first ever marathon.
He did it on November 5th , running the NYC marathon and completing it in 4 hours 5 minutes and 6 seconds. He even beat the former New York Giants running back Tiki Barber.
Ps : You should follow the @breaking2project on Instagram for some amazing content around the Breaking 2 shoe series.
Check out our Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/thesneakulture/?hl=en
The Sneakulture Podcast.-
iTunes- https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-sneakulture-podcast/id1378992572?mt=2
Android : https://radiopublic.com/the-sneakulture-podcast-WkdKQN
