
Supported by scientists from around the world and equipped with advanced running apparel and footwear, the athletes embarked on a monastic training regimen to optimize their human potential. Throughout the race, he ran alongside his Nike teammates, who acted as pacemakers, and Italian Olympian Zersenay Tadese, who started the race with the goal of beating the current half marathon world record time.


The mountain is 21,000ft high and lies about 100 miles away from Eldoret.Īnd in May of 2017, thousands of miles away from home, Eliud Kipchoge came up just shy of a two-hour marathon during Nike’s Breaking2 project, finishing with a time of 2:00:25 at a racetrack in Monza, Italy. But further east lay Mount Kenya, part of which could be seen from Kipchoge’s home. And those hills on Kipchoge’s family farm were grueling enough for a nine-year-old boy. There’s no direct route from Eldoret to St Peter’s College Juniors, the elementary school in the Nyeri district that houses Kenya’s national athletics center. Kipchoge is a long way from Eldoret, the northern Kenyan town where he grew up and first learned to run over his family farm’s rolling hills.

Instead, he has had the good fortune to be raised in Kenya in a time-and place-that offers him an opportunity for success. By that, I do not mean that he has been blessed with the kind of talent that has defined and enabled his career so far. Eliud Kipchoge breaking 2 has made him the new face of running.
