edcaesar

The most surprising thing for me was just how wrong everybody always is when they make athletic predictions... Sports scientists have been wrong for a century or more. We always think our own era is the ultimate, and we always improve. The sub-2 marathon appears to be impossible to a lot of physiologists right now, but I guarantee we're going to get there. Let me take a punt and say 2030. Mike may disagree...

It's all about taking it out of the cities in my opinion. A special track, the right weather conditions, financial motivations, a team of crack pacers. You could do it pretty soon in those conditions.

It's such a good question. Both Haile and Eliud are evangelists for that second approach, and it seems to have done them no harm! My feeling is that the guy who breaks it though, will do it in his mid-twenties rather than his late twenties... Mike will have a view on the physiology of this, but I think if the guys got set up to run longer, earlier, I think we could see some crazy times. This kid Geoffrey Kamworor who's running on Sunday in New York is an immense talent. If he has a good day in Berlin in a couple of years' time he could break the world record.

Running a marathon was extremely hard for me. I'm a big dude. 240 pounds, 6 foot 5. But it only lasted a little more than four hours. The book's taken four years.... I'd take short sharp pain (relatively speaking) over the long and sometimes very painful process of writing a book....

For sure it's a real thing! Geoffrey Mutai talks about a feeling he gets when he's trained well, and he's flying at the front of a world-class field. He calls it The Spirit. It's a high.