Inside the First Sub-2 Hour Marathon: Alex Hutchinson on Sebastian Sawe's Historic London Win

The two-hour marathon barrier is officially gone. At the 2026 London Marathon, Sebastian Sawe ran the first sub-2 marathon in history on a record-eligible course, and Yomif Kejelcha came in right behind him — also under two hours, in his marathon debut. We're still buzzing.

SUPPORT OUR SPONSOR:
Lagoon pillows help us sleep better, so we run better. Want to try? You can save 15% with code MARATHON. Go to lagoonsleep.com/marathonhandbook and take the 2-minute sleep quiz to find your match.

To make sense of this inflection point in distance running, we sat down with Outside columnist Alex Hutchinson: author of Endure and The Explorer's Gene, and arguably the sharpest science journalist in the sport. We unpack the shoes (the Adidas Adios Pro Evo 3), the nutrition, the pacing, the training, and whether the marathon as we knew it is even the same race anymore.

We get into Sawe's almost incomprehensible negative split — 60:29 / 59:01, with a final 2.195k run at the equivalent of 1:52 marathon pace. We talk about why Hutchinson predicted sub-2 wouldn't happen until 2075, why Nike no longer owns the super-shoe arms race, whether bicarb (baking soda) actually works for marathoners, why drafting "like a zombie" might be the most underrated tactic in the sport, and what all of this means for the rest of us trying to chase a Boston qualifier or a PR.

A genuinely fun, occasionally heretical conversation about where marathoning is right now and where it's headed next.

📰 .net

Chapters:
00:00 The first sub-2 marathon — we're still buzzing
01:54 Welcome to Alex Hutchinson
02:30 What made sub-2 possible? (Spoiler: the shoes)
05:59 Are we in another super shoe arms race?
08:53 What does Nike do now?
10:24 The Adidas Pro Evo 3 weight breakthrough
12:17 Are these shoes built only for elites?
14:30 Sponsor: Lagoon pillows
16:10 Hutchinson's 2014 prediction (he said 2075)
20:22 Has marathon training fundamentally changed?
23:55 Sawe's insane negative split (60:29 / 59:01)
29:20 Is resilience actually trainable?
31:00 Is "marathon pace" dead?
33:30 Norwegian method vs. Kenyan intuition
37:30 What this means for recreational runners
41:30 The checklist for the focused age-grouper
45:30 Bicarb for the marathon — does it work?
51:30 Drafting like a zombie
56:12 Will more athletes break 2 — and how soon?
1:01:30 The new limits of human endurance
1:04:00 Hot take: are we actually underperforming?
1:08:45 Alex's first-ever pair of super shoes
1:10:50 The "Endure" postscript and wrap