![]() But in the build-up to Breaking2 - held at Monza's historic race track in Italy - he now admits he was struggling to practise what he preached. Kipchoge is also a fan of the phrase 'no human is limited'. Back then, to run under two hours he was looking at taking over three minutes off his personal best. In May 2017, the Nike-organised Breaking2 event saw Kipchoge take on the two-hour mark for the first time. And, more crucially, the man with experience of the incredible individual pressure that comes with running a specially organised marathon whose sole focus is to go where no-one has gone before. The world record holder, Olympic champion and winner of 11 of his 12 marathon races. The moment you get complicated it distracts your mind."įor the 1:59 Challenge team, the biggest question was: Which athlete could produce a modern-day Roger Bannister moment? He lives by the mantra: "Living simply sets you free."Īs Kipchoge told me in April: "You run, eat, sleep, walk around - that's how life is. He is known as the "boss man" by his running partners but that doesn't stop him cleaning the toilets or doing his share of the daily chores. Despite his multi-millionaire status, for nearly 300 days a year he lives and trains away from his wife and three children at a training centre in Kaptagat, a tiny village in the Kenyan highlands. The 34-year-old's methods are notoriously simple - and humble. " Brailsford, Kipchoge and Ratcliffe pictured together at a party celebrating the Kenyan's remarkable achievementīack in Kenya, Kipchoge was beginning a journal of his own - a training log for the biggest challenge of his life. I got myself a book to write in about the experience. I behaved in a ridiculous way - it's quite embarrassing really looking back. "I look back now and think I was ridiculous, I really do. Through June, through the Tour de France," he says. ![]() "I worked really, really hard on it from April time onwards. First of all it was in a different sport, which was really appealing, and it was a landmark in making history rather than just winning a race."Īnd so, with the help of a self-help journal he penned along the way, Brailsford agreed to take on a workload that he now acknowledges was absurd. But this felt like a fairly unique opportunity. What was exciting about it was that I'm normally involved in trying to win races or winning Olympic medals. "When Jim asked me it was kind of 'take a deep breath' because this is going to be a lot of time and commitment. "I found out that I'd got cancer around March, which I wasn't expecting," he says. But Brailsford also had another issue to contend with far closer to home. Taking on such a massive project (between 300-400 people worked on it) during a hectic summer of professional cycling would have been a lot for anyone. "This sounds a bit geekish but I read quite a lot about how you can educate yourself quickly and learn fast."Ī month earlier Brailsford had been asked by his new boss, Ineos chief executive and Britain's richest person Jim Ratcliffe, whether he would take on a role as CEO of Kipchoge's attempt. By night he was studying into the small hours, learning as much as he could about marathon running. Kipchoge's sub two-hour marathon was anything but.įor Sir Dave Brailsford, the story began during the first week of May's Giro d'Italia.īy day Team Ineos' cycling boss was making sure the first Grand Tour since a switch from Sky's backing went smoothly. On the face of it, running is one of the purest and simplest sports on the planet. His design took two weeks for local workers to complete - "they thought I was nuts" - before it was undone and returned to normal 12 days later. Ketchell's solution was to dig up the roundabout and start again, turning the -2% camber into a +1% one. Good for taking rainwater away from a tourist attraction, terrible for a marathon runner trying to make an about turn while travelling at 13mph. The presence of a historic building in its centre meant that the road had been designed with a -2% camber. He is a man well schooled in sport's one percent advantages - the so-called marginal gains. Why? As a data scientist Ketchell has helped Team Ineos (formerly Team Sky) win three Tours de France. For the next four hours until sunrise, he kept a one-man watch over this hump in the road - a pivotal piece in the complicated jigsaw of Kipchoge's 1:59 Challenge. Ketchell was desperate to check nobody was trespassing on a small roundabout that had been his second home for the past two weeks. He was so unsettled that he jumped out of bed and hotfooted it 3km across Vienna. But 3,500 miles away in Austria, American scientist Robby Ketchell was woken by a nightmare at 3am.
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