Racing spikes similar to the ones worn by Hicham El Guerrouj during his former world record run. Photo courtesy of Henry Bissell.
ONE OLYMPIAN ON THE STORY OF JOSH KERR’S RECORD-BREAKING MILE TIME AND THE LONG-TERM IMPACT OF MODERN TECHNOLOGY ON MIDDLE DISTANCE RUNNING.
*Henry Bissell was a student in the College Now Introduction to Journalism class at the City College of New York.
Earlier this month, on July 18, legendary middle distance runner Josh Kerr broke the one mile world record, which had stood for 27 years. Although Kerr will forever be known as one of the greatest milers of all time, one expert says modern technology played a hand.
“Everything’s changed in the last twenty years. I was in the Olympics twenty years ago, and the time to qualify for the 10,000 meter run now is one minute faster than I had to do twenty years ago, which is nuts,” said John Henwood, a New York City-based professional runner and trainer. Henwood competed in the Olympics in 2004 in the 10,000 meter run.
When Josh Kerr from the UK broke the men’s mile world record with a time of 3:42.66 at the Diamond League meet in London, the previous world record of 3:43.13, held by Hicham El Guerrouj from Morocco, had stood for nearly three decades.
Three-time mile world record-holder and President of World Athletics Sebastian Coe reacted to Kerr’s victory, saying “One of my guys actually asked me if I thought he was going to do it. I said ‘I’m not sure. I don’t know.’ I was really, really skeptical. But he did it…. Remind me again never to doubt the Scottish brew.”
It took 27 years to shave off less than a second. But will it be another 27 years before we see a faster mile? Experts say that, due to two new running innovations in particular, that’s doubtful.
In particular, pacing lights, or lights that cycle around the track at exactly the pace that the runner is attempting to achieve, are critical for milers trying to get personal records. The modern Wavelight LED pacing system was invented and first used around 2017 in Zeewolde, Netherlands, and made its competitive debut in 2018. This means that while Kerr had the advantage, El Guerrouj did not.
According to Henwood, pacing lights are better than a human pacer, which is what El Guerrouj had, “because the pace light is going at the same speed the entire way, so it takes out human error.” Directly comparing the two races, El Guerrouj had a human pacer for the first 1400—out of 1600—meters, and Kerr had a human pacer only the first 1000 meters, but his digital pacer continued throughout the race.
Henwood added, “on TV they said, ‘Oh, it’s hard because El Guerrouj had a [human] pacer for longer, whereas the pacer dropped out earlier [for Kerr] so Kerr had to do it on his own.’”
“It’s actually the other way around,” he added, “it’s much easier because Kerr has a light to follow the entire way, right? So, when you get a pacer dropping out with a lap to go, then you’re just left to do it yourself.”
Another major advantage for today’s runners is the invention of carbon-plated shoes both for training and racing. These shoes were introduced in 2017 by Nike and began to be used regularly. Shoes like the VaporFly 4% were created specifically to enable runners to break the 2-hour marathon barrier, in a project called the Breaking2 Project.
Carbon-plated shoes improve running speed by lowering the energy required to run at a given pace. The plate inside the shoe compresses when the runner’s foot hits the ground and then springs back, returning the energy of the step back to the runner. Studies show they can improve efficiency by roughly 3% to 4%, allowing runners to go faster with less effort.
Josh Kerr during his recent mile world record wore the custom Brooks Hyperion 222 racing spikes fitted with a carbon plate and energy returning super-foam. The spikes were fine-tuned and tested in the lab just for Kerr’s 3:42 mile attempt. On the other hand, El Guerrouj wore Nike racing spikes without a carbon plate or any energy-returning foam. The Nike shoes El Gurrouj wore had almost no energy return and were only used because of the light Nike fabric and the metal spikes to prevent slipping.
Over the past 30 years, running shoes have come a long way in terms of comfort and stability–as well as speed. This helps today’s runners not just in terms of avoiding injury and running longer distances without severe discomfort, it makes run recovery time shorter, meaning that runners can do more training in shorter time periods, so they can become fitter for race day.
According to Henwood, Kerr “could go out and run a 20-mile run in these nice cushioned shoes, and then go and do a hard workout the next day without waiting two days to recover.”
“So,” he continued, “the shoes play a bigger part in the recovery and training.”
Toward the end of my conversation with Henwood, I asked him if he thought that if El Guerrouj had the technology Kerr had, he would have gone far below the time that Kerr did last week.
Henwood replied, quite simply: “Yes.”
Series: High School Journalists