General Discussion

He said that he felt that he and all of London participated in this record, as he felt their support. I've never run the London Marathon, but I know all of the points on that course well.

The east Africans run from childhood - it's embedded in their culture - run distances to school (Eliud Kipchoge holds one of his arms in a somewhat peculiar position as that's how he held his schoolbooks when he was a boy), and they have the perfect build and physiology to do it. Curiously, according to quite a number of them, most of their countrymen don't continue running as adults, although obviously others do.

The elite runners go out so fast that the pacing bikes have to sprint to stay ahead - I saw this when I was at the Honolulu Marathon when the front pack (pacing bikes/wheelchairs/elite runners) - we hadn't started yet (big crowd) and the front pack had taken the turn onto the main course. I saw the lean cyclists on their racing bikes hauling like crazy up the slight hill to stay ahead of the pack, all in the misty pre-dawn darkness.