Endure: Mind, Body, and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance

by Alex Hutchinson

“But you know, we are human.” It’s precisely that fact—his very human vulnerability—that has made Kipchoge’s run such gripping viewing for everyone who stayed up late or stumbled out of bed to watch it. And it’s what connects all of us, as we confront our own personal limits on the bike paths and mountain trails of the world, to those pushing back the limits of our species. Nothing is inevitable; nothing is simply mathematical. Kipchoge, I decide, has just come as close as anyone to truly touching the outer perimeters of his physical capacity. And that leaves me excited about the future—because, as he insists amid the good-natured post-race tumult on the racetrack in Monza, it was never just about him. “The world now,” he says, “is just twenty-five seconds away.”