The shoes definitely help, but there are all sorts of other innovations that get far less press.

More is known about optimal fuelling, hydration and sleep. Improve those and you improve your daily training. Better quality training compounds and allows you to reach closer to your talent ceiling.

Kerr also had a system set up so his bedroom had less oxygen than the rest of his house (to mimic sleeping at altitude).

He had two pacers breaking the air for the first 1,000m (although he had to do it himself the rest of the way, which was bloody impressive). Meant he could relax mentally for the first 2.5 laps and didn't have to focus on pace. I think El Guerrouj set the previous WR in a race without pacers.

They also had pacing lights on the track which helps the pacers run at an even pace.

And there are all sorts of innovations like taking sodium bicarbonate to reduce muscle acidity, nitrates to dilate the veins and increase blood flow to muscles and high doses of caffeine to reduce the rate of perceived exertion.

As someone else mentioned, track surfaces are generally a little bouncier now than they used to be.

▲ wging 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> I think El Guerrouj set the previous WR in a race without pacers.

El Guerrouj had two pacers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvCsj7eJKKA

In fact, looking at this race, Tanui (the second pacer) actually stays on the track for longer than today's pacers did.

	▲	cwbuilds 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Yep, you're right - thanks for the correction.

▲ nianderwallace 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

from https://www.telegraph.co.uk/athletics/2026/06/23/josh-kerr-m... [turn off javascript to read entire article]

  Dr Kyle works out the precise dietary requirements to support my training while my performance chef Jameel Austin does the shopping and makes the meals to ensure I implement that. Everything I put into my body is cooked by Jameel. He also works in a restaurant as a pastry chef – that’s not a food on my menu – but he comes to our house every Monday and Thursday to prepare the meals.

  We also do an eight-day coffee fast before races. A coffee about three hours before the race should then have more impact. Regular blood-work informs whether any supplements are recommended by Dr Kyle. Supplements that I might have at different times of the year include vitamin D, omega-3 or beta-alanine.

  Like most runners now in almost every distance and endurance sport, I will also take sodium bicarbonate before a race, but I never bother in training. Sodium bicarbonate is essentially baking soda and has long been known to buffer hydrogen ions and thus delay muscle fatigue. Its usage, however, has increased over recent years after it was produced in a gel that helps to bypass the gut and thus reduce the risk of gastro issues.

▲ rustyhancock 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Nitrates to dilate vessels just seems like cheating in the PED sense

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nradov 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Nitrate supplements wouldn't seem to meet the WADA criteria for inclusion on the prohibited substance list because they don't present a health risk to the athlete. A lot of endurance athletes are using beetroot supplements and so far there haven't been any adverse effects.

https://www.wada-ama.org/en/what-we-do/world-anti-doping-cod...

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cwbuilds an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You'd have to ban beets if you want to ban nitrates. Caffeine is more of a performance enhancer than nitrates, but they wouldn't ban it because everyone drinks coffee.

Sleep is the biggest performance enhancer. They should ban that.

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goodmythical 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Where do you draw the line? (I know that the answer to that question is always 'somewhere') No one's getting significant levels of baking soda from their diet, and caffeine is a relatively recent cultural addition to most diets.

The gels are much the same. Getting the same nutiritional ratios used to require carefully controlled eating and certainly weighed vastly more than the gels adding both weight and complexity and likely being less performant.

Most(?) sports handle this by maintaining multiple leaderboards. The sub two hour 26.2 mile run was broken years ago, but the sub 2 marathon race was only recently completed, for instance. The difference being that the original was done much like this one in that it was paced, on a track, etc while the later was run in typical marathon conditions with other racers, variable winds etc.

	▲	nradov 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Athletics has never maintained any sort of "leaderboard" for unsanctioned exhibitions. When Eliud Kipchoge ran a marathon-distance time trial sub 2 in 2019 it was an amazing feat of human performance but no one was under any illusions that it was a record.

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jebarker 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

There are off the shelf supplements that are widely used for this, e.g. BeetElite which contains nitric oxide derived from beet juice. I can testify that they do offer a real performance benefit - in my case I've found them beneficial when running at altitude as a (very) amateur. I'm not sure how/when something like this should become a banned PED.