Ballarat’s Birmingham plays pace role in bid for world’s first sub two-hour marathon

The 32-year-old was among a group of pacers taking turns to lead a three marathon men in the historic effort on Saturday afternoon, Ballarat time, in Monza, Italy.

Reigning Olympic marathon champion Eliud Kipchoge was the sole finisher, crossing the line in two hours and 24 seconds – tantalisingly close to the two-hour barrier that continues to elude the world’s best distance runners.

The Kenyan set out with half-marathon world record holder Zersenay Tadese (Eritrea) and two-time Boston marathon winner Lelisa Desisa (Ethiopia) in Nike’s Breaking2 attempt, run on a 2.4-kilometre circuit on a section of the Autodromo Nazionale Monza Formula One race track.

Their efforts were streamed live on social mieda, via Twitter and Facebook, attracting more than 110,000 views on the latter.

Nike left nothing to chance in its scientific preparation: completing extensive tests on the athletes, revolutionary shoes, course, weather and even have ultra-flat timing mats providing near instantaneous data on pace while they are running, according to Athletics Australia.

The date of the run was even given a three-day window so that the best conditions could be had for the runners, with it only decided this week the run would start on Saturday at 5:45am in northern Milan.

Birmingham ran three stints as a pacer, each time for about five kilometres. 

Not new to pacing marathons, Birmingham is preparing to contest a marathon in Europe later this year.

Birmingham arrived in Milan from a training camp with Melbourne Track Club in Mount Laguna, California, after a lengthy time sidelined with injury last year.

Kenyan Dennis Kimetto hold the marathon world record 2:02:57, which he clocked in Berlin 2014.

This attempt in Italy will not be ratified as a world record, because it was not a conventional marathon.

Meanwhile, leading into the attempt, Australian and Ballarat marathon legend Steve Moneghetti weighed into the debate, telling foxsports.com.au that either way, it was an intriguing experiment that would accelerate the natural evolution of running.

“It’s not something I thought I’d see anytime soon but if they did it, it would be amazing,” Moneghetti said

“I’m not sure if it’s possible but never say never and while there’s obviously a few things in their favour, at the end of the day they’ve still got to run bloody fast.”