[Bagor]

Physiologists have posited that the feat is physically possible. In 1991, in a pithy and now famous paper, a polymathic medical student named Michael Joyner calculated the fastest marathon for the perfect athlete in optimal conditions to be 1:57:58. (Joyner, who is now an anesthesiologist and exercise physiologist at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, will be watching the Vienna attempt more closely than most.) Bolstering Joyner’s optimism was the self-evident truth that all athletics records eventually fall. On the other hand, the sub-two has, until recently, been literally unimaginable, perhaps especially to élite runners. Derek Clayton, an Australian who was once the best marathon runner in the world, and whose time of 2:08:33 at the 1969 Antwerp Marathon was not beaten for twelve years, wrote in 1980 that “I might live long enough to see a 2.06 [but] a two hour marathon—4.34 mile pace—definitely not.” Clayton is seventy-six years old and still living in Australia.

https://www.newyorker.com/sports/spo...eliud-kipchoge

Video with some neat info regarding the science behind the attempt.

https://www.bbc.com/sport/av/athletics/49971113