Eliud Kipchoge’s Running Form – Winning Berlin 2023
On September 24th 2023 Eliud Kipchoge won the Berlin Marathon for the 5th time in a time of 2:2:42 seconds. While this time is slower than the world record of 2:01:19 he set in Berlin the previous year, this was a still a dominating performance by the 38 year old. It was the 8th fastest marathon run ever.
A user uploaded a video of Eliud Kipchoges run to Movaia.com. I thought others might be interested in the analysis too. Find the video here, or read on if you prefer the text version!
Eliud Kipchoge’s Running Form Metrics Deep Dive
We start again with cadence – and no surprises there. Eliud Kipchoge’s cadence of 183 is right about where you’d expect it for a world class marathoner.
Even in the final kilometer of the race, Eliud Kipchoge still shows a perfect mid-foot landing. Many, even elite runners, tend to shift towards a more rear foot landing as the race progresses and they fatigue.
Kipchoge achieves a maximum shank angle of 12 to 14 degrees. He lands close to his body with a near vertical shin, generating a Strike Angle of 3 to 4 degrees. This gives him a very powerful 10 degrees of “sweep” in every strid. This allows him to generate lots of power after his foot touches down.
Interestingly this is the same amount of sweep we observed in the running form analysis of Tigist Assefa’s record breaking run in the same race.
Another similarity is that Eliud Kipchoge also barely moves his trunk back and forward during his gait cycle. He presents about 5-6 degrees forward lean at mid-stance.
This directs forces applied to the ground in the direction he is travelling and engages hips and glutes nicely. A much more pronounced forward lean would decrease step length. A more common lesser lean would make him less efficient.
Eliud Kipchoge runs with perfect posture. His hips, thorax, neck and head are on a perfectly straight imaginary line.
He is equally efficient with his arms.
Bending his arms between 60 and 70 degrees allows him to support his high cadence. This also avoids wasting energy with excessively long levers from a larger arm angle.
Eliud Kipchoge controls the forward and backward movement of his arms well. His wrist stops at his torsos center line when traveling backward and so does his elbow when the arm moves forward.
There you have it. This is the run form you need to win the Berlin Marathon. Just don’t forget to run two times a day, do strength training and hit 130 miles or over 200 kilometers a week 😊
Eliud Kipchoge vs. the Rest of The World
After the race some commented that Kipchoges fastest times might be behind him. The rational is that he did not improve upon his world record in good conditions. Then again this might simply not have been his perfect day and Eliud Kipchoge was running by himself for large portions at the end of the race. So it might be too early to count him out just yet, the upcoming Olympics certainly will give him lots of training motivation.
It will be exciting to see him fight with the young guns such as Kelvin Kiptum, who holds the second fastest marathon time at 2:01:24 and was born only in December 1999.
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