"The Rotterdam Shift" - our vote for "article of the day"

Kibet and Kwambai (and yes, Kirui) showed that even if you've never won a marathon, even if you've never broken 27:00 for 10k, and even if your marathon PR is in the 2:07s, you can still master the marathon distance and maybe even break the world record.

More specifically, I see this shift marking the end of the lone superstar breaking away early to cruise to victory.

All of this is largely mental. Mental barriers on performance limits, mental barriers about optimal race execution strategy, and mental barriers about who can compete with who. As these barriers go away, we're likely to see more and more unknown athletes winning marathons and running incredible times. Nobody's going to run away from a pack early or catch up late. From here on out, you either get on the ride from the beginning and have more gas in your tank or you lose.

It's actually become quite simple.