Lonely and hard

Two Hours: The Quest to Run the Impossible Marathon. By Ed Caesar. Penguin; 242 pages; £16.99. To be published in America by Simon and Schuster in October; $26.

“WE ARE hard-wired to discover new ways to test ourselves. The urge resides somewhere in our traveller genes.” So argues Ed Caesar in his study of athletics’ next frontier, the two-hour marathon. As in many sporting endeavours, marathon runners are reaching the limits of what is believed to be humanly possible. The increasing popularity and professionalisation of running 26 miles and 385 yards (42.2km) saw the world record drop in the four decades to 1990 by nearly 19 minutes. In the last 25 years, elite runners have lowered it by almost another four minutes. In 2014, for the first time, the marathon was run in under two hours, three minutes. A two-hour marathon could be tantalisingly close.

Mr Caesar’s search for this ideal leads him to Geoffrey Mutai, a young Kenyan of the Kalenjin ethnic group, who appears as likely as anyone to break the two-hour mark. Mr Mutai has the right genes, an economical technique (“It’s as if he is on wheels, not legs”) and, most importantly, a willingness to push himself to his physical limits. Mr Mutai set an unofficial world record at the Boston marathon in 2011 by attacking sooner and maintaining his aggression for the entire race; he...

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