On the morning of 25 September 2022, Eliud Kipchoge lined up for the Berlin Marathon with a world record already to his name. Four years earlier, he’d run 2:01:39 on the streets of Berlin. Now 37, and a double Olympic champion, he was back to see if he could go faster still.
Berlin gave him every chance to put his best foot forward; an overnight drizzle had cleared before the 9:15 AM start, leaving a cool morning in the low teens, with light south-easterly winds breaking up the last vestiges of the morning cloud. As someone who traded the cooler climes of a European autumn for Australia’s year-round sunshine, they sound like the perfect running conditions to me.
On Kipchoge’s feet was a pair of Nike Air Zoom Alphafly NEXT% 2s in Total Orange: a full-length ZoomX midsole, a curved carbon plate, Zoom Air pods under the forefoot, and an Atomknit 2.0 upper. It was the same shoe that had gone on sale to the public three months earlier and what many considered the latest evolution of the prototype the Kenyan runner wore during his historic sub-two-hour marathon attempt in Vienna in 2019.
The plan was to reach halfway through the Berlin Marathon just past the hour mark, at around 60:50. But his legs, Kipchoge will tell you, felt good, so he went for it, passing 10km in 28:22 – a time that would have placed him 17th in the Olympic 10,000m final in Tokyo the year before. He kept going, reaching 15km in 42:32, a pace that only the pacemakers, Ethiopia’s Andamlak Belihu, and defending champion Guye Adola could follow.
Kipchoge hit the halfway mark in 59:50, one of the fastest first halves in marathon history. He was already well ahead of his previous record pace, and people began to say the unthinkable: a sub-two-hour marathon, in a real race.
The last pacemaker stepped off at 25km, and Belihu dropped back two kilometres later. With 15km to run, Kipchoge was alone with the clock, and the early pace started to cost him. With two kilometres left, his margin on the old record was down to 36 seconds.
He sprinted the final 500 metres through the Brandenburg Gate and, smiling down the finishing straight, stopped the clock at 2:01:09, 30 seconds under his own record and almost five minutes clear of Mark Korir in second place. “After 38K, I knew I would be capable of breaking the world record,” he said afterwards.
For those counting, that’s around 2:52 per kilometre, kept up for 42.195km. It’s the same pace that would leave us flailing forward in an expected heap on the floor after just a few strides. But that’s why Kipchoge is the greatest marathon runner the sport has produced and truly embodies the US brand’s founding philosophy, credited to co-founder Bill Bowerman: “If you have a body, you are an athlete.” If that’s true, Kipchoge sits a little further down the track than the rest of us.
Next week he brings that philosophy to the Nike Melbourne Marathon, the third stop on a seven-city world tour that’s taking Kipchoge from the southern tip of Africa to the unforgiving ice sheets of Antarctica. He’ll also be the first athlete to line up for a marathon in the Apex, Nike’s new elite racing shoe, some three months before they’ll hit the shelves.
“I felt like flying.”
— Eliud Kipchoge
Of course, he’d say that. It’s the latest in what many in the sport have dubbed the super shoe – an elite footwear arms race that’s quite literally pushing against the realms of possibility in this increasingly popular sport. And one that Kipchoge himself has been closely involved in for the last thirteen years, running, testing, and innovating with Nike’s innovation department to develop what many will consider to be the pinnacle of race-day shoes on the market today.
At the heart of the Nike Apex sits the first-ever double-stacked Air Zoom unit in a racing shoe, an idea Nike pursued for more than eight years before it could make it work within the rules. At 40mm at both heel and forefoot, it sits right at World Athletics’ legal limit for road-shoe stack height. Every millimetre of legal height goes to Air, ZoomX LT foam, and a redesigned inverse wave carbon plate.
“What excites me about the Apex is the double stack,” Kipchoge says. “The double stack comes with benefits; it comes with stability, with cushion. The sole rocker is wonderful. The transition right from the back of the foot to the toe is free and is seriously smooth, in a happy way. So, it's the best shoe ever – you are like flying.”
At 190g in a men’s US10, it’s 15% lighter than the Alphafly 3, too, designed for long-distance running and good for about two marathon attempts. It lands in January 2027 for $500.
But first, Melbourne, where Kipchoge will offer the world its first look at Nike’s most advanced shoe in a controlled marathon environment.
“The running culture in Australia is crazy. Australia in general is a running country. It's a running continent, I can say that.”
— Eliud Kipchoge
“Last year I was in Sydney,” Kipchoge smiles. “Where I saw with my own eyes how beautiful the city is and how people love running in Sydney. Now I'm going to the sporting city of Australia, which is Melbourne, which I think will be even crazier than Sydney, because this is the city of sport. So I'm really looking forward to seeing the people. I'm looking forward to running on the same road that Formula 1 is driving on, with that speed.”
The course in Melbourne this year is also faster than 2025, with up to 20% less elevation gain and around 30% fewer turns than last year. Crucially, the 2km climb from Birdwood Avenue to Domain Road at the 36km mark – a hill that has devastated plenty of PB attempts through the years – is gone. So is the false finish via Southbank Boulevard, so runners now get clean air all the way to the ‘G, finishing with a lap of the hallowed turf in front of the jubilant Melbourne crowd. Not that many runners will be taking a beat to take in the sights.
Somewhere well behind Kipchoge, I imagine, I’ll be on that start line too, wearing the Nike Air Zoom Alphafly Next% 3 (in a rather dashing electric blue). It’s my first attempt in Melbourne, ticking off a bucket list run I’ve held since moving to Australia all those years ago.
“In a great marathon course, what I'm looking for is how flat the course is. And I think Melbourne deserves to be called the best [in the world] because it's really flat. And when you tell me the news now that the corners have been cut by 30% and the elevation is 20%, it shows that this is what I've been looking for. This is what the elite athletes are looking for.”