On May 6th, 2017 Nike's #Breaking2 project took the running world by storm, when Eliud Kipchoge ran 2:00:25 for the marathon. Kipchoge will now race for the official world record this weekend in Berlin LIVE on FloTrack in more than 100 countries!

This post is mostly an excuse to feature the incredible photo above that Victor Sailer got at the finish line of the 5K at the 2003 IAAF World Championships. That year at worlds, Kenenisa Bekele won the 10K on August 24; Hicham El Guerrouj won the 1500m on August 27. Those two men have the world records in those two events, and their clash in the 5000m final on August 31 promised to be an all-time great meeting in the middle. 

Eliud Kipchoge of Kenya ran 2:00:25 tonight in Nike's Breaking-2 marathon attempt. The time just missed the two flat mark, but is more than two minutes faster than the standing world record of 2:02:57, set in 2014 by Dennis Kimetto of Kenya. Kipchoge's time will not count for record-keeping purposes, due to pacers utilized throughout the entire race, but the run -- which was live streamed on Twitter and Facebook with a free feed provided by Nike -- was revolutionary. No one can deny that the sub-two-hour marathon is out of the realm of possibility any longer.

Nike's attempt to get a man under two hours for 26.2 miles is kicking off Saturday morning at 5:45 AM in Italy--11:45 PM Eastern time on Friday night. We'll have the stream embedded and live updates for you on FloTrack. Below, three of our staffers try to make sense of it.

Say what else you will about the Nike Breaking2 Project, but you have to admit that as a brand promotion it has already been very successful. Even before one step has even been taken in the attempt to go sub-two hours over the marathon distance, a buzz has been created. Set to take off in early May on an 2.4K/lap oval race track in Monza, Italy, famous for hosting a Grand Prix and Formula One races, three men, one car, and two sets of four pacesetters will make the attempt. There are rumors that the car will be electronically controlled to go at 1:59:50 pace, 28:25/10km, and the three runners will be assisted by two sets of four pace runners going 5km on, 5km off. 

When adidas and Nike announced separate sub-two-hour marathon attempts less than a week apart in December, the obvious question was: why now? One answer was: to sell shoes.

After reporting earlier this week that Nike's sub-two-hour marathon attempt won't be on a record-legal course, the Wall Street Journal's Sara Germano reports today that adidas is gunning for its own sub-2:00. That attempt, according to the report, will be on a record-legal course and "is at least two years in development and has already yielded a prototype of a running shoe." 

Nike will announce today that it has handpicked three men for a sub-two-hour marathon attempt in the spring of 2017, according to a Runner's World report. (RW's Alex Hutchinson writes that Nike gave him and an editor access, so it's safe to assume that this report is true.) ​