Marathon Handbook Podcast

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Michael Doyle and Alex Cyr (Katelyn is on a well-earned vacation) reset the Marathon Handbook Super Shoe Power Rankings for Spring 2026. We cover the full overall Top 10, including prototypes, then run a second Top 10 of the most accessible super shoes — the ones you can actually buy.

Previous Power Rankings — Winter 2025 (December)1. Adidas Adios Pro Evo 22. Puma Fast-R Nitro Elite 33. ASICS Metaspeed Tokyo Sky / Edge4. Nike Alphafly 35. Saucony Endorphin Elite 26. Adidas Adios Pro 47. ASICS Metaspeed Ray8. On Cloudboom Strike LS9. Adidas Adios Pro Evo 110. New Balance FuelCell SuperComp Elite 52. Current Power Rankings — Spring 20261. Adidas Adios Pro Evo 32. Puma Fast-R Nitro Elite 33. ASICS Development Shoe (ME5 Type One / Type P)4. Adidas Adios Pro Evo 25. ASICS Metaspeed Tokyo Sky / Edge6. Nike Alphafly 47. Adidas Adios Pro Evo 18. ASICS Metaspeed Ray9. On Cloudboom Dev 5 (LS)10. Brooks Hyperion Elite 63. Accessible Top 10 — Spring 2026 (shoes you can actually buy)1. Puma Fast-R Nitro Elite 32. ASICS Metaspeed Sky / Edge3. Nike Alphafly 34. Adidas Adios Pro 45. Saucony Endorphin Elite 26. Puma Deviate Nitro Elite 47. Hoka Cielo X1 v3.08. New Balance FuelCell SuperComp Elite 59. Brooks Hyperion Elite 510. On Cloudboom Strike

Michael and Jessy are back after covering Boston and London, and this week's five stories cover everything from a polarizing youth running debate to one of the most shocking marathon debuts in American history.
In this episode:
An 11-year-old from Indiana, Ben Dick, ran 1:20:14 at the IU Health 500 Festival mini marathon — reportedly the fastest half ever run by a boy his age. He dropped his dad at mile seven. The internet is split. We dig into what happens to these kid phenoms long-term, and why pediatricians (and Jessy's kinesiology background) say the half marathon distance is too much for a developing 11-year-old body.
Sprinter Abby Steiner is suing Puma and Mercedes-Benz Grand Prix, claiming the carbon-plated shoes and spikes she wore caused the foot and Achilles injuries that have kept her off the track since the 2024 Olympic Trials. We unpack the questions this raises about athlete responsibility, sponsor accountability, and how you even quantify a derailed sprinting career.
While the running world was glued to Sebastian Sawe's near-sub-two London Marathon, 25-year-old Vinny Mauri quietly ran 2:05:54 at the Glass City Marathon in Toledo, Ohio — the fastest U.S. marathon debut on record. Before the race he joked that if he didn't break 2:16 he wasn't a real marathoner. He broke the course record by more than 13 minutes. Nobody had heard of him. His Twitter feed is mostly Bitcoin memes. Expect a major brand to scoop him up fast.
Cocodona 250 has kicked off in Arizona — 253 miles from Black Canyon to Flagstaff with 40,000 feet of climbing and a 125-hour cutoff. Courtney Dauwalter is the clear women's favorite (and looking for redemption after dropping out last year), but the field is deep with Rachel Entrekin, Heather Jackson, and surprise headliner Randy Zuckerberg. The men's race is wide open with Jeff Browning, Joe McConaughy, Ryan Clifford, and Adam Kimble all in the mix.
And finally — the running brand quietly dominating the industry isn't Nike, Adidas, or Asics. It's Brooks. Their best quarter ever: 23% global growth, North America up 20%, EMEA up 30%, China up 136%. Eleven straight quarters as the #1 specialty performance running brand in the U.S. Michael shares early thoughts on the unreleased Hyperion Elite 6 (out August), which Jess McClain and Clayton Young raced in Boston.
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The two-hour marathon barrier is gone. At the 2026 London Marathon, Sebastian Sawe became the first person ever to run under two hours on a record-eligible course — and Yomif Kejelcha did it too, in his marathon debut.
Outside columnist and Endure author Alex Hutchinson joins Michael Doyle, Alex Cyr and Katelyn Tocci to make sense of it.
We get into:
Why Hutchinson thinks the shoes (the Adidas Adios Pro Evo 3) are still the biggest single factor — and why Nike has lost its grip on the super-shoe race
Sawe's astonishing negative split: 60:29 out, 59:01 back, with a final 5K that put him on 1:52 marathon pace
Whether the marathon is even the same race anymore — and whether "marathon pace" as a training concept is dying
Norwegian-style threshold blocks vs. classic long marathon-pace work
Resilience and durability — what they are and how (or whether) you train them
Bicarb / sodium bicarbonate: the science of why it works, and whether marathoners should bother
Why drafting "like a zombie" might be the most underrated tactic in distance running
What's actually possible from here: 1:57? 1:56? Are we further from our potential than we think?
The recreational-runner takeaways: shoes, fuel, sleep, and what to skip
A wide-ranging, occasionally contrarian conversation about an inflection point that may reshape the sport for the next decade.
📚 Books by Alex Hutchinson:Endure: Mind, Body, and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human PerformanceThe Explorer's Gene
📰 Sweat Science Substack: alexhutchinson.net

Sebastian Sawe just ran 1:59:30 on the streets of London — the first sub-two-hour marathon in history on a sanctioned course. And he wasn't alone. Yomif Kejelcha, in his marathon debut, ran 1:59:41 to make it two sub-2s in a single race. On the women's side, Tigst Assefa lowered her own women's-only world record, with Hellen Obiri running a huge PB just under 2:16 for second.
Michael Doyle, Alex Cyr and Katelyn Tocci recorded this instant reaction from Knees Up on Hackney Road, with Jessy Carveth dialing in live from the finish line media center — including a quick word with Sawe himself before the press conference.
In this episode:
The moment the media center went silent — and then erupted — as Sawe came around the final bend
How a 90-second negative split delivered the first official sub-2
Yomif Kejelcha's astonishing marathon debut and what it means for the next decade of the event
Tigst Assefa, Hellen Obiri, and the women's race that almost got lost in the sauce
The Adidas Pro Evo 3: why Adidas held it back from Boston, and what it does to the shoe wars
Where John Korir's 2:01 in Boston now sits in the conversation
Athlete vs. shoes vs. nutrition: the Maurten data on Sawe's pre-London block
Whether the marathon has finally been "figured out" — and what that means for the rest of us
Boston vs. London as a race weekend, the case for a two-day London in 2027, and why this one race may have just changed the sport

Michael Doyle and Jessy Carveth sit down for their full elite preview of the 2026 London Marathon, breaking down the top five storylines ahead of Sunday's race.
Sebastian Sawe and Jacob Kiplimo headline a men's field that Sawe himself says will require a course record to win: 2:01:25, set by the late Kelvin Kiptum in 2024. Kiplimo arrives fresh off a ratified 57:20 half marathon world record in Lisbon and a World Cross Country title in January. Sawe is expected to debut the Adidas Adios Pro Evo 3, setting up a head-to-head super shoe war against Kiplimo's Nike Alphafly 4.
The women's race took a hit when two major names withdrew, but Tigst Assefa (defending champion and women's-only world record holder) and Helen Obiri make it a showdown worth tuning in for: Obiri finally gets her shot at a flat, fast course after a career built on the hills of Boston, New York, and Paris.
In the men's field behind the big two: three former track stars: Yomif Kejelcha, Hagos Gebrhiwet, and Joshua Cheptegei: try to translate their 5K/10K brilliance into 26.2. Cheptegei is still looking to crack the marathon; Kejelcha and Gebrhiwet are both making their debuts.
The British field takes a hit with Emile Cairess withdrawing injured, leaving Mohamed Mohamed, Phil Sesemann, and Patrick Dever to chase Mo Farah's national record of 2:05:11. On the women's side, Eilish McColgan enters with a healthy buildup and a European 10K record (30:07 in Valencia) to her name.