How Assefa ran 2:11:04 on a ruptured Achilles
Steve Magness explains the pain science, Brady Holmer says the shoes did part of the tendon's job.
The argument about Tigst Assefa's Berlin win has moved on from how tough she is to how a ruptured Achilles let her keep running at all.
Steve Magness laid out the timeline. Assefa started feeling pain at 31km and pushed through, and she was still on 2:09:45 pace through 40km. After that she was visibly limping and slowed a lot. Her manager, quoted by Magness, said "With a tendon like that, I don't know how she could finish." She still won in 2:11:04, the third-fastest marathon in history, as reported earlier. Magness says post-race scans confirmed a complete Achilles tear, surgery, and roughly six months out of competition. LetsRun says she skipped post-race press obligations and flew to Munich for the surgery.
With a tendon like that, I don't know how she could finish.
Magness on why the pain did not stop her
Magness points to Henry Beecher's World War II study of 215 severely wounded soldiers, about a third of whom said they felt no pain at all. The model he cites is Howard Fields' motivation-decision idea, that your brain weighs pain against everything else you want right then and can turn it down when the stakes are big enough. Magness says he did the same thing in a 2014 half marathon, closed his last mile in 4:30 to win, and was out for months with a partially torn Achilles. His verdict is that toughness is a decision-making process, and sometimes the tough call is to quit.
Holmer says the shoes did part of the work
Brady Holmer's reply is more specific. He argues a carbon plate, thick resilient foam and a rocker act like an external spring and lever that takes over part of what a healthy Achilles does. That means lower demand on the calf, slower muscle shortening, and propulsion from the midsole that happens whether or not your tendon is intact. Less ankle range of motion is required because the shoe rolls you over the forefoot.
What it actually means. Nobody is saying the shoes caused the rupture or that Assefa did not hurt. Holmer's claim is narrower and more interesting, that running 2km on a torn Achilles at that pace is a thing the current generation of race-day shoes made physically possible.
But this couldn’t happen in the pre-supershoe era.
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