Marathon running has significant room for optimization in terms of course temperature, terrain, and curvature.

“so you're going to choose a course that optimizes temperature it optimizes terrain it optimizes curvature so there's a lot of things you know you knew right away the way marathons were run and mostly continue to be run there's fat on the bone in a way that there isn't in sports like track or uh you know if you look at the tour de france there's fat on the bone but no one cares about the time compared to track cycling where everything is optimized so marathons is are this kind of anomaly where they're run in a tour de france style in a very uncontrolled environment with which differs from from race to race and yet we care about time”