Dr. Philip Skiba said students should not be so quick to dismiss what they learn in math class and ask, “When am I going to need this?”
Skiba, director of sports medicine at Advocate Health Care in the Chicagoland area, has used the principles of integral calculus to become a world-renowned expert in elite athletic performance.
Skiba, who lives in Highland Park and works out of Advocate Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge, has been instrumental in developing world champion and gold-medal winning triathletes using his patented algorithm designed to accurately predict how an athlete will perform based on how they have trained.
Earlier this year, Skiba was part of a team of five elite sports scientists, all with different areas of expertise, contracted by Nike on a project called Breaking2. The project, which was featured in a one-hour special on the National Geographic Channel on Sept. 20, was an effort to train three of the world’s best distance runners in the hope that one would complete the first sub 2-hour marathon.
Skiba and his algorithm featured prominently in the project and the television special.
“When you are a kid in math, you think you’re never going to need this. Well, actually you might,” Skiba said. “Here was the kind of problem you can solve with the math that is taught in high school or early college. It’s using practical-level math to help do something everyone thought impossible.”
Breaking2 ultimately ended with Kenya’s Eliud Kipchoge, the 2016 Olympic gold medal-winner in the marathon, running the fastest recorded marathon in history in 2 hours, 0 minutes, 25 seconds, but just missing the goal.
In the months leading up to the race, which took place May 6 in Monza, Italy, Skiba and the sports-science team traveled to Beaverton, Ore., Kenya, Ethiopia and Spain, helping to prepare Kipchoge and fellow world-class runners Lelisa Desisa of Ethiopia and Zersenay Tadese of Eritrea for their attempt at the record.
With a reported 13.1 million viewers, according to Nike, having watched the final attempt live on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, Breaking2 caught the attention of road-racing fans and general sports fans alike.
But Skiba said the project was about much more than just eclipsing a running record.
“Studying the limit of human performance, as a doctor, that’s important,” said Skiba, who said information gleaned from studying the elite athletes can be applied to his everyday patients.
Skiba said the idea of striving to achieve something once thought nearly impossible is also a reason Breaking2 was relevant and inspirational.
“How many times have we heard this or that is incurable?” he said. “But we found a way to cure polio and certain types of cancer. Being able to find a way doesn’t come without the desire to do it. You have to want it.”
Dr. Vincent Bufalino, president of Advocate Medical Group, said it’s important for the group to have doctors, like Skiba, who are pioneering new treatments and technologies and at the forefront of their fields.
“Dr. Skiba’s groundbreaking work continues to push the bounds of human performance,” Bufalino said.
Skiba’s groundbreaking work started not on elite athletes, but on Skiba himself. Using his training/performance equation, he was able to take 10 minutes off his 5K time.
“It didn’t make me fast, but it made me 10-minutes faster,” said Skiba, a former college volleyball player, who has done a few triathlons, but described himself as a science guy with a calculator.
Skiba began working with elite athletes in 2005 and came to prominence in 2008 by helping turn 38-year-old triathlete Joanna Zeiger into the Ironman 70.8 world champion and record holder.
Skiba also developed the training system the British Triathlon Federation used with its elite athletes ahead of the 2012 London Olympics. British triathlete Alistair Brownlee went on to win the gold and his brother, Jonathan Brownlee, captured the bronze.
“Dr. Skiba looks at efficiencies and biomechanics and optimal performances. It’s fascinating,” said Carey Pinkowski, the longtime executive race director of the Chicago Marathon and an Elmhurst resident, who said he’s quite familiar with Skiba’s work.
Skiba said his trip to Africa earlier this year for the Breaking2 project was an eye-opener for him, as he got the chance to see firsthand how that continent’s elite runners train.
In Kenya, where the entire visit was filmed by a NatGeo television crew, Skiba said he was amazed at Kipchoge’s spartan existence while in training mode. The Olympic champion routinely leaves his friends and family to stay at a rural training camp, where he and a few other elite runners focus solely on their sport.
“You realize why people in the western world have so much difficulty competing with these guys,” Skiba said. “These guys don’t have any Facebook or Twitter. They run in the morning, eat, sleep, run more. There are dirt roads. There was an old red dirt track, which was uneven and had plants growing out of it. Here you have the fastest (distance runner) alive, and he’s using a plastic bottle to indicate where to start (a run). It had a very ‘Rocky’ vibe.”
Kipchoge’s climactic final run at the Formula 1 car track in Monza may have been the fastest 26.2-mile run ever recorded, but it only went down as a world best instead of a world record because the event used pacesetters, who rested in-between shifts on the track.
Some critics of the event called it a publicity stunt, or an attempt by Nike to sell shoes.
Pinkowski, said he was intrigued by the whole Breaking2 project, but that certain traditionalists were not willing to accept the results of a run that took place in a highly-controlled environment, rather than one with variables — like other runners, wind, heat and hills — a competitor must deal with during a normal marathon.
As for pacers, Pinkowski noted the legendary Roger Bannister had two of them running with him when he ran the first recorded sub-4-minute mile in 1954.
Skiba said he viewed the Breaking2 project, which was not scheduled to continue after the Monza event, as an important step forward in a process that could eventually lead to somebody running the first sub 2-hour marathon.
“People talk about the first guy to climb Mount Everest,” said Skiba, referring to Sir Edmund Hillary, who reached the summit with Sherpa Tenzing Norgay in 1953. “But (Hillary) had (people from previous expeditions) who had made a path (on the mountain), which made it easier.
“We’re the guys plowing the way for other guys to get to the summit.”
This article has been modified to reflect the following correction:
Dr. Philip Skiba developed the training system the British Triathlon Federation used with its elite athletes; however, he did not directly train the Brownlee brothers.
Dan Shalin is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.
Twitter @Pioneer_Press
