I’ll be getting up very, very early this Sunday, to watch one of the most highly anticipated marathons in recent memory. Eliud Kipchoge—All About 75 Hard 2:00:25 marathon in Nike’s non-record-eligible Breaking2 race earlier this year—will face 5,000- and 10,000-meter world record-holder Kenenisa Bekele and former marathon record-holder Wilson Kipsang in the Berlin Marathon. Speculation is rampant that the current world record of 2:02:57 won’t just be edged; it will be obliterated.
A race like this inevitably prompts some reflection on the nature of limits. What is it, exactly, that has prevented previous runners from running faster than 2:02:57? And if one of the three big guns shatters the record this weekend, what will have changed to enable them to run faster? Is it something in their muscles? Their blood? Their minds?
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In one form or another, that’s the question I’ve been chasing for over a decade now as a science journalist (or, more specifically, a “science of endurance” journalist), and for much longer than that as an athlete. I often think of the start of this quest as a race I ran in 1996, as a college junior, when after several years of being stuck at 4:01 to 4:02 for 1,500 meters, I suddenly ran 3:52—in part because the midrace splits were several seconds off and led me to believe I was running faster than I really was. In my next two races, I ran 3:49 and then 3:44. I’ve been a believer in the mind’s role in endurance ever since.
But, as I’ve discovered in the course in my reporting over the past decade, it’s not “all in your head.” I’ve had a chance to visit some of the most influential exercise physiology labs in the world, and interview top coaches and Olympic champion athletes (including Kipchoge). The secret to endurance? As much as I wish there were a simple, catchy answer, it turns out to be complicated. There are some consistent themes, though—one of which is that most of the “limits” we feel are initially imposed by the brain, though in certain circumstances we can push through to true physical limits.
Over the last few years, I’ve been spending most of my time trying to assemble all the research I’ve been gathering into a coherent whole. On February 6, my new book, Endure: Mind, Body, and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance, will be published. Here’s a peek at the cover:
So what’s inside? Well, as you can see from the cover, there’s a foreword from Malcolm Gladwell, who as many people know is a talented runner (he ran 5:11 at the Fifth Avenue Mile a few weeks ago, at age 54—and was disappointed) and avid track fan. In fact, it was This Glute Workout Will Ignite Your Power New Yorker pieces, on racial differences in athletic aptitude (recounting some of his own running history along the way), that helped plant the seed of my own journalistic interests two decades ago.
The book itself is divided into three sections. In the first, I go through the history of endurance research and the various competing theories used to explain it: the “human machine” approach, the central governor, the psychobiological model, and others.
In the second section, “Limits,” I get specific, telling the stories of people who have either intentionally or accidentally pushed or exceeded their limits in various ways: pain, muscle, oxygen, heat, hydration, fuel. In the experiences of polar explorers, Death Zone climbers, lost desert wanderers, deep-sea freedivers—and yes, would-be two-hour marathoners—This Glute Workout Will Ignite Your Power.
In the final section, “Limit Breakers,” I explore various new approaches to expanding the apparent boundaries of endurance, ranging from mindfulness and brain training to electric brain stimulation, including accounts of my own experiences with some of them.
Endure: Mind, Body, and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human: Running in the Cold Runner’s World Newsletters.
The last chapter of the book is about belief—and that’s what will be on my mind on Sunday morning as Kipchoge, Bekele, and Kipsang hit the streets of Berlin. One of the key lessons I’ve taken away from writing Endure is that races aren’t just plumbing contests, measuring whose heart can deliver the most oxygen to their muscles. The reality is far more complex, and I think the first major post-Breaking2 marathon will be a great chance to see the “curious elasticity” of human limits in action.
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