Subtitle: Hysterical Strength
Introduction
Posted on August 2, 2024
By Olivia Baker
Have you ever heard of those stories of people lifting cars to save their children who are trapped underneath? It seems as though one of these stories reach the headlines every few years. In 2009, a 32-year-old man lifted a Mercury sedan off the 6-year-old daughter of his neighbor. He tried to lift cars again later that day, but was unable to do so. In 2012, a 22-year-old woman lifted the rear axle of a BMW 525i after her father had been pinned underneath when the car toppled off the jack. These are examples of what we now call hysterical strength − a display of extreme physical strength, beyond what is believed to be within a person's capacity, usually occurring when people perceive themselves or others to be in life-threatening situations. Accessing it is the key to unlocking our greatest endurance.
I chose Endure by Alex Hutchinson for the 23rd installment of Runners Who Read because I believe that everyone can benefit from learning how to use our minds to push through the many challenges that may be thrown at us in running and in life. If we can learn how to harness our own hysterical strength at will, just like those people who lifted cars, we could push ourselves further than we once could have imagined. Whether you're preparing for cross country season, a fall marathon, becoming a first time parent or starting a business, among other things, sharpening the skill of endurance can help you conquer anything.
Discussion Questions:
What is an example of an instance in which you've most had to utilize endurance in life outside of running? Is there a time you can remember that involves running, walking or jogging?
What are you most looking forward to learning from this book?
Subtitle: Where is the Limit?
Part 1
Posted on August 14, 2024
By Olivia Baker
Where is the limit of human performance? This is the question a lot of us get into endurance sport to try to figure out about ourselves … and few of us (if any!) actually ever answer. Many people train hard to take on the grueling nature of endurance events and the best of us accomplish feats that challenge boundaries of human performance few could even bring themselves to believe could ever be reached. Think of Eliud Kipchoge (unofficially) breaking 2 hours in the marathon, Jasmin Paris becoming the first woman (and only 20th person) to complete the Barkley Marathons within the 60-hour time limit, or Camille Herron's 6-day ultra-running world record, completing more than 560 miles. Despite immense fatigue and certainty that we couldn't have gone even a second faster, further or higher, there is always a little more in the tank. As famed professor and exercise scientist Tim Noakes once said, "What is really interesting about exercise is not that people die of, say, heatstroke; or when people are climbing Everest, it's not that one or two die … The fact is the majority don't die − and that is much more interesting." (pg# 36). Why is it that even those of us seeking to find the absolute limit almost always fall short?
The first part of Endure by Alex Hutchinson explores historically and scientifically what many of us have already found to be empirically true. Finding the limit of an individual's endurance, and human capability for endurance in general, is practically impossible, but that hasn't stopped generations of researchers - or runners like us − from trying to figure it out. Over the last 150 years, the pendulum of thought has swung between the theory that the human body is a machine with purely physical limits and the theory that the human body's limits are almost completely psychological.
On one end of the pendulum is A.V. Hill, the man who discovered VO2 max. Evidence to support his human machine theory includes research showing that taking into account a plethora of physical and genetic factors such as VO2 max, lactate threshold and running economy, among other things, can predict with great accuracy how fast a given person can run a marathon. On the other end are the likes of Noakes and Samuele Marcora, who have shown in their body of research the impact of perceived exertion on performance for better and for worse. With each swing, the calculations become more and more complex.
The good news for us, however, is that the scientists do agree on one thing: either way, we can train to get closer to our limits, whether that's tightening the bolts and fine-tuning the human machine or teaching the mind how to better override the body's many physiological responses to fatigue. Therefore, the question that serves us best is not "where is the limit?" but rather "how do we train ourselves best to approach it?"
Discussion Questions:
1. What is an example of
a time in which you thought you were the closest you've ever been to your limit
of performance?
2. What is the greatest
feat of endurance you've ever heard of?
Subtitle: Pain: A Double-Edged Sword
Part 2 (First half)
Posted on August 23
By Olivia Baker
It was a slightly chilly April day at Franklin Field on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania as I stood on the track, waiting for the baton from our incoming third leg. A crowd of nearly 30,000 roared as the penultimate legs of the high school girls 4x800m Championship of America rounded the final turn. Columbia High School of New Jersey, my team, was the defending champion. Edwin Allen of Jamaica was the favorite, having the fastest time on paper of any team. Our victory last year had been an improbable come-from-behind win right at the line that seemed to catch our opponent off guard. Our team wouldn't have that element of surprise, coming in as the defending champions this year. As I received the baton tied for third with the anchor leg of Edwin Allen, the last thought I had to myself was "could lightning strike twice?"
My vision narrowed as I took off around the first turn, nervous adrenaline coursing through my veins. My mind was laser-focused on executing the race plan my coach had given me and my body followed suit, falling back on the muscle memory of having run this event many times. Everything was going according to plan as the bell rang signifying the last lap. I was in fourth, but the three teams ahead of me were well within striking distance. Then, with 300 meters to go, something strange happened. I didn't feel any pain. As I accelerated down the back stretch for the final time, excitement began to fill my heart. For a moment, it felt as though I could go as fast as I wanted without consequence. Flying through the last 200m, I carried the baton across the finish line first, completing our title defense to "USA" chants from an elated crowd. Of course, the pain caught up with me a few seconds after crossing the finish line, but lightning had indeed struck twice. The only other time I've experienced that painless feeling had been at this very race the year before and it hasn't happened again (despite having raced Penn Relays several more times since high school). Needless to say, I also haven't figured out how to channel it on command, but every now and then I wonder what racing would be like if I could.
How would you race if you knew beforehand that you'd feel no pain? Pain, as Alex Hutchinson explores in the second part of Endure, is seen as one of the most prominent limits of human performance, and this question has actually been put to the test. In 2009, researcher Markus Amann injected volunteers with the nerve blocker fentanyl and then asked them to ride a 5K as fast as they could on a stationary bike. Unsurprisingly, they took advantage of having no pain and pedaled as fast as they could from the start. By about halfway, despite still feeling no pain, their speed began to slow. They were reaching the limits of their muscle's capability to fire when told to do so by their brain. In the end, thanks to erratic and overly ambitious pacing, they rode no faster than they had when they received a placebo injection but had pushed their muscles to greater exhaustion, being unable to even walk afterwards (pg#91).
Hutchinson highlights this experiment to show that pain is truly a double-edged sword. On one end is the temptation to quit or slow down and on the other is useful insight into the functioning of the body. As an 800m runner, in an event in which precision pacing under pressure is a key to achieving fast times, I've intuitively come to know the necessity of some pain. Thus, these days I no longer strive to re-create those painless moments from the Penn Relays. Instead, I take advantage of my hardest practices to get to know those pains more intimately and understand how they can inform my racing in real time. So next time, rather than try to block out the pain, let's start learning how to lean into it because more powerful than feeling no pain at all is the ability to read it and know exactly how to respond.
Discussion Questions:
In what ways have you experienced pain as a double-edged sword? When have you found it to be helpful in training or racing? When has it hurt you (no pun intended)?
In the chapter on "Muscle," Alex Hutchinson explains that in short, explosive efforts the limiting factor to our performance is usually muscle fatigue, whereas in longer, sustained endurance efforts the limit is more frequently mental fatigue. However, right at the intersection of both mental and physical fatigue is "that agonizing point, about 600m into an 800-meter race, where you're holding nothing back but can feel yourself slowing anyway. Runners have a phrase for that feeling, though it doesn't show up in dictionaries: to rig." (pg#115-116) Which form of fatigue do you feel most confident fending off? Have you ever experienced "the rig" in a race? In light of this information, what do you think is the hardest event in track and field (and why is it the 800m)?
Subtitle: Fueling as a Strategy
Part 2 (second half)
Posted on September
6, 2024
By Olivia Baker
Did you know that for
every 100 calories of food you eat, you might get 25 calories of useful work?
The other 75 calories are released as heat (surprisingly similar to the
efficiency of a typical internal combustion engine) (pg#143). Unlike the limits
of pain, oxygen and muscle that were discussed in the first half of part 2 of Endure by
Alex Hutchinson, this inefficiency limit cannot be stretched by simply training
(or tricking) our brains into telling our bodies to use more calories for work
instead of heat. In fact, it is one of the least-malleable limits in the human
body. However, by teaching our bodies to selectively burn certain fuel sources
we can effectively optimize the use of those "work" calories to push the limits
of our stamina.
In the second half of
part 2, Hutchinson examines this possibility through the lens of the age-old
debate surrounding whether high-carb (80+% of calories from carbs) or high-fat
(80+% of calories from fats) diets create better performances in endurance
athletes. Both sources have benefits and drawbacks. Carbohydrates are a
quick-burning fuel source that gives the body energy to sustain moderate to
high intensity efforts. They are stored primarily in the muscles, where they
can be used right away, but are also limited in the amount that can be stored
and usually need to be replenished over the course of a long effort. In race
situations, the quick burning of carbs in our muscles is what produces the
finishing sprint, but the depletion of carbohydrate stores is what causes the
feeling of "bonking." On the other hand, the body stores more than enough fat
to make it through even the longest ultramarathons without the need for constant
replenishment and is the primary source of energy for long, low-intensity
efforts. However, the breakdown of fat requires more oxygen than that of carbs,
thus creating the need to consume more oxygen (literally causing us to breathe
more heavily), and burn less efficiently. As Hutchinson puts it, the choice is
between "carbohydrate as a fast fuel with limited storage capability, [or] fat
as an inexhaustible, but rate-limited alternative." (pg#193). To complicate
matters further, dieting toward either high-fats or high-carbs causes the body
to become less efficient at making energy from the other source. So which
option is better?
The answer depends on
the strategic approach you take to completing the given endurance task. Do you
want to sit-and-kick to win a race? Choose carb-loading so that you can muster
the intensity to make that finishing kick and but be prepared to bring gels
along the way to refill this quickly depleting energy source. Do you want to
outlast your opponent in a long distance? Choose the high-fat diet, but start
slow and be sure to stay within a pace that keeps your body mostly aerobic;
otherwise, your body may start burning carbs and heading toward a "bonk". Any
such drastic change in diet should be made under the advisement of a
professional, but with huge adaptations that have been shown to occur in lab
settings within a matter of weeks, it is worth considering as it may just be
the edge we need to achieve greater performance in our endurance tasks.
Discussion
Questions:
1. When preparing for a
long race or endurance task, do you prefer a high-carb, high-fat, or other type
of diet during training? Do you fuel mid-race?
2. With regard to the prototype shoes (that we now
know as a form of "Super Shoe") that Hutchinson observes as he is covering Nike's
sub 2-hour marathon project, he comments that "Technology evolves, but when it
evolves so quickly that it effectively picks winners, that's a problem." (pg#
204-205). Do you agree with him? Do you think that shoe technology in running
has evolved to the point at which it has tarnished the sport?
Subtitle: The Belief Effect
Part 3
Posted on September 20, 2024
By Olivia Baker
Two things can be true: One, there are real (legal in sport, not doping) performance-enhancing supplements with large bodies of evidence supported by peer-reviewed research showing that they work, and two, the performance advantage that comes from the aforementioned supplements relies in large part on our belief that they will work.
In other words, interventions like altitude, caffeine, beet root juice and the like have proven physiological benefits for endurance athletes, but many of those benefits are driven by our body's response to the belief that they will work. In the final section of Endure by Alex Hutchinson, he refers to this phenomena as the belief effect and makes the case that when it comes to pushing our limits, this effect is the greatest performance enhancer of them all.
While they may sound similar, belief effects are distinctly different from placebo effects. Placebos are used in laboratory settings and require the deliberate deception of participants for testing purposes, such as giving one group a caffeine pill and another group a sugar pill (and telling them it's a caffeine pill) before a time trial. Placebo effects often work in one-off lab settings, but do not continue to work over time because their effect is not rooted in any truth or even believable deception that will last. Eventually, people will realize they're being deceived. Belief effects, on the other hand, are able to be sustained because they are rooted in truth or at least some empirically supported evidence.
Let's revisit the caffeine pill example. Caffeine supplementation before competition has been shown to increase performance by 1-3 percent. Most people who take caffeine before endurance competitions experience this performance boost. However, research has shown that people who believed they received either a moderate or high dose of caffeine experienced 1.3 and 3.1 percent better performance respectively in cycling time trials despite having been given sugar pills (Pg#254).
Furthermore, people who were given sugar pills or were mistakenly given decaf coffee on race day, had a good race and then decided said pill or drink is their lucky charm to continue experiencing benefits in future races. This is also why superstitions have been shown to enhance performance. In other experiments, simply telling someone that their golf ball is lucky boosted golf putting performance (pg#254). Telling runners that they look more relaxed makes them burn measurably less energy to sustain the same pace (pg#254). No matter how we get to a place of sustained belief, it is clear that developing it comes with benefits and points to something even more powerful.
The greatest performance enhancing benefit comes from believing that anything can make you better, to also believing that there's more in the tank and the limit is further away than initially thought. The most valuable thing an athlete can learn throughout their career, and perhaps that anyone can learn as they face any challenge, is that they can do more than they initially thought.
There's a tinge of irony in the fact that a book that sets out to determine the scientific limits of performance and how to break them concludes that it's mostly in our head after all. Both the limits themselves and the ability to breakthrough them comes down to primarily believing that those limits exist, and then believing you can go that much further, faster, higher, etc. As Hutchinson puts it in the closing of his book "…when the moment of truth comes, science has confirmed what athletes have always intuited: that there's more in there—if you're willing to believe it." (Pg#262).
Discussion Questions:
What are your thoughts on the conclusion of this book? Do you believe in the power of belief alone? Why or why not?
At the beginning of chapter 13, Hutchinson discusses the potential drawbacks of attempting to run a perfectly (evenly split) paced race. He writes "If you execute a perfectly paced race, that means you effectively decided within the first few strides how fast you would complete the full distance. There is no opportunity to surprise yourself with an unexpectedly good day: you've put a ceiling on your potential achievement from the moment the starting gun fires. As a result, this approach produces better results on average, but is less likely to produce dramatic outliers: jaw-droppingly fast (or slow) times." (pg#248-249). Which is your preferred strategy when preparing for a race? Do you prefer to shoot for even splits or are you willing to go out faster than goal pace with the higher risk/higher reward strategy?