What are the limits of human endurance?
CrowdScience
BBC
4.8 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 19 October 2018
⏱️ 33 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
When it comes to speed, humans have got nothing on cheetahs - or greyhounds, kangaroos or zebras for that matter. It’s over long distances we really come into our own: when running for hours or even days, our body structure and excellent sweating skills make us able to outpace much faster mammals.
But what are the limits of human endurance? Can we run ever further and faster, and what’s the best diet to fuel such ambitions? This week’s questions come from two CrowdScience listeners in Japan who already know a fair bit about stamina, having run several marathons and long-distance triathlons between them. We head to Greece, legendary birthplace of the marathon, to witness an even more arduous challenge: hundreds of athletes following in the footsteps of the ancient Greek messenger Pheidippides, to run an astonishing 246km across the country. The ever-so-slightly less fit CrowdScience team do our best to keep up, and try to discover the secrets of these runners’ incredible endurance.
Presenter: Marnie Chesterton Producer: Cathy Edwards
(Photo: a runner in the Spartathlon ultramarathon, with kind permission from the International Spartathlon Association)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm Rory Stewart and I grew up wanting to be a hero and I'm still fascinated by the ideas of heroism. |
| 0:09.0 | In my new series, I'm taking in the long sweep of history from Achilles to Zelensky and asking, what is a hero? |
| 0:16.0 | Simply doing your job, being a decent human being. |
| 0:20.0 | A true hero is someone who just kind of shines by |
| 0:23.1 | their own light and that light is to be recognised by others. The long history of heroism with me, |
| 0:28.6 | Rory Stewart. Listen on BBC Sounds. BBC Sounds, music, Radio, Podcasts. |
| 0:42.8 | The racing's the easy bit, the hard bits, the months of getting up at 4 o'clock in the morning training. |
| 0:45.8 | This is just such an amazing spectacle and an event. |
| 0:49.9 | It's a great honour to be able to run in the footsteps of the DVDs. |
| 0:53.1 | Oh, I've been dreaming of these many years, so this is a dream come true. |
| 0:55.2 | Now I just want to start running. |
| 0:59.6 | Hello, and welcome to crowd science from the BBC World Service. |
| 1:06.1 | I'm Marnie Chesterton, and right now, my producer Kathy and I are on top of a hill in Athens, |
| 1:10.0 | in the shadow of the Acropolis, world-famous landmark. |
| 1:12.6 | It's just breaking dawn. |
| 1:25.4 | And we have just watched 400 hardcore runners take off for the start of a 246 kilometre race. |
| 1:34.3 | They're going to help us answer this week's question, which comes from two similarly energetic crowd science listeners. |
| 1:42.3 | Hello, crowd science. I am Alberto Sanz in Saitama, Japan. And my question is, what are the limits of human endurance? |
| 1:49.7 | I'm Aya Matsuda from Hirazuka City, Japan, and I'd like to know what the best diet is for endurance activity. |
| 1:54.0 | So, two questions about human endurance. |
| 1:56.9 | It's limits and the best diet for fueling it. |
| 2:01.9 | We were struck that both of these questions came from listeners in Japan, so we arranged for them to meet up and go for a run in one of Tokyo's most famous jogging spots. And then we gave |
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