Learning to run 100-mile marathons thanks to the science of self-control
qz.com
qz.com
Anyway, let's throw out willpower and even genetics for a second so I can bring up something: In today's age, virtually no one is even remotely close to their physiological limits.
Literally, hundreds of people (elite marathoners, a few ultra marathoners, cross country skiiers) out of billions of people are bumping up against physiology. These people will do anything for the smallest performance gains (1%).
Really, if you have not achieved a level where you are ~5-8% body fat and run consistently at 100 miles (or more) a week, you are not anywhere that close. Trust me. This is kind of even standard for competitive college distance runners - and even they are likely making mistakes that hold back their development (diet, drinking, running too many miles at too fast of a pace, etc.)
Yet we can take someone who is 20% body fat, and runs 10 miles a week. You will find this person finishing an 100 mile ultramarathon. It's not that uncommon, if the time cutoffs are liberal. 18 minute miles is walking pace.
The author even mentions he didn't think he was obese. He just didn't know the reality of things, I'd argue. He had to have this concept of willpower (concentration) to learn. And to change his diet and training habits. And even his understanding of what is possible.
It's magical to chalk things up to grit - but there is so much process of knowing how the lows feel during a race, what to eat while training, how fast to do each run while training, how much to run while training, how to stay hydrated while racing, how to get nutrition while racing, etc.
"Tough" or "in control of self" to me is too emotionally loaded.
Edit: I almost feel bad writing this because it takes some of the magic that gets marketed about it. But this is a science-oriented crowd and should be exciting to know there is more of an opportunity for the objective than a lot of people believe.
Thank you for pointing this out. I'm so sick if people telling me they ran a marathon only to find out they walked. I'm totally fine with that being an accomplishment to finish, but it's entirely dissimilar to those who were racing.
It's one thing to be proud of your own time, it's entirely unsportsmanlike to criticize someone not as good as you.
If you tell me you RAN a marathon, I'll think that you RAN a marathon. If you walked a marathon and you think that's a great accomplishment (and it very well may be), I'm also very happy for you. But it's not the same thing. Conflating the two is dishonest and devalues what others are doing. It's the difference between building a website as a fullstack dev vs building one using Square Space. It's not that there's anything wrong with Square Space, but if you tell me your a software engineer afterwards, I'll think of you the same way I think of marathon walkers who tell me they ran a marathon.
I'd disagree though that the grit/toughness thing to me is too emotional. My marathon time is 3:38 - reasonably fast for an amateur, but nothing blazing. ~8 minute pace. I know that getting that time faster is 100% about my commitment level. I know I could be faster, but I just don't want to invest the time and pain in it. I enjoy running, but I'm not trying to be super competitive.
So I think it is emotional for 99.9% of people. Only those .1% of people you mentioned are hitting the physical limits, as you said.
In other words, I agree with your facts, but I think the interpretation is wrong (or I'm misunderstanding). The key ingredient is the willpower, the consistency, and that comes from an emotional place.
By analogy, there's a difference between an HN celebrity, someone who does programming for a living at a typical skill level, and someone who claims to be an engineer - but cannot complete FizzBuzz.
Ultras are also far less populated by folks with an elitist running mentality. It is more about being in nature and a personal journey, which is why Ultra appeals to a certain crowd. Olympians and the guy down the road have more in common with their running experience than not.
The human race didn't fight tooth and nail for 40,000 years to give everyone education, a code of laws and civilization, safe lives that include both work and leisure, so that I could bump into the limits of my physiology. How is that a normative goal?
There are no mountain lions chasing me whose escape pushes me to the limits of human physiology - and I for one prefer to keep it that way!
On the one hand that's true but on the other hand, the vast majority of people aren't operating at their theoretical mental limit either, either way a vast amount of wasted potential.
I'd add elite soldiers to that list, which would take it up to tens of thousands maybe.
I think the latter may be more interesting and useful: not many can afford the time commitment to eating, sleeping, and training to the max. But when a high-school kid takes 30 seconds off his 1600m PR in the meet with the rival school? That's just because he didn't know he had more available.
There is also the case of the people who can rise above what their physiological markers predict, somewhat consistently - and then conversely, people who are strikingly under performing.
Ultras are a different beast entirely, as its more of a "survival" test of muscles, ligaments, and bones than that of sustained running performance--even top ultramarathoners will walk during races. Ultras are about physiological limits of our bodies to handle stress; the 2-hour marathon is about the physiological limits of running.
Lydiard-ians would disagree - at least for a base phase.
But I will agree that if you are running even 7min/miles for your easy and recovery runs, many get injured at 100 miles a week. Many do. And that disrupts their development in the worst way possible!
Interesting article on that: http://www.letsrun.com/news/2006/09/wejo-speaks-why-i-sucked...
But sure, I also agree - ultras versus marathons are different types of limits. Or mountain races versus marathons versus something like an ultra like Badwater.
Badwater is (more) brutal now that it has a night start, and experience only counts for so much...
But please don't treat 100 mile weeks as some trivial task. I have been running for > 25 years and have run from a 4:40 mile to a 2:44 marathon and 1:15 half and my max week was 84. I was doing consistent 70 mile weeks in college for a while and finally couldn't continue due to injury.
I do agree with your core point that most people have no idea what their true limits are. I have seen friends who hated to lose pass out at the finish line of a race. I find I don't even improve until I hit about 40 miles a week with at least one LT run of 4 to 6 miles and a >= 13 mile long run. That only takes about 4 to 5 hours a week (not including extra showers, drives to runs, necessary strength work, etc.) I guarantee most spend far more than that on Netflix et al.
P.S. Congrats on your race!
Nice ad for "sword" sportfood products, though.
For one thing, running 100 mile races isn't a very good standard for willpower or self control.
There is virtually zero use for this capability, so whether you spend 5-10 hours a week to do so or not isn't really a question of self control.
It's a question of what activities/hobbies you want to pursue in your free time.
Staying fit is a good-for-you type of thing, but you don't have to do anything close to that level of training to stay fit.
My advice, whether you want to get/stay fit or achieve some athletic endurance goal is to make sure you find a way to enjoy the training.
It takes consistent long-term training and you wont't have to worry about your willpower Or self control if you enjoy doing it.
Along those lines: start slow - the hardest and most painful part is getting started. E.g., use a C25K program; find your own goals - whether that's completing 100 mile runs, or a 5K PR, or 1000 miles this year, or an 8:00 pace or a 365 day running streak or whatever.
That's a major point of the article, given it's discussion of the spillover effect: "The bottom line: Practice self-control in one area of your life, and you can apply it in other parts, too."
But that doesn't suggest that's the best way to do it generally, or that running in particular is an effective or efficient way to do it.
Look, I get it. I run and it takes time so there's pressure to justify it.
But I don't see why the basic truth isn't enough: he enjoys it and it staves off his feelings of impending mortality. (In this case, I suspect he may also be trying to monetize it, but who knows.)
Plus, a whole slew of writers say that willpower is an expendable resource.. resist the cookie in the morning, and you will be less likely to resist a candy bar in the afternoon..
Oh really?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endurance_running_hypothesis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistence_hunting
"Lacking guns and even bows, they could hunt only by digging traps or pursuing prey across the mountains until the animals collapsed from exhaustion. Dmitry built up astonishing endurance, and could hunt barefoot in winter, sometimes returning to the hut after several days, having slept in the open in 40 degrees of frost, a young elk across his shoulders."
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/for-40-years-this-russ...
Not even. At the top of the sword page:
> FORGET SUGARY SPORTS DRINKS The simple solution for hydration and fuel is here.
Follow the link to find the ingredients:
> Ingredients: Maltodextrin, Fructose, Citric Acid, Salt, Sodium Citrate, Natural Flavors
But I remember reading Tim Noakes' whole ~1000 page tome "Lore of Running" 15 years ago (in high school) which discussed the idea at length and thinking "If only I could have some control over my central governor, I could run under 4 minutes." Is that the same as hoping to "will your way" to a sub 4:00 mile?
Not sure where the research stands now.
http://www.nature.com/news/1-500-scientists-lift-the-lid-on-...
Also, to be fair, the willpower hypothesis that was discredited is really about ego-depletion, the idea that willpower is (or reflects) a finite resource that is used by an array of neuropsychological processes. It's not that crazy of an idea, as there are many limits in human behavior and physiology.
This guy: https://youtu.be/96VZFklUM_Q runs ultra marathons, using fat for fuel. He leaves his fellow competitors in his dust because he doesn't have to carry glucose packets to keep his body fed. Instead, he finishes his race with an avocado and bison jerky.
How do you know that is why he leaves others in the dust, vs him just being more talented, or training more, or training smarter, or just setting higher goals than the last generation of endurance runners?
Also you should keep in mind that while there is at least a plausible story you can tell about > 5 hour endurance efforts benefiting from some kind of fat burning approach, from 5k to marathon, you absolutely want to be burning glucose if you want to go as fast as you can go. This is unambiguous.
In regards to your first point, I mean, in the video, he stated that he used to try running with the glucose packets and he stated that he got sick trying to keep it all down, and it really slowed him down. It's anecdotal evidence of course, but I wasn't trying to present as anything other than that. :-)
Edit: Holy run-on sentence. I'm going to leave it for posterity.
But early on, you don't need to worry much about it, just get out and move every day. If you keep it up for a year or two, and want to get faster, you can start adding things to be neurotic about =)
There are a LOT of other factors. Who's on top in the ultrarunning world is constantly changing, and, the ultra races are extremely vaired: 100 mile road races to the Barkley Marathons.
Just last year, Karl Meltzer broke vegan runner Scott Jurick's Appalachian Trail speed record. Obviously, they had very different diets.
I think the real requirement for ultrarunning (and other long-term thinking activities) is grit. Grit includes will power but also the ability to endure.
Low-ish carb is great. It helps you endure long runs overall and it's a good habit in general. Especially for recovering after the race and getting all those calories back.
During the long run itself however, glucose packets are absolutely necessary. You run out of glycogen stores every 45 minutes or so. That's when you start cramping up and having trouble. A glucose packet gives you some caffeine (helps with stamina and pain tolerance), and some electrolytes (helps with cramping and hydration), and some 100 calories of sugar (helps with glycogen levels and mental fortitude).
Crucially, you aren't replacing all the calories you burn. That's impossible. In a 4 hour marathon I burn between 2500 and 3000 calories. The packets replace only 500 calories.
The difference between packets and no packets is that with packets, I am able to be a human person after a marathon. Far less cranky, far less tired, generally feeling okay. Without the packets, I'm basically a walking zombie.
That said, it took a lot of practice to figure out the right timing for those packets, to train my body to absorb them and so on. It's definitely not something you want to start experimenting with on race day. That's a recipe for puking.
I used to puke anything I had when I ran.
My digestion couldn't handle food when I was running. It was a mix of slight heartburns (& coffee) causing a sensitive stomach which didn't like food moving around when I ran and partly because I was running so hard my stomach didn't have enough blood to process the food.
Several weeks of eating peanut butter mini sandwiches with their crusts cut off, banana slices and oranges dipped in salt, while running at a moderate pace, I managed to tame the tummy.
That said - I don't think I like the taste of GU gels, but like coffee or beer, you get used to it (& the extra 100Kcal feels like it goes directly to your legs).
Personally, I've switched to mostly liquid nutrition, currently using a custom blend from Infinit. For 6+ hour races, I'll supplment with a PBJ sandwich or a bar of some sort.
And like another person mentioned, it takes some practice to get used to it. A lot of people have trouble digesting anything while running.
I found that just like my legs needed training to withstand a marathon, so did my digestive system need practice to process and retain enough calories. Eating 4000+ calories on a long run day used to be pure torture. But you get used to it.
Try something like flapjacks or even rice cake [1]. It's more suitable as bike nutrition because of the ergonomics but at the end of the day it's all just carbs.
If you don't like any of that or the solid food is difficult to swallow in a race, you can try just water mixed with maltodextrin. It's a very slight sweet taste.
1: https://www.britishcycling.org.uk/zuvvi/media/bc_files/izone...
I can run a 13mi run, and maybe some extra, without gels. Even without water. But in my experience I can't do it for a 20+ mile run.
And my fasted runs are generally slower than nonfasted runs regardless of how I actually feel while running it. For example, when I train every day, my morning runs before a full day of eating are abysmal. My evening runs are nice and fast.
Worse still, when training every day, I've noticed that what and how much I eat the evening before, has a huge impact on my morning run as well. (I tend to do my long runs early in the morning because fitting a 4h run in the evening is tough)
Maybe my problem is the every day training part. It makes nutrition crucial so I can get enough recovery out of my body.
You don't need glucose packets. They might help speed you up a bit, but as long as you've built up your range progressively, the human body can go without them. As I mentioned above, I used to do > marathon distances once or twice a month in the mountains for fun (which I realize is very different than racing. I did dozens if not hundreds of 50k+ runs and have never yet even tried a gel pack. Some of those runs were at a weight of over 90kg!
Yes, you'll burn a ton of calories. I often found I weighed in at a full 5kg less after a run and probably 0.5kg less after re-hydrating. Sure, I was never anywhere near as good at long distances as mid distances, but you don't need gel packs. At least I didn't for anything up to 50k, and I probably could have gone further if not for the logistics of carrying enough water and dealing with the heat and humidity that go along with living on a semi-tropical island.
Not to mention the majority of people will feel absolutely terrible trying to run in a depleted state. And there is no good reason to inflict that extra hardship on yourself when you can eat a large carb dinner and have enough glycogen to carry yourself through a half marathon
(Why can this guy still get good results? Ultra marathon is not at all a highly competitive sport. Someone to the far right of the genetic bell curve can handicap themselves with pure fat metabolism and still perform good. They would be absolutely killed in say the marathon distance where there is much higher selection pressure, if you want to call it that. Also, you don't run ultra distance at a high effort level, say 50-60% of VO2max - so here fat metabolism is naturally more pronounced anyway)
And you are always burning fat. Human minds like to break it up into nice progressive steps or state machines but the actual body is just a highly parallel beast. Just that as you get closer to VO2max, the proportion shifts dramatically in favor to glycogen over fat.
Knowing where your walls are ... that's been one of the self-reflection exercises for me. Because it is an extremely personal limit & moves about with weight, food intake, sleep debt, hydration and local weather.
The physical sensation of hitting the wall is somewhat orthogonal to all the other health benefits - it is an extremely accurate read of your physical condition on that day & tells you how you're doing.
The top competitive distance runners (a group dominated by Kenyans and Ethiopians) generally eat over 70% of their calories from carbohydrates. Naoko Takahashi said she loved Korean barbecue. Bill Rodgers, the dominant marathoner of the previous genration, seemed to live off of pizza slathered in mayonnaise. Paula Radcliffe talked about eating a lot of fruits, yogurt and granola. While many, many runners have sworn by various odd diets, it doesn't look like anyone has been able to get a sizable edge from theirs.
I only raced 5-10k ranges, but I used to run greater than marathon distances once or twice per month in the mountains for fun so I can have some personal experience with "walls". Even a skinny person has enough fat on them to run for far longer distances than any race I've heard of. The "walls" are more about glycogen limits in your muscles. Extending the wall is mostly an issue of how high your aerobic threshold is, how well you can spare glycogen at the beginning (though this probably matters less for ultras) and your running efficiency.
All three of these factors are influenced by diet to some degree but training is by far the more important factor. Strangely, caffeine has a bigger effect than macro-nutrient composition.
Here he is making a banana smoothie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96VZFklUM_Q&feature=youtu.be...
I've observed that the only apparent constant among all finishers is above average fitness, a reasonable approach to food and drink while racing, and a total commitment to finishing.
Every race has some bare foot runners and some Hoka devotees. You see fat people and thin people. Old and young.
Every finisher suffered tremendously, yet he or she refused to quit.
I'm touching these words on my monitor. I can feel the pain. Ugh ...
However, only when I started running I noticed how much this sport can influence one's life. There are no shortcuts, talent has almost zero influence, and it depends only on you how well you perform. I started about a year ago, more seriously about 3 months ago, and I already see how much I'm improving in other areas of life.
You mention football and basketball, which are essentially a series of short sprints. Sprints are _much_ healthier for people than 100-mile marathons that will essentially bathe your body in cortisol.
http://www.marksdailyapple.com/the-evidence-continues-to-mou...
In football / basketball, so much depends on chance, your team, your opponents, the referee etc. You can work more / better and still end up with worse results. Or vice versa.
In running, you mostly compete against yourself (unless you are a top athlete, but that's another story). You set your goals, you work to achieve them and it depends only on you. So yeah, grit , determination or however you call it, will make you progress, and you can measure it with an easy objective function (your time vs your past times, distance).
The only time I ever caught up with anyone was when I did more than the coach/instructor asked.
Most of the tragedies in day to day life are really minor but most of us lack perspective. I wouldn't wish an actual tragedy on anyone, but there are people in my life who could definitely benefit from taking up an endurance sport or doing real volunteer work.
I think a half marathon or a century (100 miles on a bike) will change your tune about the line at the DMV or how they don't have the phone case you wanted in the right color.
1. the guy is only an example. Willpower alone will not make you run 100 mile-race. You need the right body as well.
2. most people don't try and run 100 mile-races because they have better things to do
3. willpower and success: seriously this is really self congratulatory. running 100 miles does not make anyone a more succesful person.
4. no mention of endorphines and running addiction?
You need to get in shape first, obviously, but unless you have a condition that prevents you from doing that, you can do it.
I get the impression you haven't done much distance running, because the article is spot on when he says it's almost exclusively about determination.
#2 just seems like you're being a dick. #3 is unprovable, and #4 is something I rarely hear any serious runner talk about, and it certainly isn't the reason I run at all.
Other 2 articles I had found interesting (both found on YC):
http://nautil.us/issue/50/emergence/how-the-oil-pipeline-beg...
http://cosmos.nautil.us/short/161/how-much-should-expectatio...
Edit: Maybe it's easier to talk about power to do things.
> Strength: ... I built my mental strength by running even when I didn’t want to—when I was sore, stressed, or sleepy.
He built his will power by doing things he didn't have the will to do? One of the pillars of his self-control is that he has self-control? Maybe I'm missing something or jumping on the easy mockery, but this seems circular or common-sense.
I do agree with you in that by this same logic, you have a better chance of arriving at great self-control if you start with decent self-control.
When I hear "I don't have a say in the matter" I read frustration, not dismissal.
I'd posit that when people say that, they don't mean it literally. Or, rather, it's the best they can articulate the internal struggle. I've found the language I know (English) to not provide me with the tools to describe the nuance of the sensation of lacking self-control or willpower.
What I describe going forward is hard-won from long term introspection, and it still falls short of effectively communicating what I am really trying to say.
I would wager that, for a not insignificant fraction of people, when they tell you they "don't have a say in the matter" they are trying to articulate the feeling/sensation of having the intellectual understanding of the situation i.e. (paraphrased for brevity) "I should do X because it has benefits Y and Z, instead of A which has downsides B and C" but where merely having that understanding is insufficient to compel (willpower, initiative, motivation, w/e) themselves to action, for however long they choose to linger on it in their mind.
Sure, and so did thousands of others. Bill Gates clearly didn’t become a modern Croesus because he was a better programmer, this is just trying to shoehorn Microsoft into the at once self-evident and ludicrous 10000 hour idea.
Here's the full quote: "Bill Gates spent thousands of hours learning how to program computers—but he only had that opportunity because he had the good fortune of having parents who supported his education."
I think you're in violent agreement that 10,000 hours isn't sufficient.
[1] http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/body/marathon-challenge.html
As well, probably anyone healthy can slowly jog a marathon with enough time to prepare.
But not everyone can qualify for boston, or make the olympics.
I participate in these kinda of events.. I'd be interested to know where you are getting your information.
This isn't meant to suggest that 100milers are easy or dumb, just that if you imagine someone actually running 100 miles straight and think that sounds nearly impossible, it is. Most people aren't doing that. If you think a 100 miler sounds interesting, you should try it, because you can probably do it. But please prepare really well because it is going to be really hard.
So, almost anyone can finish a marathon, with motivation and preparation. I can't remember for sure, but I think the participants had about a year and were given some excellent coaches whom they met with regularly.
Ultras require substantially the same kind of training as marathons, though you'll certainly have a different fueling and pacing strategy.
Alternatively, try doing boring work you hate for hours because bills needs to be paid. It is less pleasant then doing sport you like.