How did Eddie Izzard manage to run 43 marathons in 51 days?
news.bbc.co.uk
news.bbc.co.uk
In the end when you look at the positive effect the organization in his name has had its truly remarkable. The 29th annual Terry Fox run was actually last Sunday.
Still, it seems rather an amazing feat because of the repetitive stress injuries he has sustained.
The body is a fragile yet a very resilient machine. Amazing how it adapts to physical demands. The brain is more amazing having the ability to fool the body that the physical necessity is real and not just a will to prove something. It proves that a strong body is nothing without a strong brain.
Still... wow!
He redefined what it means to run a marathon, that's all. Trying to do this but running maximally would be another feat indeed.
But wow - very impressive none the less.
Ermm, no he didn't. Or if he did I can "redefine" running a Marathon to walking to Starbucks in which case I did 2 Marathons today. I bet there are many people who do a 10-hour Marathon in a day's shopping...
Good for him raising money for charity, but there are people in the world like Dean Karnazes who really do run 50 marathons in 50 days - and Karno has raised huge amounts for charity himself.
(3:40 Marathon runner)
It would certainly be interesting to see how fast he could run one in a few months time once his soreness dies down.
I think the 'nay sayers' should try and do what he did :)
In Europe there's a 100-club for marathoners, for those who complete 100 marathons within their lifetime. In less than 2 months Izzard is almost half-way there. He did in a few weeks what most marathoners dream of for half their lifetime. That's simply amazing and the fact that he increased his speed considerably despite injuries and damage makes it even more amazing.
No, not even close.
What he did is impressive, but stupid. He is doing a lot of damage to his body. If he were trained properly, he wouldn't be having all the physical problems like the missing toenails and the blisters.
Also, anything much longer than a 6 hour marathon is basically a walk (for a middle aged man in decent health). Maybe it's just a pet peeve of mine because I'm a runner, but it just feels like bad "running journalism".
I'm much more impressed by someone who sticks to a proper training plan and finishes a single marathon in a respectable time for his/her age.
If you read the material kicking about from real doctors about this you'll see it's not the case.
It's fairly short term damage: in the long term he's going to see lots of benefits :) (edit: im not sure you could even call it damage, thety are just "flesh wounds". I bet some of us here have worse RSI from sat typing all day!)
The human body is incredibly resilient and it is often truely difficult to really seriously damage it in the long term.
He is overtraining. From the article it sounds like he may have stress fractures already.
Hell, I'll just forward this article to my athletic trainer and sports med friends and see what they say, and post their comments in a followup post.
People racing to the South Pole regularly screw their feet up (with blisters, tears, ripped nails and all sorts) within a few days (or even hours). The foot is quite easily damaged and just as easily repaired :)
As to ligament damage I dont really know because Im not a serious "trainer" but I do cycle regularly and ligament damage I have done in the past has healed in a week or so.
On the other hand after a month or so of not cycling (say on holiday) I find a week of intensive work is great for retoning your body. This sounds like the same - just a little more extreme.
Top ten reasons not to run marathons: http://www.arthurdevany.com/2005/08/top_ten_reasons.html
2. The slower the speed, the less the stress. Elite marathoners run maybe a couple or three a year. In my young and skinny days I managed four sub-three-hour marathons in about 7 weeks.
have a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yiannis_Kouros
Before each race, his feet are bandaged. He has lost toenails, and one ankle ligament is seriously sore. "My feet blistered up terribly, then started healing when I shoved them in surgical spirit," says Izzard. "Then they reblistered because you've got new skin coming through. "Blisters upon blisters are not very nice. It's the pain. Like the pain from mouth ulcers, it's not a massive area but sharp and quite agonising."
To be able to get up and run again day after day and put yourself through that is quite an accomplishment.
Also, by the end he was completing the marathons in around 5 hours, so it's not "a 10-hour marathon, repeated however often."
Lastly, I'm sure that soldiers go through a lot more training and conditioning than Izzard did, besides being younger. That said, if this story were about a soldier who ran 43 10-hour marathons in 51 days, getting up day after day and doing it despite experiencing the pain Izzard did, I would still be impressed.
I doubt after only 5 weeks of training that a soldier would manage 1110 miles in 51 days. The OP comments are asinine, he's criticising Izzard for a truely amazing feat. Terry Fox managed 3339 miles in 143 days meaning he only managed about 23 miles a day. I suppose to the OP this would be unimpressive too. The OP has a pathetic attitude, and criticism for a feat he (nor anyone on HN) would likely never be able to accomplish, it's simply pathetic.
Once the 4 minute mile barrier was broken, what was once impossible became the new standard. I suspect that the same thing will happen to the 2 hour marathon.
Eddie Izzard has pushed 2 boundaries, physical and the fact that "anybody can do it". Thank you for that.
As a mentor of mine once said after he did something that I had never seen done before, "I did it because I didn't know that I couldn't."
http://www.elitefeet.com/the-legend-of-cliff-young-the-61-ye...
That's real endurance!
Really? http://www.sportsscientists.com/2008/10/15959-sub-2-hour-mar...