Otis Chandler's Reviews > Endure: Mind, Body, and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance

Fascinating book about the limits of human endurance, well researched and backed by science. Worth reading, but if your goal is to learn how to become a faster athlete, it ambles a lot and doesn't really focus on that question as much. That said, lots of interesting tidbits.

First, some basics - oxygen in the bloodstream fuels us up to a point, and with increased oxygen we get increased performance. That is only up to a point, of course, which is called your VO2max - as you approach that point you start to burn carbohydrates, which produce lactic acid, fatigue your muscles, and make you slow down or stop.

"Crucially, they could still accelerate to faster speeds; however, their oxygen intake no longer followed. This plateau is your VO2max, a pure and objective measure of endurance capacity that is, in theory, independent of motivation, weather, phase of the moon, or any other possible excuse. Hill surmised that VO2max reflected the ultimate limits of the heart and circulatory system—a measurable constant that seemed to reveal the size of the “engine” an athlete was blessed with."

Interestingly, the book points out that the "vast majority of the world’s best distance runners these days, were born, grew up, and train in the East African highlands along the Great Rift Valley, at elevations of at least 6,000 feet". So I guess if you want a better ability to process oxygen really well, be born in (or move to?) a high elevation.

Disappointingly to me, the book didn't go as much into how to improve your endurance or train up to elite levels. With one exception - it focused a lot on mental stamina, which the author seemed obsessed by. It gave a lot of interesting examples of people who have done remarkable things by pushing boundaries (a guy lifing a car off a cyclist trapped underneath, a woman who drowned saving her son in dangerous surf by treading water for hours). And to be fair, it is an interesting question of how the mind regulates us and how you can learn to push those limits. Because we all rate limit ourselves - if you go out for a 5 mile run at the 4 mile mark you start to feel it because you know you are almost there - versus if you go out for a 10 mile run, at mile 4 you feel fine - because your brain regulates it. So if it's all in your head, can you improve mental endurance to affect that? The answer is it sounds like you can, but it's a nascent field.

Drugs can also help endurance - a placebo pill will boost performance by several percentage points, as will caffeine, Tylenol, or even crystal meth (which puts a whole new lens on the Blitzkrieg). Swishing gatorade or anything with carbs in your mouth and spitting it out also improves performance by a few points, which speaks to mental power.

Ice baths are something that many people I know and have read about swear by - but apparently the science says they are neutral - IE have no measurable impact on performance. (Curious if there are other takes on this?).

Your body starts to run out of fuel about about an hour of intense exercise, so even in a half marathon it's good to fuel - you can only absorb about 250 calories an hour though. Sports drinks like gatorade or gels.

But the best advice that I at least gleaned as a combo of improving mental belief and pushing your limits there:

"Even the humblest Kenyan runner, he noticed, wakes up every morning with the firm conviction that today, finally, will be his or her day. They run with the leaders because they think they can beat them, and if harsh reality proves that they can’t, they regroup and try again the next day. And that belief, fostered by the longstanding international dominance of generations of Kenyan runners, becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy."

You have to teach athletes, somewhere in their careers, that they can do more than they think they can." ...

And also improving your aerobic and anaerobic limits:

"which is why his super-workout consisted of five times a mile as hard as possible, followed by your coach telling you to do another at the same pace. “From this workout, you’ll learn forever that you’re capable of much more than you think,” he wrote. “It’s the most powerful lesson you can possibly learn in running."

Best advice, expressed in a Michael Pollan-esque quote:

"Run a lot of miles. Some faster than your race pace. Rest once in a while."