[MUSIC] In 490 BC a Greek messenger named Pheidippides
ran from the Greek town of Marathon to the capital Athens to deliver a message that the
Greek army had just beaten back the Persians, and the distance
between those two towns is 26.2 miles, and that’s the origin of the modern sporting
event that we call the marathon. You might know that story, but what they don’t always
tell you is that when he got to Athens after those 26.2 miles, Pheidippides died. So why on Earth would anyone want to run one
of those for fun? How are our bodies even able to? I decided to find out, so I ran one.
In the process, I discovered a lot about what I’m made of,
in more ways than one. You guys ready to run the marathon? My training started millions
of years before I ever got to the starting line. The first step to becoming a runner is, well,
standing up, and bipedalism is only seen in a handful of animals, except for a few species
of birds walking on two legs is only uses a temporary form of transportation. Our ancestors
first stood up over three million years ago, and well we were running probably not long
after that, were made for it. You could say that humans are built for
long distance running but the truth is, long distance running build us the most four on
the floor quadrupeds could easily beat me in a sprint, but humans are medal contenders
in nature’s distance running events. Even the cheetah, the most perfectly crafted running
machine on Earth could only run for maybe a mile and a half before it overheats. Today’s
fastest Olympic marathoners, they would only be beaten by a handful of Earth’s animals
in that long distance. One theory of human evolution says
that our adaptations for distance running work feast or hunting success like we talked
about in my episode “Why Do We Cook?”, bigger, richer meals mean that we could evolve,
well, bigger, richer brains. There’s a whole list of ways that we are made to run. In large
tubes in our skulls help us balance while we’re running, reflexes in our eyes keep
our heads steady as we move up and down. It’s short arms and thin ankles that take us less
effort to swing. Wide shoulders, a thin waist, and a pretty narrow pelvis help us counter
the rotation of our moving legs. We have sweat glands, and less body hair, and tall thin
bodies that let us disperse more heat. Better blood flow away from the brain to keep it
cool, your big gluteus maximus muscles to stabilize our upper body, high surface area
knee, ankle, and hip joints for shock absorption, and most importantly, our lower legs are built
like rubber bands. This is by far our coolest running adaptation.
Every time my body hits the ground, it delivers up to 8 times the force of my body weight.
That’s over 1400 pounds! In order to keep that up for 26.2 miles, my foot expands and
spreads like a shock absorber. This is the most important part of a running human: the
Achilles tendon. Though my foot hits the ground, my calf muscles flexed, but even then the
muscles and tendons are still a little bit elastic, and then my ankle joint acts as a
lever, which transfers as much as 50 percent of that energy into the next step. By using
stored kinetic energy, instead of chemical energy, we’re able to go farther with less
work. You can’t run a marathon with just rubber
bands though. You need power that humans are run on gasoline your car ATP. This is an image
of a striated muscle, the same type we have in our arms, in our legs, and basically everywhere
that we move. Each row of stripes contains a string of proteins called actin, next to
another string of proteins called myosin. And the head of that myosin protein, well,
it acts like a ratchet, pulling along the string of actin, shortening our contracting
the muscle. That myosin machine is powered by ATP. The thing is, our bodies only have
a couple seconds worth of ATP stored up at any moment, so instead, we’re constantly
replenishing it, thanks to our mitochondria and their little ATP factories. Just picture
me as a giant ship with trillions of mitochondria at the oars. My body cycled through something
like 75 kilograms of ATP during the marathon. That’s almost my entire body weight! It
just shows you how good our bodies are at recycling energy. Now that’s 75 kilograms
of ATP broken down release the same amount of free energy as a kilogram of TNT. My body
gets ATP in a couple of different ways. If I was running full speed the entire time,
my cells would be forced to use an inefficient process called glycolysis, but by running
slightly slower for the whole race, I let my mitochondria use a much more efficient
method called the Krebs cycle and the electron transport chain. I can burn lots of fuel and
make that ATP, like fat or protein, but my muscles prefer glucose, which is stored in
long chains like glycogen for quick access, but even they don’t keep that much just
lying around. So instead, I topped off my glycogen tank before the race by doing
something called carb loading. Look at all these waffles I have to eat. But
even eating all that before the race, my body can’t hold all the glycogen it needs to
get through a marathon, so I had to eat and drink more during the race, or else I would
hit the dreaded wall. Hitting the wall is just a big scary name
for fatigue. And there’s lots of reasons why it can happen. If you run out of glycogen,
then your muscles can run out of ATP, and that protein ratchet will get stuck in the
lock position. It’s actually why something, well, gets kinda stiff when it dies. If your
cells don’t have enough salt, then your nerves and muscles won’t have the sodium,
potassium, and calcium that they need to pass electrical signals. The main reason that people
hit the wall is because of this. See, your brain is competing with your muscles for blood
sugar, and if those levels dip too low, well, you’ll feel dizzy and loopy. “I think I’m gonna die. I’m gonna die.
” “You’ll be okay.” Your brain is actually preventing your muscles
from firing goad for some emergency power save mode. I’ve never run a marathon before
and I discovered it’s not like any other sporting event I’ve ever taken part in.
You’re not battling an opponent; you’re only battling yourself. All those feelings
of joy, and fatigue, and pain, they only exist in your mind. That mind is connected to the
physical muscles and chemical power plants and proteins doing work. I’ve never understood
more about my body, or my biology, and when I push them to the limit, and in the process,
I discovered that it wasn’t a limit after all. That was the most fun I’d never want
to have again. Like halfway through, it was like the hardest thing
I’ve ever done, and the entire second half was just pure willpower, like a competition
against yourself, and I-I won. I beat- I beat my own mind. That was awesome. Thank you,
everybody. We’re not the only social animals that sit
down to eat together, but we are the only ones who cook. Cultural anthropologist Claude
Levi-Strauss is above all cooking establishes the difference between animals and people,
although I’d think he’d agree that pants make a big difference, too.


Dennis Veasley

16 thoughts on “The Science of Marathon Running”

  1. We didn’t evolve from primates. If we did, why are there still primates..and with that I’m out.! Good day sir

  2. fun fact: prehistorical humans (i think all species) ran the speed of olympic sprinters on sand, on bare feet, in (probably) hot weather. That’s it.

  3. 2:57
    1) He said 8x his bodyweight? So he weighs 175? Wow I thought he'd be lighter lol

    2) That is a false mathematic equation, 8X BODYWEIGHT???? Usain Bolt hit 5.75x Bodyweight in the 100m Final in Berlin FOR ONLY LIKE 2 SECONDS = 27.9 MPH! Usain Bolt delivered 1,190 lbs totals

    3) If he delivered 1,400 lbs that would mean for 26.2 MILES he was going 17.241 m/s (38.79 mph or 62 km/h) so his Marathon time would've been 40-41 minutes. Yeah no dude 😂. You were probably exerting less than 400 lbs of force tbh which is more likely

    Note: I love this video, I'm not trying to hate I was just blown by the 1400 lbs

  4. I just started long distance uphill(around 20 inclination) running a distance 6 km and my legs pain so much just at 3k though😣

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