How Marathons Work

really even researching this. You know, I get kind of caught up when when we do research from like I'm gonna start growing Bond's eye, I'm gonna grow orchids. I'm gonna start um, you know, um clipping those little uh those little indentations into into currency to help the blind and start cleaning up crime scenes. That was another one. Yeah, so that didn't happen. I felt that the beginnings of an inkling of it. And I want to go jog,

but I don't want a marathon. No. Well, my joke that I've been saying for about thirty years is I don't even like driving twenty six miles. It's a good one. Yeah, it's gotten a little stale. Um. Yeah, I've never had the urge. I think it's great if people want to run marathons, sure you, but um, it is not for me. I hate running. Uh see. I like running, I just I hate it. I don't have any desire to run that far for that long. I like walking or like spinning.

I like all kinds of great aerobic exercise. You mean spinning, like cycling, No no, no, like a like a kid, totally okay, totaling and tumbling, I like rolling downhills No, no, no, spinning on a bike. It's all great. But I just hate running. I hate it. Okay, I never have liked it. Well, then, yeah, marathon is probably not for you, But there it is for plenty of people. There's and it's growing in popularity. I don't know if you know this or not, but

marathons are quite popular, Chuck. I saw that in the the upcoming I believe it's in November, the New York Marathon. They're expecting fifty plus people to run it. And that's out of like a hundred thousand plus people who are applying to be chosen to run. There's a lot of people. And then the half marathon too. There was I think in two thousand, fourteen, four full years ago, there was something like two million finishers. That's a lot of people

running marathons and half marathons. So clearly it's popular. And that's okay with me, Like do your thing. Yeah, I've I've I've flirted with the idea of a ten k with our famous Peachtree road Race. Yes, because it's and we'll talk about the sun in the show, but it's you know, it's a social event. Uh And and from what I see, it's a good time to go out

and run the peach Tree road Race. And growing up in Atlanta seeing everyone with those shirts on the fourth of July, I'm always like, man, I want one of those shirts. One day. You can just buy one from eBay. But then I remember the running part of it, and and then quickly just say no, thank you. And it's on fourth of July, right, Yeah, yeah, I mean early in the morning, so it doesn't matter. It's the fourth of July in Atlanta, it's already like a hundred degrees.

I know it's hot, that's crazy town. But I think the idea is you get it done before like nine am. Yeah, that's what I understand too, But still it's probably pretty hot, all right. Should we talk about history here? Yeah, let's so. I think most people realize that the marathon is based on Greek history, but there's a there's a pretty decent story to it, if you ask me. Yeah. So let's go back to ancient Greece. Let's go to Athens. We're we're hanging out. We're a little drunk. Sure, I'm wine.

We're eating uh delicious olives maybe, man, I love olives. Maybe some lamb? What else I've given up lamb? Yeah, I don't eat lamb either. Um, let's see, we could be eating um, rice filled grape leaves and uh what it kills somebody to give us a little test siki sauce for him, I don't think so. All right, I'm happy that, all right. So we're hanging out the azure

blue seas, the beautiful white homes on the seashore. But things are not looking good because next door, the Persians want to come in here and kill us and take our city because it's so beautiful. Yeah, and there's a lot of them. There are, there's something like five to

one compared to the Athenians. So we're worried. So the Athenian Army, like most other Greek armies, and like the Inca, later would um employed runners who were who were soldiers, but their job as a soldier was to run as a messenger from place to place as fast as they could over very long, rocky mountainous distances. Yeah. Did they not use horses because of the terrain? I don't know.

Maybe horses hadn't made their their way down there by then, alright, So for whatever reason, they use human beings that were fleet of foot to literally run uh messages back and forth. And it was a big job because you're not just handing over a piece of paper. You you are taking the place of a FaceTime call or a phone call, and that you need to go back and say, well,

I gotta say. When I gave him the message, he initially seemed interested, but then his face turned and although he said it's okay, his face said it's not okay at all. So I would really be worried if I were you that his official reply isn't really on the level. Yeah, And they would go, Philippities, you are one of the

best ever, thank you. So. Philippites was actually the the name of the Athenian army messenger at the time of the Athenians fending off the Persian invasion about four ninety BC, and um, he ran off to Sparta to from Marathon and it ran off to Sparta to say, hey, Spartans, we need your help. We've got this Persian invasion coming and we need your help. And he was very famously kicked into a bottomless hole. Yeah that the Spartan said, we have to oil our abs and do some crunches,

so no dice on the help. Yeah, they said no. And from what I understand, he he made it back and said they said, now I have to go to sleep now for a couple of days. Because he made this trick about twenty five I was about forty kilometers UM in a day and a half. But from where from Marathon? Okay? I don't think we pointed that out yet, did we? I did? Okay, I said he made it from from Marathon, and all right, I think we just I was missing the drum roll. Oh sorry, you ready

he was in Marathon. That's where he started out. Yeah, I really blew it for us, didn't I didn't realize it was See this is proof positive that we don't coordinate before we record. I just thought it was supposed to be a big reveal. You're like a marathon. It's true. I'm sorry, they chuck, Sorry everybody. So that's the big reveal is the name of the place was Marathon. Where Marathon? That's right. So that's just story one. There's another story

that may have happened, may not have happened. All this, we should say, is ancient Greek legend as far as we know. But the the Athenians actually did manage to stave off the Persians, and Philipites was tasked with running from the battle. Maybe that was a marathon back to Athens to say, don't burn this hound down. The persons

have been vanquished. We're all we're all good. But rather than being able to say all this, he has supposedly made it back to Athens, just with just enough energy left in his body to say Nike and fall over and die. And Nike was, of course, the goddess of victory, and victory meant that Athenians had held off the Persians. Don't burn down the city. Oh so they didn't say, why are you plugging a shoe with your final breath? Right?

He goes, just do it? Uh. And the idea. If it sounds weird that he that they were going to burn down the city. I think the idea was is that they thought they were gonna lose, so they were going to burn their city down because they just thought it was a bygone conclusion, aforegone conclusion, and that they didn't want the Persians to come in there and like raid their city. I think they really the jealous lover type, like if you can't, if I can't have you, know

and catch you, they said it to their city. Alright, So flash forward in time to the very first Olympic Games, which we should probably do a show on at some point. Yeah, we will like the first olympiad uh and the uh. Well, there was one guy in particular, Michael brial or Brell, who proposed including in homage to this and recreate this, this legendary marathon race that Fidipites ran so many years previous, and the leader, I guess coordinator of the Games, Pierre

Day Cobortine, said that sounds good to me. Let's be twenty five miles. We're gonna call it a marathon and go forth and run. He didn't. And by the way, I took French in high school. So if you'll allow me, I think it's Michel Brial and Pierre de coubertin Okay, you have to say it real snotty like um. But they were apparent supposedly they're not like they don't deserve all the credit. Robert Browning had written a poem about Philippites run two Athens, and it was pretty popular at

the time, so they were probably inspired by that. But they did. They said, we're gonna redo the Olympics. We've gotta have a marathon race, which was not exactly chuck Um accurate, because the Olympics have been going on for hundreds of years by the time Philippites was around the of the first modern games, we should say, right right, um, and they went on for a couple of hundred years

after Philippites had come and on um. And at no point during this I think maybe five hundred or seven hundred year run of the first ancient Greek Olympics was there anything even remotely close to a marathon as one of the races. I think the longest that they had was somewhere around between a five to at ten k run that was far and away as far as they ran. But these guys decided to um again, inspired by the Robert Browning poem create a marathon. And a lot of

people said, you're gonna kill somebody. Yeah, that was the thing. It was. It wasn't roundly accepted, the whole twenty five mile thing. A lot of people did say that it's too long, it's too hot. Not a good idea, right, And they said, to heck with you, we don't care if we kill anybody. This is the Olympics. Don't you understand how big a deal that is? And they said, no,

not yet, but we'll we'll watch and see. So they held this Olympics, and it was from the from the very um, from from the very outset, the marathon was taken quite seriously, I think, just because it was such a nutso thing to try that no one had ever

tried before. Um. The Greeks in particular, who hosted this first Olympics, they had thirteen of I think the seventeen competitors in the marathon were Greeks, and they held trials over the course over the marathon course to see who who could do it and what their times were, and um they came up with with some pretty good guys, two of which eventually came in first and second for those first Olympic marathon. Yeah, this guy speared on Louis

or Lewis, I don't know. He's Greek, his name is Lewis. Yeah. Uh, he won. He got a time of two hours, twenty eight minutes and fifty seconds. Uh. And legend has it, and this may be it may not even be legend. It may just be straight up in fact that he stopped halfway through the race to have a glass of wine. Yeah. I was thinking about that, and I'm like, I'll bet he was treating that like you would treat a gatorade. He's like, I need to restore myself, so give me

some wine. Maybe the thing is that that time you just said to two hours, twenty minutes and fifty seconds is insanely good. And I'm sure that caught the attention of people who run marathons and they're like, what that was the first guy back in the thing about the first marathon was they were straight up forty kilometer races, so they were about twenty five miles, not twenty six point two. Hence the reason why his um time was

so good. But it's still a really really good time, but that extra one point two miles at the end can really jack your time up, from what I understand. Yeah, that didn't come about until in London when they were the host and King Edward the seventh wife Alexandra said, and this is just so great. It was and she was like, I would like the race just stopped by

the palace. And they were like, well, that means an extra one point two miles on this already dangerous race, and everyone rolled their eyes were like, all right, I saw that. Not only did she wanted to start by the palace, they said, okay, that's fine, it'll be like twenty six miles. Then she said, well, okay, after you've officially said that, um, I want to actually to start in front of the children's nursery so they can see the starting line. So they added another point two miles

because of Alexandra. So she's like, well kill them and they're like maybe maybe, oh well all right, but still do it. Yeah, so they for the Night Olympics. That's the first time we have a twenty six point two mile marathon, and it was so the children could see from the nursery, which is kind of sweet. Actually it is pretty sweet. And then so there have been marathons before that one. Again, the first one was those eighteen

nine pigs. Um. There was one in Boston held in eighteen ninety seven, which became the Boston Marathon, and it's been held every year since then. That's amazing, it is amazing. UM. But from that point on, marathon's up until I think nineteen seventy, they were elite events. You were an elite marathon runner. If you were in any marathon, you were there by invitation. Most of the time, your competitors were from the country that the marathon was being running, and

it was an enormous honor to be invited. Um. And that's who ran marathons. But then in nineteen seventy, a guy named Fred Leebo or Leboo, I'm not quite sure how you say his name. He said, you know what, to heck with all this snobby nous, I'm gonna start a marathon for everybody. And he started a marathon that ran around Central Park in nineteen seventy with a hundred runners, and it was not only just opened everybody, it was

open to women too, which was a huge deal. UM. And he started kind of the first UH mass for the people style marathon in the New York City Marathon, although Boston I believe it kind of been toying with this a little bit, but Fred Liebo really kind of blew the lid off of it, and from that point on, marathon started to pick up more and more in popularity, especially when an American won the gold medal in the

nineteen seventy two marathon at the Olympics, Frank Shorter. And then, of course for anybody who's seen for his gump um, the whole fitness craze that started around that time really gave marathon running a boost. Yeah, that was, like you said, seventy two. And I remember growing up in the seventies. I remember even knowing as a child that this was a new thing sweeping the nation, um fitness UH fitness craze,

a fitness revolution. I remember being just very aware of like running, everyone's running, like they're running magazines and running clothing that's all over the place now and everyone is running, and I remember just like feeling like, man, this everyone's making a big deal about this running thing. And it was I didn't know at the time, but it was

because it was sort of a new deal. It wasn't like you didn't have to be, you know, weigh a hundred and eight pounds, uh, and just be like a tiny stick of a person, Like that's what you think of when you think of marathons. It really democratized it, and uh said, you know, if you want to lose some weight, if you want to manage your weight, if you want to just have more energy or increase your cardiovascular fitness, get out there and beat the streets and

run because it's sort of the cheapest, easiest form of exercise. Yeah, and and it's also the most independent too. There's no team, there's no you don't have to do with anybody else you can there's no coordinating necessarily, although as we'll see as you get into marathon and all that stuff really comes into play. But at its at its core, it is running is the the most basic type of exercise there is. It really is, And I think that definitely

attracted a lot of people. Plus, um, I'm not sure what kicked off that health craze, but that really really fit in nicely with it. The idea of all you need is a pair of shoes and some really really revealing shorts and you too could be a runner. Should we take a break? Sure, because I find myself getting excited all of a sudden. It was the short shorts, but wanting still to not run a marathon. Okay, all right,

we'll be right back. All right, dude. So we said the seventies or where the marathon boom started, but it really hit and I think the nineties, um, people like that's when. That's when marathons just started popping up everywhere. By then, like cities, major cities all have marathons. I think Berlin started their legendary one in nineteen eighty and then London in one. But now you can go to just about any town and there's a marathon there at least once a year. Did you see this weird stating here?

Did that jump out at you totally? It's I'm just gonna read it. They're trying to prove in this article how what a boom in popularity in the nineties, and it says this from n to nineteen two alone, marathon finishers increase from nine thousand to nine thousand, two hundred. It's like, is that right? Is it missing a one? Is it supposed to be nineteen thousand. Don't. I don't think so. I think they just are impressed by very small numbers. There was another one who that came later.

It said that the percentage of runners under twenty years old over the past fifteen years has increased from one to one eight percent. Whoa, Yeah, it's weird, man, all right, those weird stats aside, there was a boom in the nineties. UM Running USA said that the number of runners in the largest half marathon and marathon UH in two thousand increased by about ten thousand I'm sorry, increased, uh to twenty nine thousand and thirty eight thousand, respectively in the

half marathon in the marathon. Yeah, that's like, um, that's that's again. That thirty eight thousand numbers now fifty thousand plus for the New York City Marathon. So it's it's still growing quite quite dramatically. Katherine Switzer or Switzer came along um the first official uh uh female participant for the Boston Marathon, and dude, you know she was almost thrown out mid race when they found out that she was a woman running. Yeah, she entered as a case

Whitzer in nineteen sixty seven. Yeah, so she wrote a book about it called Marathon Woman, where she not only talks about the fact that women like are great at this, but uh, you can do this. You don't have to be nineteen and twenty years old. You can do this into your into your sixties. And you see that. You see people in their forties, fifties and sixties and beyond. Yeah, just still out there pounding the streets. UM. Marathoners are

interesting people. Like when you see him on the street, you can tell the difference usually of like your average like I'm jogging for exercise, and like I'm running miles and miles and miles. You can see it on their face. You can't there when eyes usually kind of like popping out more than the other. The hair is coming out in tufts, their knees are bleeding, that kind of stuff.

Here's the interesting step for me though. It says most long distance runners are college educated from seventy four to UM, which is interesting. And they make a couple of points that, Um, you're not just exercising your your your legs or your body, but your brain because a lot of brain training goes into this. It's not the kind of thing you can just say I'm gonna go run a marathon. Let me see how that goes? Um with training and scheduling and just being out there running for twenty six miles is

a big brain exercise in and of itself. Yeah. Yeah, just the run itself is, but also the months and months and months of preparation and dedication and um self motivation and discipline like that takes a tremendous amount of brain power that you might otherwise be you know, using to do to do. I want a little Debbie coffee cake or Drake's coffee cake today? Why not both? You know? Should we talk about the training, sure, because training it's

not uh. And I'm glad they said this in this article because I was afraid they were gonna be like, here's how you do it. Um No, they very wisely did the opposite of that. Yeah, there isn't a single way to train for a marathon. There are so many and I started to look and it's just overwhelming. It really is, dude. There's entire magazines and websites dedicated to just training for a marathon, not even just running, but like training for marathons, and it's like there is a

lot to it. Yeah, So it's it's easy to be intimidated by that or to go down the rabbit hole where all of a sudden, six months later you're still researching training methods and not just diving in, but you know, find something that you think might work for you, and then just get out there and give it a shot. And a justice necessary would be what I gathered from this.

That's a that's a great advice, I think. Also it's probably smart, as with just about anything these days, to do like just some preliminary research to see if there's anything you should look out for or try first, but just get a pair of shoes and go try running

and see what happens. Yeah, so you're you're gonna be running, not not every day, depending on what training regimen you undertake, but almost all of them that I saw features at one time a week you're going to go on a run that's probably at least fifteen miles, right, And you're not expected like the day you start training marathon, or even the week you start training for a marathon, to to do a fifteen mile run like that's something you

work up to. Fifteen or twenty or twenty six is the max that you're going to try to run too, and you work up to that over time. Like we should say, if you decide that you want to train for a marathon, you should start about eight to nine months. If you're starting from zero, you should start about eight to nine months to to begin training for your first marathon, because you were meant to slowly work your way up. If you try to do it other than that, you're

going to pay dearly in pain. Have you ever heard of a couch to five k? Yeah? I have. I don't know what it is, though I can guess you're right. I guess ahead and guess first it is, Um, you just jump off your couch and run a five k and then you go back to your couch. Well, you're wrong. No, it's exactly what you would think it's. It's a it's

if you really do not run at all. It's a pretty good intro program to get you up to a five K. I tried it for a little while when I was like maybe I should run a five k um and it It just starts out with, like you know, running and walking and then running a little bit more and walking less until you're running a five k. But that's a pretty decent way to start um. But some people right out of the gate or like, no, you know what, I don't want to run a five k

or ten k. I want to run a marathon. Yeah, so you can do that, Um, but you know you just have to. You're training your body to run for twenty six point two miles, which you're there's people out there who are like the not only you're not supposed to do that. The human bodies not meant to run. We're supposed to walk. That's it. This is totally unnatural. Most other people say that's not true. But twenty six point two miles across the board, people say, the average

person can't just do that. You have to work up to it. Yeah, so you're gonna have that one weekly long run. You're gonna be cross training uh on your days in between, which keeps you in good shape. And you're just using I think the whole point here is to use your muscles and your lungs in a different way. Well, but yeah, and you're also giving your the muscles you used to run arrest. You're you're working them out, you're

keeping working them out, but you're you're taking arrest from running. Yeah, although there will be a full rest day in there as well, Um, where you're well, we'll talk about the muscles and how they regenerate here in a minute. Um. But then you've also got your speed work or interval training or the greatest words ever fart like running, right is that? And then I saw oh it's sweetish Okay, yeah, sweetish for speed play and so innocent the swedes and

so good looking. Um. But interval training that's when you're doing uh things like you're working out different muscles like by sprinting and spurts uh or you know, running real fast then slowing down, and it's just it's just working out different parts of the body. Yeah. And again, well we'll talk about why you would want to do that, but um, that is definitely part of marathon training. And again, as Chuck said, this is not meant to be your

how to guide to marathon training. Nope. Just listen to this and if it gets you like jazz, then maybe you should go try to learn how to train for a marathon. But that's not what we're doing right here. No. And the other really helpful thing that it's said in here was it like, what is your goal here? You need to figure that out? Are you trying to be competitive? Are you trying to just finish the race or do you have a time goal in mind? Um? Do you want to like walk part of it? Like just figure

out what your goal is here? And it early on it's probably just like I just want to go out there and finish this thing. Yeah, I think that's what a lot of people their first goal is, probably of first time marathoners, is just to finish, you know, without pooping yourself the Yeah, we'll talk about that later. Um. The one of the things about marathon ng is and everyone who is friends or a relative of somebody who marathons knows is it can become something of an obsession.

And one way that you can be right. One way you can become obsessed with marathoning is by keeping a training journal, which most most training regimens encourage. Um. And there's the number of reasons you would want to keep this.

So a training journal just basically is where you log your data from a run, whether it's like, um, how your eggs and pains were, what your heart rate was if you keep up with that, which of your shoes you're wearing, how much sleep you got the night before, what the weather was, like what your weight was, all

this different stuff. You can log all that down and over time you can start to find patterns in that data and you can see, well, oh, actually my orange shoes, I do way better in those than my blue shoes, so I'm not gonna wear my blue shoes anymore. Or I run really well if I've gotten five hours of sleep, but I run terribly at six and a half hour sleep. You can find patterns like that, and you can use

it to kind of guide your training a little more. Plus, it's also a big motivator too, because especially if, like you say, you're logging body weight or your time or whatever, you can actually see physically intangible form your provement over time, which can keep you going, you know, for sure. So trading journal is usually a pretty good idea, but it is kind of it encapsulates like the idea of really

becoming very focused on on marathon ng. Yeah, it's the same like if you're if you're trying to keep up with your like food or calorie and take, like they say, the best way to do that is is to journal about it or use one of the apps that helps you journal about it. Yeah, sure, um, all right, should we talk about muscles. Yes, so there are a couple of types of muscles, and I know we've talked about this before in something over the past ten years, but

I can't remember what. But but the twitch, the slow twitch, and the fast twitch muscles, and there's also I saw intermediate twitch, but we won't mention this. The muscle that dare not speak its name, right. Uh, slow twitch muscles are important for marathoning because they are your which I guess you would call your endurance muscles for endurance events, because the muscle fibers contract very slowly. Um. The fast

twitcher for more like sprinting. But uh, they do think that if you are like a top tier marathon or you may actually have a physiological edge because you might have a larger proportion of slow twitch muscles to fast twitch. Yeah. I saw that, UM, slow twitch muscle, so that has way more MYA globin and mitochondria and capillaries, which means you get more oxygen and more oxygen rich blood and you have more um oxygen conversion sites to to convert

energy into muscle movement right there in the muscle. So it's way better for long distance endurance running. They'll have more slow twitch than fast twitch because over time, when you're working out, you tear your muscles, you pull them, you stretch them, you tear them, and you you get stronger because your body repairs that muscle and it's stronger than it was before. That's how you gain muscle mass, right, um, apparently with runners or with any athlete, but your body

repairs it with the muscle that you need more. So, if you're doing long distance running and you need more slow twitch muscle, when you tear fast twitch muscle, it may be replaced with slow twitch. It's called muscle fiber recruitment. So yes, it would make total sense that long distance runners have more slow twitch than fast twitch and their

muscle fiber than the average person. Yeah, because they're pretty cool because they trained that way, and that's their bodies have developed, have fashioned itself to fit its training, fit their training. Yeah. So that kind of the point of that is like, even if you don't have a literal physiological advantage, uh, you can still train your body to become something different. Right. You may not win the Boston Marathon, do you never know, but you might win your age

group or place or finish finish. That would be my my goal for sure. Uh, you're also beyond your muscles. It is obviously an aerobic exercise. Um, the oxygen feeds these muscles. Your heart is is supplying this oxygen and your lungs and it's all just an amazing and amazing aerobic fitness routine that you're going through. But it takes time to get there. Like you can't like, just like your muscles can't take pounding the pavement for ten miles on day one. Your lungs are not gonna be ready

in your heart's not gonna be ready for that either. No, you just you have to start out slow and know that you're gonna work your way up. This is when you should come in with one of the famous Josh like rhyming lines, getting where you fit in. Start out slow so you can go why not? That's all right? But with the So with that oxygen thing though that I want to talk more about the slow twitch muscles because I'm fascinated by them. The more oxygen you can train yourself to take in v O two, I think

is what it is. The volume of oxygen um. The more that oxygen gets transported to your slow twitch muscles. And again they're oxygen and glucose is being put together to form a t P, which is the energy molecule that powers muscles that makes a move. So the more glucose, the more oxygen you have at the side of your muscles, the more your muscles are going to be able to contract, and the further the longer you're going to be able

to keep running. Um. So it's just fascinating that, like, just training your lungs to take in and distribute more oxygen to your muscles will allow to run farther, and that the muscles that you're tearing are being rebuilt to specialize in accepting that oxygen and using it more efficiently. So I I feel like the fact that the body is capable of of changing itself like this certainly suggests that it's it's not like we're not designed to run.

If we were designed not to run, sorry if he's in the word designed, But then your leg would just come right off if you tried to run twenty six something like that would happen. Your muscles wouldn't become more efficient, allowing you to run further. Good point. M hm, very good point. It didn't rhyme. I'm sorry but it's okay if they get the point across. Uh So, if you're wondering about that heart rate though, and what like how

fast should my heart be beating? Um, there is a formula man named Gordon Beer No, wait, Gordon Block, Yes, that was it. Yeah, he determined a formula for an ideal training heart rate, which is two minus your age. Yeah, and then you multiply that times point six and point to nine. Why that would be your range of your heart rate, your beats per minute between those two numbers that you end up with for your ideal heart rate for training. I didn't see where. I didn't see that

anywhere else. I don't understand what that point six and point nine is. I couldn't find what that is. What do you mean what that is? Like? What what is that? Where does that come from? What explains that? I want to know? Oh? Like how he developed the formula? Yeah? I don't know how you developed any formula. I don't plug in trial and error. Yeah, you plug in numbers until you land on what what your formula is. It's like, oh, that guy died, so point one two is too high,

let's try point one one? Well, how about this? Then forget that, throw it out the window and use the old fashioned talk test. Ideally, if you're in your ideal train zone, you should be able to talk. Uh, if you're if you're going at it too hard and you're doing that thing where you're been over and someone's asking you a question and you hold up your hand and you're just shaking your head like give me a minute, you're working too hard. Well, this is so, this is

why you're actually running. You should be able to talk correct, Okay. Yeah, and if and if you do the thing that I just described where you're shaking your head and you're waving your finger and going, well, you can't even say that, actually, then that means you're working too hard. You need to be able to talk. Um if you apparently, if you

can sing, then you're not working hard enough. So if you see a marathon or that's singing, that's singing, Billy Joel singing piano man, Yeah, then they're they're not they're doing it wrong. Now, no one wants to hear that. Who sings that song Billy Joel? Well, then let him singing.

He doesn't even want to sing it anymore. Yeah, I'll Betty does it, which is said because it's a pretty good song and it's about him really well, and John and Davy and Paul well yeah, yeah, but I mean he's the piano man, right, Sure, it's not like a metaphor for for I don't know, like God or something. Right. No, Okay, he's a piano man. John's a real estate novelist. Davy is still in the navy. A real estate novelist. Yeah, he writes novels about real estate. No, I think he's

a real estate guy who writes novels on the side. Okay, you never had time for a wife, boy, Billy Joel really was a poet. But Davy's in the navy. You know he probably will be for life. That's right. And America loves that song because it rhymes like a mofo like most great songs. Uh. Visualization has such a problem

with that dumb word. That's a big deal, not only for marathoning, but any anytime you have something big in your life that you want to accomplish, you you're supposed to visualize that and look at yourself in your mind's eye, crossing that finish line without poop running down your leg,

which we'll talk about in a little while. Uh, and there's a guy named Jeff Galloway who's who calls it positive brainwashing, where you come up with some magic words for yourself that can you can just repeat in the rhythm of your run. Um. He recommends relax, power, glad. Oh that's good, but you can you can choose anything you want. Yeah, um like Metallica corn husks. You know what's so funny is right before you said Metallica, I was thinking exit Light internight. No, yeah, no, that's the

worst Metallica song of all two? Uh is it? I don't know. I like the old stuff I too, but I'm saying, like, surely there was another song on that album that was way worse. Oh, and there's been worse since then. I was just being koy, like Linda's Eyes. Come on, I don't even know that song. I just made it up. It's was like it'd be pretty bad though. Uh, should we talk about the Runners High? Should we take a break before we do? I was on a podcast high.

Uh yeah, well, let's leave him hanging, because everybody wants to know. Everyone tuned in just to hear about the Runners High, and We're gonna make you wait a little longer. All right, Chuck, we can't wait any longer. We gotta talk about the runners high. I've always heard about this. I was gonna say, have you ever gotten it? But you have, and I know if you if you aren't a runner, I've never gotten it either. Apparently the runners high kicks in from what studies show. It does exist.

By the way, there's a lot of bad and forth about whether it exists or not. But what I saw you need to run at about a six out of ten level of exertion for two hours, basically NonStop, at about the same pace in a rhythmic motion. That's where you're likeliest to experience a runners high. I've never done that in my life and probably never will, so I'll never get to experience a runners high. Chuck. Yeah, I thought it was two minutes, and so I just got

discouraged every time. Well, that's the funny thing about it is a lot of people do run because they want to see what a runners high is like. And it's like, well, maybe you'll find out in five years. Yeah, So here's what a runners high as um and then we'll talk

about what it may or may not be. But that's the state where you're running and you're you know, you may be laboring and it may be tough, and then you reach a point where it's just like everything clicks in you'r you got that even stride, your body feels great, your breathing is steady, the rhythm, relax, power, glide, it's all happening, and you get this state of like euphoria almost And they even describe sometimes like a meditative loss

of time can happen. Yeah, I saw also that. Um it's it's like you feel like you can just keep keep running forever. It feels so good. And the apparently for a long time everybody was like, well, it's clearly endorphins. Endorphins are great chemicals that we know your body releases

when you exercise. But they did a little further study and said endorphins are actually too big to cross the blood brain barrier in a very short time, so it's probably not endorphins because it clearly affects your your mood, So there's something that's affecting the brain. Uh. And they think that, yes, your body does release endorphins when you exercise, but they go directly to receptor sites in your muscles to kind of dampen the pain. What they think the

runners highest is cannabinoids, specifically anatomide or anatomide. Yeah. Georgia Tech very on Georgia Tech and uh Cal Irvine they did a joint study and they said that if you exercise for long enough, you can produce this what is it an atomide anatomide? Either one? And it is in

fact a cannabinoid, not unlike THC. Yeah, I mean exactly like well th HC is a cannabinoid too, right, yeah, yeah, but the feeling that you get, right, So, since it's a cannabinoid receptor that's being activated this this, the feeling would be kind of similar to it. But I'm I'm guessing you don't. I don't know. Maybe you do just kind of get laughy or whatever, maybe paranoid. How about this? I want to hear from someone who has experienced a runners high for sure, who was also had some experience

with marijuana. Hey, great, and I would like to know how they compare. If we need a control group, somebody who's had a Runner's high that is never touched pot, and we're going to compare your descriptions on the pot cast. Oh god, I'm so excited. We just need to hear from someone who just smoke spot all the time and has never run. I don't want to see what their experienced. I feel like we hear from them every week as a listener. Male. Okay, so, um, the runners high is

probably pot is basically the physiological explanation of it. But the weird thing is is, again it's not like we've We've not either we don't know enough about it to say this is exactly what you need to do, or it is elusive for some reason that we've never figured out. But it's not like you're going to get a runners high every time. And some people never get a runners high,

some people get them infrequently. Um, it's it's just kind of like this elusive dream that that runners love to work toward but don't necessarily ever attain, you know, I mean, marathoning is impressive, but the people who really like or a may is me are the I don't even know what you call it. There's a word for it, the ultra ultra racing. What's it called ultra Thon's really? Yes? Is that the name? Yeah? Ultra marathon, ultrathon and how

long are those all? Right? So some of them are up to like a hundred and fifty miles or longer. They'll they'll be like overnight, like you run for like twenty four straight hours. I've got one. I got a couple for you. Wouldn't look into this because it scares me so Ultra ultrathons are ultra marathons. They probably deserve their own maybe like short stuff episode to tell you the truth. But there's a guy named Dean Carnazas. He

ran fifty marathons in fifty days in fifty states once. What. Yeah, there's another guy named Scott jurork Key's a ultra marathon her but he wanted to show off. He set a record. He ran the Appalachian Trail in forty six days. Ran it ran the Appalachian Trail in forty six days, something that frequently takes people six months if they're like trying to go at a city clip. He ran in forty six days. Now, I like that because I uh, for some reason, like road racing just seems boring to me.

But I have had friends. In fact, my old friend James from New Jersey is a trail runner. That always seems kind of cool to me because I'm into the woods in nature, and sure it's it's hardcore stuff, but I've always thought kind of like mountain biking greater than street biking. Yeah. Yeah, Well, then there's another ultraton that you would like. Um, I can't remember the name of it, but it starts in Death Valley. Oh yeah, I've heard of this one. And then it ends on a mountaintop

and you run it in about twenty four hours. I've seen. Man, those people are there's something psychological going on there too. Yeah, well that's another their things. Like you know, everybody has heard that great Iron Maiden song. The loneliness of a long distance runner. That's real, Like, that's a real thing that to stave off boredom and your body just being like, dude, let's go get an apple fritter, what are you doing.

That's that's like a real hard thing to deal with that you have to like stave off for hours on end and keep up a pace to to try to finish the marathon. Yeah, I'm on an apple fritter kicked big time right now. Yeah, and wanting to eat them when I'm not eating them all right, So you've got your runners high, which is the positive side of things. You have the other side of that, which is called

hitting the wall. Yeah, and that happens, um. I don't think it happens like everyone all the time, but generally, in like the seventeen to twenty one mile point, your brain is says and your body are like, what are you doing? You're not supposed to run this far? And you hit a figurative wall where fatigue sets in such that you may I mean it depends on who you are. You may not finish, you make collapse in a heap, and you're done when you hit that wall and you're

all of a sudden, you're in an ambulance. Um, but for real, Yeah, yeah, seriously, I'm like, I'm not getting around, um, and it's a serious thing. But what what's happening there is your body is literally out of fuel. It's done. That's exactly right. That's perfectly put because to run a marathon, or to run any race, but especially a marathon, you have to have a tremendous amount of stored energy in

your body. Yeah. Yeah, I remember when I said that, Like your your muscles use or your body uses um glucose and oxygen to produce a t P, which is this energy molecule that your muscles used well. You get glucose from stores of glycogen, which is basically just a little bit of glucose tucked away here there, and you can build up like the glyco glycogen your body by eating a lot of carbs, like the night before a

race or something. Hitting a wall is where you've not only used up the glycogen that you have eaten, right, your body also deposits is little fatty, fatty lipid deposits, and it started to use up those emergency reserve stores. And if you can't finish, if you're being carted off in an ambulance, you used up all the glycogen in your body. You don't have any energy stores any longer.

That's that's what happens to some people from marathon NG. Yeah, And part of the problem is those fatty acids, those emergency reserves, they released very very slowly. So if you're running a race, you you just basically can't withdraw from your energy bank fast enough. Uh. The a t M sort of shuts down and you're you're done for the day.

And some people will you know you can, but you're you're It's probably a more responsible like a gel pack, an energy pack, little sugar pack basically, or a banana or an energy bar or something like that, because then you're keeping up the easily attainable available stores of glycogen um. I just I don't understand how somebody who is well trained in marathon NG could hit the wall like that. It just seems like you would you would know your

energy stores better than that. So I don't know if that's amateurs that hit the wall or or somebody that just didn't. I wasn't paying attention to their energy. I don't know, but it just seems weird to me that that somebody who knows what they're doing would have that happen to them. I'd like to hear about that too, because I was just about surmise. But I don't even have no idea. All right, I want to hear about

hitting the wall too. I mean, I'm sure if you smoke pot every day and you hit the wall, what does that or play the wall by pink Floyd. No, No, just keep that all to yourself. I'm sure a lot of times hitting the wall is maybe not enough experience, and you have to read jigger your training and like what you eat before and what you eat and drink during but it probably also happens on any given day.

Conditions might be such that, or maybe your body just doesn't react the way you you usually count on it, you know, I guess, I guess I can't help though. We have to bring up that episode of the Office where they had the five k. Yeah, and Michael Scott thought that stood for five thousand miles and he carbo loaded right before the race by eating like a giant

styrofoam takeout thing of Alfredo oh Man. So great. So if you think about a marathon runner, you probably think, all right, if you're out there run in twenty six point two miles, you are the peak of health fitness, and you will live forever. Um, there's still something called genetics. Everybody that are still in play no matter what you do. Uh, And that can lead to death. Jim Fixed, very famously,

very celebrated runner, died at fifty two. He wrote the Complete Book of running, and he died four of arterio sclerosis while he was running, right, I think, so, uh, And you don't even have to be I mean, fifty two still pretty young. But in two thousand seven and twenty eight year old named Ryan Shay died uh and he was in he was competing at the Olympic marathon trials. Uh,

he had an irregular heartbeat. Um. What happens when you run a marathon or doing any kind of intensive uh physical training like this is your your heart size can actually increase because it needs more blood to pump um and that can lead to arrhythmia and heart failure. Right. You also can drink too much water, and since you're sweating out salts and peeing out salts because you do have to pee, um, you can actually affect the electro

light balance in your body. And electro lights are needed for um electrical transmissions for your muscles, which you think, okay, well you can't run, but your heart's a muscle too, so we can't beat right if it doesn't have the right electrical or electro lights. Um. So there's something called called um pyperon atrema, yeah, which is basically water toxicity, and it can lead to sudden cardiac arrest because your heart just stops getting the right electrical impulses. Do you

pee during a marathon? Yeah, I I didn't see what you do when you have to pee during a marathon. I believe there's like porter potties like everywhere right along the route, but from what I understand, those are more for the diarrhea. Can we talk about diarrhea upon it? I think it's time. I've seen some very and we have all seen very famous images on on sports television of people that have lost their control of their bowels during an event like this and they end up on TV.

Hint up on TV. They're not exactly sure the single cause or if there is a single cause of runners diarrhea, but they think it could be everything from decreased blood flow to the intestines, two changes in your hormones, jiggling to just get old fashioning jiggling of your organs. Yeah, but it is a thing, it's called runners diarrhea. Stress anxiety, yep, that could that could contribute for sure, Yeah, um it could.

It could also be like if you eat something weird that you're not used to eating, it could be a problem. Eating high fiber foods, um, sugar, alcohols can make you poop even normally. But if you're running around, um that can be a big problem too. Yeah. So they I mean they recommend to for the day or two before you run a marathon, like avoid those high fiber things. Um, don't like drink a bunch of caffeine. Uh the day of the race maybe, um, maybe a few three to

six hours before. Uh, don't eat at all all right, but again you don't want to hit the wall, so you need to You need to juggle all this. You need to juggle your chronic runners diarrhea with the your glycogen stores that you need to keep up with. But don't juggle your organs. But you can't help it when you're running. Man, I remember um, Peter Segel wrote, You know Peter Segel from Wait, Wait, don't tell me. He's

like a big time runner. He has a column and Runners World, and one of them was just about runners diarrhea and how everybody gets it. It's so weird. Should we finish up with dear Rosie ruise one more thing before we finish up with her. We have to give a huge shout out to l you Kip Chogi, who this this month at the Berlin Marathon, set a new world record of two hours, one minute and thirty nine seconds. He beat the six year old record by a minute

in eighteen seconds. A six year old ran it in that it's being compared to will Will Chamberlain's hundred point game. It's that big and um. The way that it really kind of sunk in for me was that it meant that he ran a four minute thirty eight second mile for twenty six straight miles. Sounding yeah, and they're they're like, this guy's gonna break the two hour mark. That's what

he's been training for. Nike basically said, hey man, we want to basically throw everything we have at sports medicine wise at your training to see if we can get you down to two hours, because he's like probably the greatest marathon or who has ever lived. And um, he said, all right, let's do it. So they've been working on it and everyone's expecting him to to break two hours in his career for sure. Well, you know who's not the best marathon or in history. I do ruise she's

one of the worst. Actually, from what I understand, she is a woman who very famously, on April night, at the age of twenty six, uh, got on a subway with a Boston Marathon runners number, exited the subway and entered the race with about half a mile ago. I saw a mile give her give her a mile, man, I saw a half mile, so let's just say not far. We'll say three quarters of a mile, and um, what was briefly crowned the winner, the female winner of the

Boston Marathon. And she still maintains this day that she ran that race despite mountains of evidence, um, although no physical evidence, but mountains of anecdotal evidence from people that were saying, like, she was on the subway with me, and we walked off the subway together, and I saw her jump back in the race, and other people saying she wasn't at to stop or this stop or this stop,

like we never saw her and she cheated. Yeah, And supposedly they looked into her New York City marathon finish and found that there were people who said that she was on the subway with them for that one too, which her story both times I think was that she said that she was injured and just wanted to go see the finish, and then when she got near the finish line was like, I'm an injured runner, and like people helped her back onto the The thing and the

article I read from this one guy, I can't remember his name, but he was some sort of official. His feeling is that she she didn't mean to win, like that was an accident. Uh, And that she just wanted to cheat to the race and finish, and then all of a sudden they were like you won, and she was like what, which is interesting? She's like great, Yeah,

it's a weird story. It is. Apparently she was busted stealing sixty grand from a realty company she worked for, I think a couple of years later, Yeah, a couple of years later. And then the year after that, she was blested for selling two keys of cocaine to an undercover detective. Yeah, this is the last kind of person you want to sell two keys of cocaine too. Yeah, for real. So she had a colorful life, and I guess still does. Why don't she's still around? Yeah? I

think she's in her sixties. Huh. Um. They've made it much harder to cheat nowadays. There are checkpoint computer checkpoints, their video checkpoints um that are hidden and you don't know where they are. And all of this is in an effort to uh. And I think one of those cameras, in fact, is what eventually captured the Boston bombing, if I'm not mistaken. Oh, is that right? I think, so that totally makes sense. Wow, Yeah, that's so that one

I wanted to point out to um. Remember how Wes said the Boston marath has been one every year since I think, even including the year after the bombing too, So like that. I remember in two thousand and fourteen when they had it again otter the year after the bombing, they were like, you know, it's a big deal. And I didn't understand quite why I was a big deal. I thought it was strictly because they were coming back

from the bombing. They were also saying like, we're not about to miss a year because of those terrorists jerks. We're going to keep Yeah, for sure, I want to see that movie with Jack Killenhall, which one. It's the one he plays the guy who very had that very cheese grewesome famous picture. He lost his legs in the bombing and uh they made a movie about his life. Oh. I thought it was like Mark Wahlberg was in that movie. Is that he is there another one that he was in,

because in another I think he was. I mean it's Marky Mark. So he was the guy that saved the day. I think he was one of the got the cops chasing him down or special Investigator or something I don't know. I think probably right. I don't think we need to even see that movie to know that's exactly what it is. I love Marky Mark though, sure man, how do you not has a Hamburger place? Does he? Yeah? Wallburgers? Oh yeah, that's right. So you've got anything more on wall Burgers?

All right? Neither do I, which means if you want to know more about marathon's, go find out about how to train for a marathon and get out there and do it. If this floats your boat, um, And since I said that, it's time for listener mail, yeah, actually, no listener mail today. What we're gonna do is something we almost never do, and that is plug our stuff and ask for your support. People are always writing in saying what can we do? It's a free show. We

love stuff you should know? How can we support you? Guys? And stuff you should know is doing great everyone, so continue to listen to that. But we have our own solo ventures. Uh. And it's hard to get a podcast off the ground these days, even if you're big hot

shots like us. So I have a show called Movie Crush where in once a week I sit down with someone in the entertainment industry, from a musician to an author to a writer, director and actor, or comedian or podcaster and talk to them about their all time favorite movie in their life and how movies have influenced their

life and career. And then on Mondays we release many episodes called Many Crushes with producer Noel where we just kind of shoot the s and shoot the breeze about movies and what we're watching, and a very interactive with a lot of people on Facebook, and we do polls and listener questions and certain segments. It's a lot of fun. So subscribing the movie Crush is a big, big way to about Chuck. And you have a little something special

coming out soon too, I do. It's coming out, and movie Chris is wonderful by the way I can attest to that. Um. I have something coming out called The End of the World with josh Ark, and it explores this idea that we have a lot of um things coming down the pike, something called existential risks that are big enough and threatening enough and menacing enough that they could actually wipe the human race out of existence. And you might think like, well, yeah, there's climate changer. Yeah,

there's nuclear war. Those things don't even register on the map of existential risks. These are brand new things that we're not used to and we're not equipped to deal with at this point, and we suddenly have to figure out how to handle them exactly correctly in the next ten hundred years, or else we're probably going to accidentally wipe ourselves out as a race. It's really fascinating stuff.

And sure it's a little grim and it's dark, but I try to approach it scientifically and interestingly and fascinatingly and hopefully inspirationally, because it really is. I saw um one of the guys that interviewed said it was the moral us and of our time, and he thinks that we will kind of, you know, rise to the occasion. And I hope that's the case, and hopefully this series helps with that. Well. I can't wait. I can't wait for it to be out either. Man. I've been working

on it for a while now. Yeah, man, And uh, from what im what I've heard so far, it's great. If your name on it, it's going to be great. Uh. Subscribing to movie Crush, Subscribing to the End of the World helps us out more than you know, so that is how you can help, and just keep on chuck along with Stuff you should Know too. We're not going anywhere, Nope.

And we've even added a new thing, short Stuff that comes out Wednesdays too, So rejoice in all of the stuff you should know this and thanks for your support everyone, Yeah, for sure after all these years. Um. If you want to get in touch with us, you can hang out with us on our website Stuff you Should Know dot com and you can find all our social links there. You can also send us an email send it off

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