4 ms·

This is intresting, since some health or fitness advocates has been saying that "no-one should run a marathon" (eg. Art De Vany: http://www.arthurdevany.com/200

by enra 18y ago

This is intresting, since some health or fitness advocates has been saying that "no-one should run a marathon" (eg. Art De Vany: http://www.arthurdevany.com/2005/08/top_ten_reasons.html http://www.arthurdevany.com/2005/08/top_ten_reasons.html) Still it isn't clear that marathon or any massive repentive excercise is ultimately good for you, but if humans are built for running, it might change my mind a bit towards running.

gaius 18y ago
Top ten excuses. I'll tell you this for free, runners have longer, happier lives than couch potatoes.
- enra 18y ago
  There is quite a lot of space between being a couch potatoe and a marathon runner, on both cases probably the extreme is bad for you. Professional athlethes tend to have severe problems, injuries, joints operated once or several times by the time they retire in their forties. It's a hazard of the job, but should try to achieve the same hazards? I wouldn't. People tend to think that primitive hunter-gatherers had so good health since they were excercising or were on the run all the time, but it isn't necessarily true. Hunter-gatherers actually had leisure times to sit by the fire telling stories, creating art or tools. Some todays tribes actually have lower or the same activity levels than us westeners(some studies: http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2009/01/exercise-and-bodyfat.html http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2009/01/exercise-and-b...)
  - gaius 18y ago
    Oh I agree, but most Marathon runners are doing 1 Marathon a year, if that. For many people a Marathon is a once-in-a-lifetime thing that they do and move onto the next challenge or goal. That list is ridiculous, you could make a list of worst-case risks for any activity and not do it. The top athletes in any sport won the genetic lottery to be well-adapted for that sport. Basketball players don't train to get that tall... It's not reasonable to compare their training and competition volumes with average people. Even a full time professional Marathon runner only competes a few times a year. Incidentally, if you show up to a Marathon (or a half-Marathon or even a 10k) and look around you, you'll see that 99% of the crowd look perfectly ordinary. If you saw them (us!) in street clothes, you wouldn't think they were anything unusual, certainly not super-athletes. A Marathon is not at all out of reach for the average person.
    - mannicken 18y ago
      I think the ability of any person to jog a marathon even after being couch potato for long periods of life shows how well genetically predisposed people are for running.
    - Psyonic 18y ago
      Some run far more than a few times a year... for instance Dean Karnazes. He once ran 50 marathons in 50 days as a promotion for North Face. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.01/ultraman.html http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.01/ultraman.html
      - gaius 18y ago
        Karno has amazing endurance and recovery but he's not a competitive Marathon runner - his best Marathon time is 3:00:30, compare that to Haile Gebrselassie in 2:03:59. Geb competes once every couple of months on average.
  - gcheong 18y ago
    When you say professional athletes, are you referring to those exclusively in endurance sports? Surely you cannot directly compare runners with tackle football players, etc.
- gojomo 18y ago
  As I understand him, DeVany is against long, constant-paced runs, of which marathons are the most extreme example. He likes short, varied sprints, as in competitive sports. Chasing prey across mixed terrain likely had more pacing variety than a marathon. Just navigating around plants and rocks could provide more rhythmic variation than a modern marathon on a paved course. The optimal chase may have also involved trying to drive the prey to a convenient final resting location, so some of the chase would involve overtaking the prey from different angles at different times.
streety 18y ago
Just because we may be adapted to long distance running doesn't mean it will necessarily boost your, or my, quality of life or life expectancy. By either measure we're a lot better off now than we were when we had to run down our own food.
dkarl 18y ago
Everything Art De Vany says could easily be true of the people running recreational marathons today. Many of them are much heavier than the San and the Tarahumara, both in build and in body fat. Many people who run marathons never run more than twenty miles in training, and then run the marathon extremely hard to get the best possible time. Most of the people in an amateur marathon will be in pain for at least a week afterwards. They only say they "hurt" themselves if it takes more than two weeks to recover. An endurance hunter wouldn't run so hard (because he knows time is on his side) and would take much better care of his body (because he depends on his athletic ability much more than a modern person does.)

by enra 18y ago

gaius 18y ago

Top ten excuses. I'll tell you this for free, runners have longer, happier lives than couch potatoes.

enra 18y ago
There is quite a lot of space between being a couch potatoe and a marathon runner, on both cases probably the extreme is bad for you. Professional athlethes tend to have severe problems, injuries, joints operated once or several times by the time they retire in their forties. It's a hazard of the job, but should try to achieve the same hazards? I wouldn't. People tend to think that primitive hunter-gatherers had so good health since they were excercising or were on the run all the time, but it isn't necessarily true. Hunter-gatherers actually had leisure times to sit by the fire telling stories, creating art or tools. Some todays tribes actually have lower or the same activity levels than us westeners(some studies: http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2009/01/exercise-and-bodyfat.html http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2009/01/exercise-and-b...)
- gaius 18y ago
  Oh I agree, but most Marathon runners are doing 1 Marathon a year, if that. For many people a Marathon is a once-in-a-lifetime thing that they do and move onto the next challenge or goal. That list is ridiculous, you could make a list of worst-case risks for any activity and not do it. The top athletes in any sport won the genetic lottery to be well-adapted for that sport. Basketball players don't train to get that tall... It's not reasonable to compare their training and competition volumes with average people. Even a full time professional Marathon runner only competes a few times a year. Incidentally, if you show up to a Marathon (or a half-Marathon or even a 10k) and look around you, you'll see that 99% of the crowd look perfectly ordinary. If you saw them (us!) in street clothes, you wouldn't think they were anything unusual, certainly not super-athletes. A Marathon is not at all out of reach for the average person.
  - mannicken 18y ago
    I think the ability of any person to jog a marathon even after being couch potato for long periods of life shows how well genetically predisposed people are for running.
  - Psyonic 18y ago
    Some run far more than a few times a year... for instance Dean Karnazes. He once ran 50 marathons in 50 days as a promotion for North Face. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.01/ultraman.html http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.01/ultraman.html
    - gaius 18y ago
      Karno has amazing endurance and recovery but he's not a competitive Marathon runner - his best Marathon time is 3:00:30, compare that to Haile Gebrselassie in 2:03:59. Geb competes once every couple of months on average.
- gcheong 18y ago
  When you say professional athletes, are you referring to those exclusively in endurance sports? Surely you cannot directly compare runners with tackle football players, etc.
gojomo 18y ago
As I understand him, DeVany is against long, constant-paced runs, of which marathons are the most extreme example. He likes short, varied sprints, as in competitive sports. Chasing prey across mixed terrain likely had more pacing variety than a marathon. Just navigating around plants and rocks could provide more rhythmic variation than a modern marathon on a paved course. The optimal chase may have also involved trying to drive the prey to a convenient final resting location, so some of the chase would involve overtaking the prey from different angles at different times.

streety 18y ago

Just because we may be adapted to long distance running doesn't mean it will necessarily boost your, or my, quality of life or life expectancy. By either measure we're a lot better off now than we were when we had to run down our own food.

dkarl 18y ago

Everything Art De Vany says could easily be true of the people running recreational marathons today. Many of them are much heavier than the San and the Tarahumara, both in build and in body fat. Many people who run marathons never run more than twenty miles in training, and then run the marathon extremely hard to get the best possible time. Most of the people in an amateur marathon will be in pain for at least a week afterwards. They only say they "hurt" themselves if it takes more than two weeks to recover. An endurance hunter wouldn't run so hard (because he knows time is on his side) and would take much better care of his body (because he depends on his athletic ability much more than a modern person does.)