way gonna get this thing done. And we're gonna do this. We're gonna do it. Why? We're gonna do it. Because this'll biscuits was vis vis vis a bit. The human body is incredible. And when we push ourselves to the limits to the extremes, we question what's possible. I am Dr Jess Mason. And I'm Dr Mel Herbert. But where is Dave? Dave decided that in honor of this episode, he was gonna run a marathon while doing the show. Dave, are you there? Hey,

guys, I am running right now. Well, more of a jog. I guess I was thinking What better way to talk about running than to actually run while talking about running? So I'm attempting to run my own personal marathon here, and I don't know if it was a good idea yet. Have you ever run a marathon before? Uh, well, the closest I've come to a marathon is watching the Twilight Zone marathons. Well, Dave, as you explore your own limits with reading, we are going to explore the limits of extreme running. Okay,

well, I'll tell you, it's feeling pretty extreme right now for May. So in this episode, we're gonna talk about some of the stories and the characters responsible for some of the most famous and extreme running records. We'll also explore the question just how far and how fast can a human being go? What's the theoretical possibility here and more importantly than all this half us? Could you go have Husker Tiger of these people? Superhuman? What can we train to be just like them? And why does anyone even want to do this? 1954 Roger Bannister achieved what many head believed to be impossible to run a mile in under four minutes. The best minds of their time thought that running that fast would simply kill you. But on May 6th, 1954 the soon to be Dr Bannister proved them wrong after the finishing line. Time.

Three minutes 59.4 seconds, shattering the four minute mile the Everest of athletic. But the first of ail stories is not about Roger Bannister. It's about what happened 23 days later, on May 29th 1954. It's a great day in Birmingham, in the West Midlands of England, a city sitting quietly in the bottom third of the United Kingdom. The archives of the monthly weather report of the Meteorological Office tell us the temperature was mainly dull and wet. But this is England. So what do you expect? It is the date of the Midland women's Triple A Nationals. It is essentially the English national championships. For women. It's 1954 and Doris Day a CZ. The number one song.

Winston Churchill is once again prime minister of England, as he had been during the Warriors that ended just nine years before. But none of this was on the mind of one perky, skinny 21 year old chemist by the name of Dion Leather. She stood at the start line, going through her routine. In her mind, she saw herself doing something that no woman had ever done before running a mile in under five minutes. She must have been confident because just days before, she had run the distance in five minutes and 50.2 seconds, and as a gun sounded, she took off the details of that race so hard to reconstruct. You see, unlike Roger Bannister's race, we have no footage. YouTube and smartphones are 50 years in the future.

And while Miss Leather was excited, knowing she was on the brink of history. History seems to have forgotten her. And so she ran. She ran for the joy of it, for the excitement of it. And for four minutes and 59.6 seconds, she ran a self right into history. Just 23 days after a man had broken the four minute mile, Ah woman had broken the five minute mile, a feat that was even more remarkable because so few people really cared. When Roger Bannister was preparing to set the record, he knew it would be world news that it would be heralded as one of sport's greatest achievements. But for Dion Leather at the time, it wouldn't even be recognized as a record, because even in the Olympics,

women couldn't run the mile. Even at the 1960 Olympics, the longest official distance that women could compete in was just 800 meters. Women's bodies were considered too fragile to run more than this. Dion liver is now 82 years old, still kicking and remembers events this

way. It was very exciting. That's a loner. Well, I've been going for it, and I got close to it, a few times. So I'm just going to happen. I think I mean Barrier waiting to get broken both by the men and the women.

She would go on to break the five minute mile many more times. At the time she retired, she would have a personal best of full minutes 45 seconds. Remember, too, that all records are ethereal. They're made to be broken. This'll world record would remain untouched for seven years, but it wasn't until 1967 that the I f started to recognize women's records at this distance. Today, the men's one mile record stands at an amazing three minutes 43 seconds, a remarkable 18 seconds faster than Roger Bannister's four minute mile world record. 3 44 3 They race to the finish line. He's got three party cream weather for the former world. The women's record stands at four minutes 12 seconds, an incredible 48 seconds faster than Dion Leathers. Five minute mile.

That record is held by the remarkable Russian athlete sled Vanna Masterkova. It was running Zurich in 1996. We found some audio of that race. It's in German, but thankfully he also penned a noose could interpret things in the world. Record pace. Three minutes and 56 seconds on the last stretch of the mild cold, Oh dear crossed the finish line in her new time. Four minutes 12 seconds. 57 4 minutes 12 seconds. 57 is a new, aggressive time repeats the time again, says her name's the world record. 11. So help us, Kendry one.

What's the limit, Dave. Half of you run. I'm only down the block. This is killing me. He's a studies. An athlete. Yeah, Mama B. M In beast mode. Runners have gotten faster and faster over the years, but the reason why they're getting faster might surprise you. I'm David Epstein, the author of The Sports Gene and I'm a science writer and investigative reporter at ProPublica. The great example is Sir Roger Bannister running the first sub four minute mile, he said,

You know, journalists would write that well, you can't run under four minutes the mile your you know your kneecaps will fall off or whatever. And he said to me four flat 40.1 and 3 59.9 or the exact same thing from a scientific point of view, there's no difference. But you could see other runners from other countries getting up to this four minute barrier and then just getting stuck, right? Get it stopping there. And once Sir Roger broke through, there was a flood of sub four minute miles after that. And so I think part of it is it gives people the confidence to go out a little faster than they would have otherwise. They have this very concrete thing to chase. But also, we now know that our brain is involved in basically holding back a lot of our physical capacity because it doesn't care as much if we win the race more so that we don't hurt ourselves. And so it holds us back way before our actual capacity. And I think when we see somebody break through a barrier,

it sort of helps us mentally liberate some more of that physical capacity. It feels like my kneecaps, they're gonna fall off right now, Okay? But I'm curious. Why does it seem like humans are continuing to break records over and over again? I mean, are we getting faster? Yes. So clearly better training methods are a factor, but in many cases, if we look sort of at the most easily quantifiable records say, like things like sprinting and swimming that we can really track really easily. There was this period, sort of from mid 20th century, too late 20th century,

where records were being broken all the time. And then it really slowed down and basically looked like it hidden Nassim, toad and and stop moving forward in many cases, except when there was technological innovation, like changing of a track surface and running or the single biggest drop ever in swimming. I mean, the all the large record drops in swimming come from things like the invention of the flip turn or gutters on the side of the pool that allow the water to splash off so it doesn't create turbulence impeding the swimmers. And so now, instead of seeing this steady progression of record breaking, we see these kind of inching down or staying flat. And then these more sudden dips when there's a technological innovation, eso, particularly, was sprinting. Is there Ah, theoretical limit on how fast a person could go.

The current 100 meter record is 9.58 seconds by you saying bolt in Berlin in 2009 in second place Theo 100 meters. I think it's pretty clear now from very recent work that speed is limited by the contraction speed of muscle fibers, and it looks like based on that, if you could try to model that with the best currently available track surfaces, I think the limit is gonna be around in the mid 9.4 range. The limiting factor that people think that elite sprinters move their legs faster than you do. It's not true, your grandmother and you saying Bolt, swing their legs that basically the same rate when they're going as best they can. Maybe not your grandma lunch yet, but with a difference is that the elite sprinters, in about 1/10 of a second or less, put five times their body weight worth of force into the ground as quickly as possible, whereas your grandmother puts far, far less force into the ground. But the repositioning of limbs between strides turns out,

too. Account for no, like the same for high school sprinters, is for pro splinters. It's all about how much force you put into the ground and how quickly, and I think it looks like it's in the mid nine fours is about that theoretical limit. That said, people are starting to come up with shoes that have sort of spring like contraptions that may or may not be legal. The track surfaces may continue to change, but we're inching down now. What factors in running or athletes, our genetic and what are trainable? Because I'll tell you right now, I'm feeling more genetically programmed to sit than run. Unless, of course,

there was some sort of external motivator, like a velociraptor or T rex. Trace of me must go faster. The's a lot of science behind running this physiology. There's genetics, that's training. And, of course, there's that unmeasurable, most mysterious component, the human mind. On a more molecular biology level, there are a couple of different tests that we study in athletes of all ages. That's Dr Matt Baird, an emergency medicine and sports medicine physician in Greenville, South Carolina,

to main biomechanical, measurable factors that are very important with how we tolerate exercise and how successful we can be as an athlete. And that refers to vo two Max and Lactate Threshold, the VO two. Max refers to our maximum oxygen utilization. It's essentially determined by genetics, so that basically tells us how efficient we are with the use of oxygen. So vo two Max has to do with how much oxygen from the environment your body can use. And that has a lot to do with genetics. But you can't improve with training. Yeah, I don't think there's enough oxygen in the city of Cleveland right now for me. Well, Dave, there's another important factor in exercise physiology that you do have more control over than your jeans. Oh,

thank God. Tell me. Well, there is a highly trainable component of our biochemistry, and that is what we refer to as the lactic threshold. So that basically determines how much exercise you can tolerate. And lactic acid is an acid that builds up with muscle use and muscle damage. And if it gets to a high enough level, it's gonna shut us down. High level of lactate gives us that burning feeling, lots of black tea, and you just have to stop. It hurts. The lactate threshold is basically the point at which the latter gas it is accumulating in your body faster than you can get. Rid of it. Dave,

Are you feeling the burn yet? Yeah, yeah, running. It's so much fun. I'm loving it. There are athletes who have rapid clearance of lactic acid and that allows them to exercise for prolonged periods of time since they don't feel the burn. And I'd like to introduce you to one of those athletes right now. Okay.

You know, I honestly believe that what I do is something anyone could do with enough training.

So that's Dean Connexus, also known as the Ultra Marathon Man. If you're a long distance runner, then he's a household name.

That being said, it's kind of naive to say anyone could do that with enough training. Because unless you're really passionate and you love what I'm doing, you're just not gonna have the discipline and the motivation to train.

Dean's accomplishments as a runner are numerous, but here are some in particular that are simply amazing. He ran 50 marathons in 50 consecutive days in each of the 50 United States. He ran a marathon to the South Pole. The temperature was a pleasant minus 13 degrees Fahrenheit. That's negative 25 degrees Celsius. He ran a 200 mile relay race catch. He was the only team member He ran from Disneyland in Anaheim, California, to New York City in 75 days. He holds the record for the longest run without sleeping, which was 350 miles and took him four days and three nights. He has taken the limits of being human and pushed them to the edge. How is this possible? How do our minds and our bodies allow us to do this? For Runa Dean was actually late to

the race. I used to love running when I was a kid. So my earliest childhood recollections were running home from kindergarten one of six years old. And I ran competitively as a freshman in high school and cross country actually ran a marathon when I was 14 and then literally stopped running. And I don't mean that, figuratively, I mean literally. At 14 years of age, I hung up my running shoes and said, That's it. I've had enough with running and

I found myself. Then on my 30th birthday in a nightclub in a bar in San Francisco, doing what we do in on our 30th birthday. I was celebrating with my mates and we're having a couple drinks and 11 o'clock at night. I said, I'm leaving. And this is Lloyd. It's 11 o'clock at night. Is your 30th birthday. Let's have another round tequila. And I said, no. I'm gonna run 30 miles tonight to celebrate my 30th birthday, and they looked at me and they said, That's funny. You're not a runner. You're drunk.

Yeah, I am. I'm drunk. You're right. But I'm still gonna do

it. And I walked out of a bar in San Francisco and started running south, and I knew of a 30 mile mark was because it is part of my commute. So I just said, Okay, I'm gonna run the Half Moon Bay right now, And I ran straight through the night. It took me about it took me over seven hours to cover 30 miles, but I didn't sleep. I just kind of ran and shuffled and And that that evening changed the course of my life forever.

No particular reason I decided to go for a little. But why? Why a dean suddenly decide to become a runner

overnight? You know, I kind of followed the prescription for happiness that were kind of told here in the U. S. And in the West. And that is you, you know, graduate from high school. You go to college, you get good grades in college, you know, to go to business school, which I did. Yeah, you know, and you go to graduate school, which I did,

and then you land a good job and you get a good paycheck and you buy a lot of stuff and that will bring you happiness. And I kind of had done the things fairly early on in my life and I wasn't happy. I was kind of miserable. And I was so comfortable, there was no struggle in my life. And I thought, you know, tonight I want something intense. I really want to challenge myself in a way that haven't been challenged in years. And I just thought, you know, I used to love to run. I remember how tough it was to run, and I thought if I could run 30 miles, that will be a real good

challenge. Dean started training and running marathons again. Which raises the question. What happens to us physiologically when we start to train? Let's take two minutes to talk about exercise, physiology and a promise. This'll hold of it. Two minutes, Dave. You're gonna get through this. I got it. I got it. You doing okay, day? I'm feeling my 2nd 3rd wind, right? When it comes down to it exercises muscle use,

right. That's met Bid again. So we're using our muscles. That requires quite a bit of metabolic changes if you're going from not using your muscles to using your muscles. So muscles are contract I'll organs. And they require oxygen and something we call a teepee to contract. And it's recycling and recreating a teepee. Basically, that allows us to exercise for any prolonged period of time. Hey, Dave. Yeah? Do you remember from science class how the currency of energy in your body is called a teepee? Uh, no, but I'm guessing I may be genetically deficient in that one,

too. Well, a teepee has made one of two waves. The preferred way requires oxygen, and it's called a aerobic respiration. But what if, like, Dave, you're exercising too vigorously and your oxygen supplies get stretched really thin. Yeah. Then you stop and take a breather. Right? Well, then your body goes into its backup mode, which is an aerobic respiration. Think of turning wth e generator on.

If your power goes out, it works, but it's only temporary. And the byproduct of anaerobic respiration is lactic acid. When lactic acid builds up, it burns. So when you get off the couch and start moving and start exercising, you're using those muscles, Maur. They're requiring more oxygen, which requires Maur of your cardiopulmonary system. Your blood volume starts to increase and as you have more blood to pump, your heart gets bigger and has to pump harder. Holo, Hold on. Wait a second.

How do you fit more blood into your body? This sounds like a like a riddle. How can I pour three quarts of liquid in tow? One court container. Come on. Right. But think of your one court container more like a water balloon. It can expand and contract. Your blood vessels are like that, too, and they can also get better at bringing the blood to the areas that need it the most like your muscles and your muscles change over time as well. With exercise, there's minor damage to the muscles, but each time they repair themselves, they grow a little bit bigger, a little bit stronger.

It takes time. But each time you exercise, if you get enough rest and food and water, you do get stronger, Dave. Oh, I feel it sounds good. Little rest and some food and some water. Your pillow talk. And guess what else, Dave. What exercise also works on your brain. Mild to moderate exercise can improve your mental well being and decrease anxiety and depression. It can create a sense of euphoria. What chemicals cause those? Well,

this sense of euphoria can increase chemicals in your body that are similar to opioids and cannabinoids, which almost mimics the high that people get from drugs. But in a healthy and natural way, that's what's called a runner's high. I'm not feeling that good. Yeah, well, you know, Jess, I must not be making these chemicals, because right now I'm not feeling like a winner. I'm feeling like mediocre marathon man. Well, Dave, you'll be happy to know that exercise is also protective against things like strokes and heart disease and diabetes and maybe even some cancers. It changes your body,

and it changes your mind. Okay, Well, how about we get back to our riel. Ultra marathon, man. Yeah, Dean, my hero. This is for you, Dean. Hey. Yeah, Dean sounds really amazing. But, Jess,

you know me. I can appreciate accomplishments, but I'm Maur interested in hearing the stories of how people failed. So did you ask him about any failures that he overcame, You know, before he became ultra marathon man? Because I could really use some inspiration right now. Yes, I did. I asked him about his first experience running the Badwater Ultramarathon.

This race is 135 miles, and it's not just any old 135 miles. Bad water is the lowest point in the Western Hemisphere, so it's below sea level. It's over 200 people of sea level, and 100 and 35 miles from there is Mount Whitney. The Whitney portal on Mount Whitney is the highest peak in the contiguous US. So the idea is to run from the lowest point to the highest point. And right in the middle of the two is this thing called Death Valley. And they hold the race in summer where tens a little bit warm and valley in the middle of summer, the temperature was over 100 and 30 degrees, and I've gotten severely dehydrated. I really thought my electrolytes out of balance. My crew vehicle actually had broken down, so I had no cruises. Support May and I've been running for about 17 or 18 hours, and it was the middle of the night and I'll never forget this.

It was very dark two lane highway and I'm running along and I see across the side of the road thing Old Miner 40 Niner coming toward me. And I mean, he was a guy in overalls on. He had a big grey beard. He was very, very clear to me. A very visual came walking over to me across the road, and I could see he was holding a gold pan and he held up his gold pan. Too many

water. I need water.

And I looked at him and I had a little bit of water still in my hand held water bottle, and I kind of aspirated it in his gold. Hannah, give him some water, and

I heard the water sizzling on the ground,

and I reached out my hand to touch

him and my arm went right through him, and I realized it was a hallucination.

And then I saw these big dinosaurs

off in the desert bouncing along. I thought, Wow,

this is amazing. And then the next thing I know, I woke up in this air conditioned hotel room and I'm looking up at my crew and in a bed and I said, Hold it. What? You know what's going on? Where am I? I thought they were hallucinations along. They said no, Damn, we were were so concerned. We're driving around all night looking for you. And we saw you passed out on the side of the road. We got a hotel room and you've been asleep in here for eight hours with air conditioning crank down. I said, Hold it. But I I wasn't finished.

I wasn't done with the race. You are very done. You were very, very finished. So I didn't succeed. I rode Miles 78.

Let me just insert here that this sounds scary and dangerous. It sounds like Dean had heat exhaustion, dehydration and probably had severe electrolyte disturbances. This could have ended much more tragically, but fortunately, Dean recovered. Not only did he recover but you would not let it stop him. Dean returned to the marathon

and he wanted, you know, I failed. I've got some unfinished business. I got to go back out there and complete this race, and I did. I went back out there and finish the next year and yet have gone on Thio. I say Win the race, I say survived the fastest because I think it's more about survival than about running and racing when we're out in those kind of conditions. But I have. I have won the race and now completely that 10 times.

What is Dean's typical day look like? What is a day in the life of an ultramarathon runner? I like to get up early, so get up. You know when I say early 3 34

in the morning. And I like to start the day by running. I like to run somewhere close to a marathon. So 25 26 miles

he does. He does what I'm doing. Well, essentially what I'm trying to do every morning. And

I like to do this on trails. You know, this is usually takes three and 1/2 of four hours. I'll come home then. You know, in the afternoon I like to go for ah, if I can have a shorter and faster run. And throughout the day, I cross trained quite a bit. I have my whole office set up at standing level, and I'm constantly pacing back and forth. I've gotta pull up bar right next to me here and sit up mad, and I cycle two's So this kind of high intensity routine that takes about 15 minutes to go through it all. And I do maybe four or five, sometimes six of those throughout

the day. Hey, Mel, you know, it's not every day that we get to speak with an extreme athlete. And when your sport is running for days, it brings up some questions about well, how that works. Of course it does. Like, how do you eat? What do you wait and how do you go pee and poo pee, Right. And we're doctors, so we're pretty comfortable asking these personal

questions you eat on the fly, if you will. So you pretty much are eating as you're running. It's different when you're running for an hour during a 10 K or something versus running for three days nonstop. So you know, your metabolism gets kicked in the high gear and you're just amazed at how much food you can eat and still not feel full. So you you eat as you run and you try to keep running a CZ much as you can. You try to stop or slow

over nothing. And the bathroom. Where does do you go to the bathroom?

Yeah, If you've got to go Number one, if you will. There's probably some sort of medical term for that

that you guys use urination or urinating T o p p or whizzing

together. Gopi, there's a technique. You use it. Tell us like you do this. Modified waddle kind like a penguin, if you will. And you kind of lift up your short in kind of the point a little bit on the side of the road or on this comet trail, and you just waddle along as you're going. And you know I'm expert at this. I get none on my shoes whatsoever. But if you have to go Number

two, if you will defecation, poo pee or poo Big stinky,

then then you start. I mean, that's kind of the one time you stop

to run for that long. Seems to many of us just impossible, right, Dave? Yeah, pretty much. Are you okay, David? I'm really worried about you. Can you define Okay? Well, I'm an e r doctor, so if you're talking and breathing, you're pretty Okay, Okay, good. Keep going. I'm gonna keep going. And we've touched on some of the genetic advantages that some athletes

have. I have been kind of analyzed scientifically as to how many above they keep running long distances without breaking down. And, you know, there's a couple things that I think that are unique to me, but not necessarily unique to any human. And that is someone I've got pretty good biomechanics. So I've had my foot strike kind of analyzed in many different ways. And you know what? What they found is that my foot kind of lands as a runner's foot, ideally should and kind of my gate and everything is pretty much perfectly aligned. So I'm not putting a lot of ex excess mechanical stress, my bones and joints, and you know, a lot. A lot of that has to do with heredity, you know, The anything they've noticed with me is that I don't accumulate a lot of lactic acid when I run.

But writing up Dean's accomplishments as genetic makes him seem unachievable. Dean is constantly pushing himself. And where does all this discipline come from? Yeah, where, you

know, I use this technique that's just called projection, and it's kind of a psychological tool that I used to get me out the door. And that's really to project how great I'm gonna feel and how accomplishing gonna feel after I work out. Oftentimes, the hardest thing is just to get out the door, and if you can get out the door and if you can start moving, it kind of builds on itself. So any sort of technique or tool you can use just to get you out the door. I think that's something that is really invaluable. And I think that, Ah, lot of you know, people that want to start working out our struggle, the workout. I think they need to look at it in those terms that, you know, what am I going to do to get myself out the door? Just just

do that, just get out the door and usually self fulfilling at that point. Dean's next challenge. Oh, he's planning to run a marathon in every country in the world. In one year, we will be watching and cheering Dean on what makes a great athlete is partially science and genetic. But part of what holds us back from our full potential, or at least can unleash it, is our minds. You may not ever run us fasters Dion Leather or Hussein Bolt or run as far as Dean Connexus. But if you put your mind to it and you dedicate yourself to training, your future self could achieve things that your couch self right now would consider impossible. Well, I guess I can't use genetics as an excuse anymore. Justus Davis realizing it's hard work. It's dedication.

As Dean puts it, It's just about getting at the door. Getting started. Yeah, well, sounds like I already did the hardest part. I got off the couch. Right. Okay. Can I stop running now? Steve, you're back. Yes, I am back. Okay, I'm feeling good.

You look a little bit red in the face. Yes, I'm ready. I think I'm makes me feel alive. Right. You look sound like you're gonna die. No, no, no. I feel good. I feel good. So how far did you go? Um well, the absence I did 1.6 miles, so that's good. That's,

like almost a marathon. Right? Or at least I can pretend it is. It's really close to 26 miles. Yeah. I mean, it feels like 26 so I think I'll count. It is 26 miles. Not every journey begins with the first step, right? Yeah. How do you feel? I'm tired. I'm beat. I feel like I was in a boxing match. Okay.

And, Dave, we have some people to think this episode, thanks to Dean Car Nass's for making me believe that I don't have any limits. And thanks to ah, Dr Matt Baird for showing me that through science, I do have physical limits. Thanks. Also did David Epstein, author of the Sports Gene. And of course, we can't forget Katrina Langton, who was their German interpreter. Music for this episode was by June. You can find them on Soundcloud. This is due thanks to Dave Mason,

Dr Mel Herbert and I'm Dr Jessica Mason checkout Dean's book run his website is ultra marathon man dot com, and he's on Twitter. As at Dean car? Nah, sis. And of course, you can find us on Twitter at Won't hurt A bit pod on our website won't hurt a bit dot com. So let's stick with this concept of extremes for a little while. And in the next episode, we're gonna talk about extreme heat. What happens to a person when they're stranded in the desert? What is heat? Illness? And if you're desperate for water, well, should you drink your own way,

that's all coming up in future episodes. This one hurt a bit is a production of fool Abou Incorporated produced by CC. Have it, Bill Connor, the information you here on this horn hood of it should not be taken as actual medical advice. If you have actual medical questions about actual medical things, you should see an actual medical practitioner even though we are actually doctors were not your actual doctor. So be sensible and keep it real. And this Oh,