BOOK REPORT: ENDURE by ALEX HUTCHINSON

It isn't everyone who gets an introduction by Malcolm Gladwell, but this author did. That is high praise, and, so far, well deserved.

Alex and Malcolm are both runners. More interestingly, they are both thinkers.

This book tries to break down to components all the elements of endurance. It's a puzzle of physiology and psychology.

It starts with the breaking of the two hour marathon, and revisits the more famous breaking of the four minute mile. Referring to "bridesmaids in sport", I was reminded that I didn't known the second man to break the minute mile was an Australian named John Landy. I had only ever learned the name of the "bride"/winner: British, soon to be neurologist, Roger Bannister.

Alex borrows from Samuele Marcora a "suitably versatile definition" of endurance. It is actually describing effort, but works for both.  Effort, and endurance are simply "the struggle to continue against a mounting desire to stop."

He also quotes Rudyard Kipling's poem  "If" to describe runners in a race:

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,

Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it...

He notes that the science of how we pace ourselves is surprisingly complex. We "judge what's sustainable based not only on how you feel, but on how hat feeling compares to how you expected to feel at that point in the race."

He also explains the phenomenon of sprinter Usain Bolt, and how he differed from his peers. His greatest strength was not in running fast, but in his ability to "slow down less quickly" than the rest, once hitting the top speed and fading the latter half of the 100 meter race. This part of sprinting is euphemistically called, by John Smith, coach of former world-record holder Maurice Greene, the "Negative Acceleration Phase".

This is just the first chapter!