Korva is a scroll of the internet’s best ideas.
Relentless optimism at mile fifty
Looking terrible, hearing good
Ultra running has co-opted the mantra relentless forward momentum, and its psychological twin is relentless optimism in the face of adversity. Around mile forty, fifty, or sixty, a runner comes around a curve looking and feeling terrible, with shot knees, blisters, vomiting, and deep tiredness. Everyone who sees them says they look good. Nobody says it looks like they will not make it.
When the slump turns
From the inside, the extrapolation says this is not going to work, and doing it all over again seems unfathomable. Refusing to give up does not always work. About half the time or so, though, the slump levels out and starts going back up, and the runner keeps going.
A doable impossible
The race lasts about thirty hours, which puts it in a sweet spot: something that seems impossible, is unbelievably hard, and is still doable. Anybody who is basically healthy and truly wants to finish could do it.
How does the brain decide it is exhausted?
Exercise physiologist Samuele Marcora has argued that exhaustion is set by perceived effort rather than by muscles hitting a hard limit. In a 2009 study in the Journal of Applied Physiology, Marcora and colleagues found that cyclists who were first made mentally tired reached exhaustion sooner. Their heart rate and breathing at a given effort did not differ, but they rated the same work as harder. Effort is a judgment made in the brain, and that judgment can shift during a long event.
How did the hundred-mile race get started?
In 1974 a runner named Gordy Ainsleigh entered the Tevis Cup, a hundred-mile horse endurance ride across the Sierra Nevada in California. His horse went lame, so he covered the course on foot and finished in under twenty-four hours. Other runners followed, and the Western States Endurance Run became an official race in 1977. Its course still runs from Olympic Valley to Auburn in California.
More from Huberman Lab
