Alex Hutchinson

I agree.

I c- I can give the explanation that Alex Hutchinson gave in his Neuroscience of Endurance book.

Um, great book.

If anyone hasn't read it, I'll put it on screen.

Yeah, I be- I believe those, those anecdotes, yeah.

Um, and that, you know, we all say time flies when you're having fun, and time goes very, very slowly when you're, when you're suffering.

Now, and I think that when you're running a marathon, so much of that is mental, and I agree with your point that apparently Alex Hutchinson made in that some of the, that fatigue is, is mental, right? And why would that be? Well, maybe because in nature you don't only have to run something for the next hour or two, but you need to be in good enough shape to protect yourself if a predator shows up in the next hour or two.

So you have to...

... as well as with my mates.

But, uh, it was when I was reading the ever brilliant Alex Hutchinson in Outside Magazine recently, and he made me question whether riding in a group is actually better for, well, me, you, everyone.

Anyone.

Now his column was about how the benefits of group exercise are hardwired into our brains, talking about how there's a growing body of evidence to show how exercising with others allows us essentially to try harder without it feeling harder.

Yeah.

But equally, I still like, you know, still like riding on my own, basically.

Something that just springs to mind, actually, of a example, like, a most recent thing in pro cycling was at the Tour de France with Alex Swift.

Was it the...

"This is gonna be a great chapter about all these brilliant, amazing things that work." And I assumed they would be very high tech things.

I got a fantastic journalist called Alex Hutchinson, um, who's, who's my favorite kind of sports journalist.

He's also got a PhD in maths from Cambridge, so he's, I think it's, maybe it's physics.

But anyway, he's a super bright guy.

Ouais, tout à fait.

Et, euh, bon pour celles qui demandaient là, t'sais, comme des fois : « Est-ce que quand je suis fatiguée, faut-tu que j'aille m'entraîner ou pas ? » Bon, on y reviendra plus tard, mais, euh, y avait une étude qui, ben en fait, y a plusieurs études, mais je suis tombée sur un article de l'auteur que j'aime bien, qui est Alex Hutchinson, qui parlait dans le fond de l'effet de la fatigue mentale sur la fatigue physique.

Puis lui, il est allé faire des recherches parce que il disait : « Là, je comprends pas mon, mes, mes courses tempo du samedi matin, euh, ma vitesse, elle drop à une-- t'sais comme je comprends pas pourquoi, mais je vais vraiment moins vite.

Puis pourtant, t'sais, physiquement, je me sens comme vraiment bien.

But there is something in there as well around being able to use, we talked about confidence, to be able to get through the session and, you know, juggling the loud and quiet voice so that you don't lose to the loud voice and pull back from your effort.

'Cause the whole reason we train at a certain intensity, whether or not you're a cyclist and you're on the bike and you do some bike work, whether you're a runner doing a 20-minute hard block or a 10-minute or a six-minute or whatever it might be, one of the core elements of endurance, and this is the basis of what Alex Hutchinson wrote in the book Endure, was he defined endurance as the ability to overcome the urge to slow down or quit.

If you can do that in training and consistently show yourself that you can do that, then it comes to the race, you've locked in all that training into your body, and fingers crossed, you just, you know, get your mind out the way, run the race.

And yeah, you'll have some hard times, but you've got the ability to do that marathon, do that ultra, and trust yourself that you'll finish and stay on pace as much as you can.

As a much slower marathoner, I've always had a huge fascination with the technology that's helped advance the sport.

To understand how this happened, I'm talking to Alex Hutchinson, a journalist and author of books like Endure, about the science behind human performance limits.

He's chronicled the research and technology that's advanced the sport, and gone inside the lab where Nike designed its iconic SuperShoes.

But first, here's what's happening on The Verge today.

If you're buying that, you wanna think really carefully about, um, wheth-whether that's what running is about for you.

Well, I think that's a great place to leave it.

Alex Hutchinson, thank you so much for joining us.

Thanks, Lauren.

And it surprised me.

Alex Hutchinson went through every 5,000 to 10,000 meter world record of the modern era and found the same shape every single time.

First kilometer, faster than the middle.

Last kilometer, faster than the middle.