What does it mean to go far?
Endurance means different things to different people. To some, the idea of walking 2 miles is a long haul. To others, running a marathon (26 miles, 385 yards) seems like a stroll in the park compared to a 100-mile “ultra” event like the Western States Endurance Run across the rugged Sierra Nevada Mountains from Squaw Valley to Auburn, CA.
Nowadays, it seems that the word “endurance” means little to those raised in a modern society. Whenever I’m giving my Iditarod Presentations in the schools, I begin my talk by asking the kids, “How long do you think it takes to travel 1,100 miles across Alaska by sled dog team?”
A barrage of middle school students wave their hands high above their heads certain they know the answer.
“Two days” is the most common reply to my question.
“Two days?” I say. “Really? You think it only takes two days for a team of sled dogs to pull a sled, gear, and musher 1,100 miles?”
The kids in the audience, deep in thought, scratch their heads and contort their faces lost in their own personal calculations.
“Four days!” a voice from the crowd offers, now obviously guessing.
At first, the class seems bewildered when I explain that it usually takes 10 to 16 days to finish the Iditarod Sled Dog Race. The students have a difficult time imagining doing anything for that many days in a row, let alone mushing alone across a frigid, unforgiving landscape.
“Why does it take so long?” some even venture to ask.
“Nature...” I say. “An animal is not a machine - not a car. Dogs, like humans, can run only so far, so fast.”
And then I ask them, “Can you imagine running over 100 miles a day for 10 days in a row?”
The kids shake their heads; they laugh. No way, they say.
I’m not against modern technology. I love electricity, running water, my Toyota, my Mac, my coffee grinder... the list goes on and on. But many of the amenities that have made our lives more comfortable have also made us less aware, less mindful of what we as humans are actually capable of doing - and not doing. Technology has warped our sense of time, distance, and common sense; do kids really think an Alaskan Husky can run 550 miles in one day?
According to an article by T. D. Noakes from the Department of Human Biology, Sports Science Institute of South Africa, humans have “a skeletal design which favors running and walking, including the greatest ratio of leg length to body weight of any mammal; the ability to sweat and so to exercise vigorously in heat; and the greater endurance than all land mammals other than the Alaskan Husky.” The article titled “The Limits of Endurance Exercise” in the September 2006 journal “Basic Research in Cardiology” goes on to say that these unique features indicate “that humans evolved as endurance animals.”
So, if we humans evolved as beasts that can go the distance, why are we so clueless of our actual capabilities?
The answer? As they say: if you don’t use it, you lose it.
The majority of humans no longer see themselves as “endurance animals.” Most humans try to do less work, not more. Cars help us walk less, elevators help us climb less, computers and calculators even help us think less. Most people don’t want to “endure,” they want to “enjoy.”
The students participating in my Iditarod talks have a difficult time calculating how long it might take a team of sled dogs to run 1,100 miles because most of them only understand distances in relation to travel by vehicle, not by foot. Their common sense has been distorted by our human dependance on machines to get us everywhere we need to go. If we still had to walk several miles a day to fetch water or go to school, we’d have a better sense of what distances are physically possible - and what aren’t.
I recently started running again. What does going far mean to me? Right now, I’d say about 6 miles. But as I trudge up a hill with my legs burning and my heart racing, it becomes painfully clear to me that the only way to understand distance is by choosing to use our own muscles as transportation. And then it becomes obvious, it becomes common sense: no endurance animal can run 550 miles in one day, especially this one...
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