Could 17th century man run a marathon?

Factual Questions
21

I walked 20 miles as part of a steps competition at work 3 years ago. I was 56 years old, not in great shape (but not in bad shape) and started after breakfast, stopped for lunch (tacos!) and finished with a few beers at dinner. I could have gone the full marathon distance if I had to, but I didn’t have to so I didn’t. :slight_smile:

Now I work with guys who run marathons like New York and Boston and asked them if I could put one of those 26.2 mile stickers on my car if I had completed it. One said no and that he would remove it from my car if I did. The other guy said sure, you went the distance and that handicapped people didn’t have time limits. Not sure if I like being thrown in with the handicapped people (not that its wrong) but maybe I can get one of those half marathon stickers and see what happens.

Not sure what the true marathon police would say.

22

There’s a lot of walkers in marathons. Go for it.
Walkers in official marathons still get the finisher’s medal, t-shirt, etc.

23

So I see no reason to think the average 17th century man could not ‘run’ a marathon, and surely record a better time than the average American today.

24

I hope to be able to walk 1 mile again soon. Maybe when I’ve had both knees done I could walk 26.2 miles in a day (not sure if I ever have, probably came in short of that). If i do no one better tell me I don’t qualify for some ambiguously defined honorific because I only walked.

25

WADA might like a word …

Inca messengers chewed coca leaves as a performance enhancer, and the high altitude probably boosted EPO levels above the acceptable limits …

26

Riemann:

We may be innately better at it than any other animal, at least in some respects.

I doubt this. Pronghorns, wolves, hyenas etc.

mixdenny:

I used to work with a guy who was part Apache. He used to enjoy telling us of feats the Indians could do. Among them was the story of how they could run down a deer to catch it. Once I was reading an article that mentioned a white tail deer could run 20 miles. He didn’t even hesitate - “Deer run twenty miles. Apache run twenty one”.

You have this guy talking in a stereotypical movie “injun” style, which makes me wonder.

27

The original marathon runner may have collapsed, but there were other things going on other than running a given distance. There is nothing to suggest he didn’t think he could run that far. I’m willing to bet he wasn’t the first to run a similar distance.

28

Maybe the friend has a sense of humor.

29

I don’t get the point of running an extra mile. He’d be standing a mile away from the deer, what good is that?

Maybe he was texting and didn’t notice the deer had dropped, so he overshot by half a mile and then backtracked? That would get him to twenty one.

30

My grandfather was half mesoamerican Indian and he would speak in stereotypical injun speak when telling a joke. White man build big fire and stand far away, injun build little fire and sit close by.

31

I think the point was that, as far as a deer could run, an Apache could run further (and, thus, a deer could never run away from an Apache).

32

Pronghorns are precisely the kind of animal that is targeted by persistence hunting. From the Wikipedia article:

The procedure is to run down an antelope, such as a kudu, in the midday heat, for up to five hours and a distance of up to 35 km (22 mi) in temperatures of as much as 42 °C (108 °F). The hunter chases the kudu, which runs away out of sight. By tracking it down at a fast running pace the hunter catches up with it before it has had time to rest and cool down in the shade. The animal is repeatedly chased and tracked down until it is too exhausted to run. The hunter then kills it with a spear.

Wolves - and in particular wild dogs - are indeed the other main contender for best endurance runner along with humans. But they obviously have not evolved bipedalism, and have not evolved sweating for thermoregulation. I suspect we might be the winners in hot climates.

Hyenas do hunt in this way, but they are not as specialized as dogs or humans to persistence hunting. You can see by their build that they are much more muscular overall, fearsome animals.

33

Maybe the friend has a sense of humor.

Very possible. But by that same token, it’s also possible that the friend wasn’t imparting any ancient Indian wisdom handed down from generations ago but rather just engaging in some repartee …

Riemann:

Pronghorns are precisely the kind of animal that is targeted by persistence hunting.

Pronghorns and kudu are completely unconnected. Pronghorns are particularly adept at distance running.

34

This article claims that the only animal that will beat humans for distance running in high temperatures is actually the ostrich.

What Animal Would Win a Serengeti Marathon? - Thomson Safaris.

35

Hmmmm.

Maybe the guy got the story wrong and what really happened was it was a story about a deer and an Indian giving each other shit at a bar as deer and Indians will do, and the Indian said, I don’t have to outrun the bear, I just have to out run YOU. And then a bear comes blasting out of the men’s room and says we’re about to fuckin’ find out.

36

And a pronghorn was exactly the animal that was chased to near-exhaustion by a group of ultra-marathoners seeking to test the idea. They got within 25 feet at one point end, and there is little doubt they could have speared it if that had been the objective. If a group of humans inexperienced in this hunting technique could get that close to one of the fastest animals in the world, there’s little doubt this is feasible.

37

wrong linky, I think it’s this one:

https://www.outsideonline.com/1996281/does-persistence-hunting-really-work

…although it doesn’t talk about the result, is the documentary itself available somewhere? Seems to be still pay-per-view.

38

That’s the way I heard it.

39

That sticker just says you covered 26.2 miles. Doesn’t say anything about the way you covered them - running, walking, wheelchair. Walk 26.2 miles and you can plaster your car with stickers, far as I’m concerned.

– Slow Moving Vehicle, 3:49:13 marathon PR.

“If you run, you are a runner. It doesn’t matter how fast or how far. It doesn’t matter if today is your first day or if you’ve been running for twenty years. There is no test to pass, no license to earn, no membership card to get. You just run.” - John Bingham.

40

And a pronghorn was exactly the animal that was chased to near-exhaustion by a group of ultra-marathoners seeking to test the idea. They got within 25 feet at one point end, and there is little doubt they could have speared it if that had been the objective. If a group of humans inexperienced in this hunting technique could get that close to one of the fastest animals in the world, there’s little doubt this is feasible.

Your description of what happened is incomplete nd misleading, ISTM. From the way you put it, one might suppose that they got within 25 feet because the animal was exhausted and couldn’t go further, while the humans still had running capacity left. That’s not what happened. There’s a description here

They do three laps around the gentle valley trailing the antelope, running behind it for two hours. On the last pass, they push the buck up a small ridge and abruptly find it with a bunch of does, 50 feet away.
Now they’re within 25 feet of a panting pronghorn buck. It’s starting to seem feasible. “For a second, we don’t know what to do,” Esposito later recalls.
“Then we all scream,” says Houghton, “like carnal, primal screaming. Beating our chests. I lunge and it takes off between us.”
Houghton, with Garcia behind him, is in a dead sprint with the antelope.
“I’m trying to scare him,” Houghton continues, “make him use up adrenaline. We’re getting closer. The theory is working. I can see his shoulder muscles rippling.” After running for two and a half hours, they log a 4:36 mile, according to their GPS. It’s 94 degrees. It seems within reach.
The pronghorn continues around the valley for another five miles. They follow, scaring cows, crushing sunflowers, until it rejoins a herd below a small rise. They chase it over the hill and discover that the weary animal has gone the other way.

So it seems like the pronghorn stopped momentarily when they were out of sight and it found its herd, but when it caught sight of them it still outran them for another 5 miles and finally shook them.

In addition, if you look at the technique described in the article, they had about 9 guys and surrounded it, chasing it towards each other. This gives a significant advantage to the people, endurance-wise, since they get to tag-team - the people it’s being chased towards can conserve their energy (and possibly stop altogether) while the animal needs to be in constant motion.

From the perspective of the guys who made the experiment, the above is not especially significant, since they were trying to test the feasibility of endurance hunting, and if it could work one way or the other, the bottom line would be that it’s feasible. But what we’re discussing here is how a human compares to a pronghorn in terms of endurance, and if anything, the indication of that experiment is that the pronghorn has the edge.

[This is besides for the question of whether comparing some random pronghorn to a group of elite ultramarathon runners is a valid comparison.]