Book Review: Endure: Mind, Body, and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance by Alex Hutchinson

I read a lot of books.  I don't usually review them.  Perhaps partly because many are not worthy of a review, but mostly I am not in the business of reviewing books.  Plus this is an ultrarunning blog, so reviewing a random book on world history wouldn't be appropriate.   So... it's a small window, and this book is definitely worth a mention.  

https://www.amazon.com/Endure-Curiously-Elastic-Limits-Performance/dp/006249998X

I've followed Alex Hutchinson for a couple of years now.  He sends out a Sweat Science Digest every couple of months, which is a compilation of the articles he's written for various publications during that time.  They are short yet interesting and thought provoking articles about some form of endurance research, and they only show up occasionally, unlike those spammy companies who send you an email EVERY DANG DAY until you almost certainly Unsubscribe because it's so annoying.  Alex, thanks for not being that person.  

Endure is a book about new research about the mind's limitations of the body's ability to push your limits.  We can do more than we think we can, and yet our mind sets sharp limits on what is possible because it wants us to "not die" doing what we are doing.  Imagine that.

I happened to be reading this book in the days leading up to my 24 hour Spartan Race, and found it quite fascinating as I got ready to push my own endurance limits in strength, speed, cold, and sleep deprivation.  

Some of you may remember a time in Ultrarunning when you got weighed before and during a race.  The thinking was that if you lost too much of a percentage of your body weight, you were too dehydrated to continue.   In such cases, if you failed to make the weight, as it were, on the scale, you would have to stop and drink and eat until you brought your weight back up to an acceptable amount to continue on.   This seems like it's now longer in vogue, perhaps because of the research mentioned in this book.  

It turns out that for every molecule of glucose that is stored in your muscles waiting to be used, three molecules of water are stored with it.  This water can only be accessed if the glucose is used, meaning that as you exercise, that water is also available, and is used up in turn.  So your weight will naturally go down as these emergency water stores become accessible, yet your hydration level is independent of it.    To really understand the science you'll need to read this book, and this was just part of a chapter anyway.  

There's a lot of money and effort going into the science of pushing our boundaries.  But oddly enough, the best yet cheapest way to go faster, is just to smile and tell yourself that you are feeling great and having fun!   Yup, really!  Lol.