SCIENCE OF ATHLETICS
The average healthy adult, asked to run as hard as they can for one mile, finishes in about 9 minutes. That same speed, you’d guess, is roughly what your body can sustain. Sabastian Sawe just ran 26 of those miles back to back, and each one took him 4 minutes 33 seconds. That is not jogging speed. That is sprint speed for most of us. He held it for 1 hour and 59 minutes and 30 seconds, and he was actually getting faster at the end. Your body has three knobs that decide how fast you can run for a long time. The first is how much oxygen your lungs and heart can deliver to your muscles per minute. Scientists call this number VO2 max. A normal adult sits around 30 to 45. A fit recreational runner gets to 50 or 60. Elite marathoners are at 70-plus. Sawe’s is in that range. The interesting part isn’t the number itself, it’s what percentage of that ceiling he can hold for the full race. In a 2020 study of the 16 best male distance runners on earth (commissioned by Nike’s Breaking2...
