This problem was treated with a bit more sophistication by Harvards Lieberman in „A story of the human body“ and the corresponding nature article [0] establishing persistence hunting as an ancestoral hunting technique of homo sapien.
See figure 2b for the plot you were looking for. Running faster is less efficient but only slightly so and walking is a U-shaped curve like most mammal gaites.
It shows that in contrast to most animals, the efficiency curve of humans for running speeds is extremely flat, ie, we are about equally efficient at many different speeds, while the kind of game that we hunted was not.
The discrepancy allowed us to find a speed where we could exhaust the animal after 10-30km (as I understand) provided we were also excellent trackers.
I don't doubt the results but I cannot imagine how that can be true, I'm not fit but I've had many 20+hours hikes to the high mountain peaks but if I run to a bus stop when I'm late I'm tired beyond belief and I just cannot maintain running, have to stop
You are probably sprinting to the bus stop, not running. Running would be below your aerobic threshold, for however well you're trained, and thus should not leave you exhausted or wiped out. The general rule of thumb is that if you can't have a conversation, you're exceeding your aerobic threshold and so are exceeding your pace.
Training increases what that pace is, but ultimately no (land?) mammal can exceed their aerobic threshold for long, since there are limits to stored oxygen. Cetaceans and pinnipeds might be an interesting exception.
This is true, but just to quantify it a bit, a lot of people can run at their lactate threshold for about an hour. This isn't 'long' but may be longer than most people think.
That said, I remember doing similar 'runs to the parking lot' and being gassed when I was totally untrained despite being capable of long walks/hikes. I suspect there are even more basic adaptations one needs to be able to do these very short activities for which a more trained individual can complete anaerobically.
> a lot of people can run at their lactate threshold for about an hour.
I say this as someone incredibly out of shape, but I doubt any of those people are wiped out by running to the bus stop ;)
> I suspect there are even more basic adaptations one needs to be able to do these very short activities for which a more trained individual can complete anaerobically.
Yeah absolutely, I found it very interesting that weight training is universal in sprinters, it makes sense as metabolic training as well as the actual muscle growth.
I started trying to pay attention and do some "zone 2" training recently. I came to the sad realization that a moderate jog pushes me well over zone 2. :(
Same here! Have you found a solution? I was pretty happy with 3 miles 3-4 times per week, 10 to 11 minute pace, but apparently for me that's pushing too hard according to zone training. I tried going much slower, and even then my HR raises more slowly, but eventually gets way up there. Alternating my slowest possible jog and walking has taken all the fun out of running for the time being.
When people talk about "Zone 2" they generally do not refer to a specific % of max heart rate. The simple answer is at this volume of training (3-4 times a week 30 minutes) don't even worry about it. Just run. Zone 2 is an optimization. Can you talk while running at this pace? Can you hold a conversation? I think it's unlikely you can over-train at this volume though if you've never run maybe you ease into this over a couple of months.
Adding distance/time into your program is probably going to help, as long as you don't feel too tired/sore or that you're over-training
Consider adding interval training to your regime. That's a more time efficient way of improving your VO2MAX (which should translate to your overall performance). E.g. 1-2 minutes 90%-100%, 1-2 minutes walk/slow/jog, x3-5 (this is rough, do some reading and see what works for you).
So, I thought this might be the case. But I never got a good answer on if power zone or heart rate zone was what to pay attention to. Since I'm not competing and don't plan to, I don't really care that much. But, no reason not to try and train a bit more properly. :D
When biking, it really doesn't help that I have some silly hills surrounding the house. Even if I'm not going all out, a 10% climb takes its toll.
My ex lost 80 pounds and went from unable to run to running ultras and she found that she had to alternate between walking and running in the beginning to keep her heart rate in the lower thresholds. On the converse side, maybe integrating some strength training or speed workouts or stair climbs will help you develop a strength reservoir to make it easier to run at a low heart rate.
Now that you've recognized how gentle a low heartrate feels I'm sure a conversational pace is totally adequate for staying under your lactic threshold (but if you could sing you're going too slow!)
Kudos on that progress! I don't see myself moving to marathons anytime soon. I /think/ I could do a 5k in about 30 minutes. I would be zone 4 in heart rate for dang sure, though. :D
Supposedly this is the definition: "Zone 2 is defined as the highest metabolic output/work that you can sustain while keeping your lactate level below two millimole per liter.". Unless you can measure lactate level you just don't know what heart rate this corresponds to. The heuristic that's used is "able to have a conversation".
For a beginner a good tip is just to go a little bit easier than they think they should be going. Once you've built some sort of aerobic base your training should start including intervals and runs that push you harder.
There are two risks in pushing yourself too hard. Injury and over-training.
There should be some correlation between lactic acid levels and feeling sore. I honestly just don't worry about it. Just getting out there and doing something is better than sitting around. Listen to your body. If you're not recovering, or not sleeping properly or are too sore, dial back a little on either volume or intensity. My Garmin gives me an estimate of recovery time, you really have to work hard to stretch that recovery time into more than 48 hours (e.g. running a 10K race). You can vary your workouts between something that feels extremely easy to pushing yourself a little more.
EDIT: another thing I didn't mention is that in terms of injury you want to give your body plenty of time to build more distance. Most of your joints and other tissues take longer to adapt than cardiovascular. I think this is where people can get into potential injury situations by ramping up too fast. I personally also try to run on soft surfaces (trails etc.) since I find hard surfaces (roads) a lot more punishing.
"Zone" training is primarily a way for high mileage runners to get the physical adaptation of running with lower risk of injury on easy days. If you're running < 20 mpw there should be minimal risk of injury and you should focus on increasing mileage and not on heart rate (which is highly variable depending on the person anyway, and should be properly determined with a LT test).
I pretty much settled on what all they were saying. I was taking the exact path you outlined. Since that seems to be working fine for me, and I'm also adding weights, I figured I would wait and try again later. Probably in a year or so, if I can keep up this schedule. Good luck on your exercise!
As other people say here, 9 to 12 miles a week is unlikely to put you in need of that kind of specialization. People I know that do zone training are running 30-50 miles a week, some more.
I did hiit training for a year 3 times per week and now I struggle to get my heart rate up to that same point. My muscles give up or just can't sustain the intensity necessary.
My heart rate goes down way faster, so if I stop for 1 second (literally), my heart rate drops immediately and it takes a lot of effort for it to go back up.
I suspect at this point training in zone 2 is trivial, my body gets naturally there
TL; DR; train hard first, your heart gets stronger and brings you to zone 2 naturally?
I'm no athlete or expert, so please do your research and ignore everything I said
You might want to check yourself for conditions such as asthma in that case. Mild cases often go undiagnosed but medication makes a huge difference on the heart rate during a slow jog.
Most animals get tired running very quickly too. A cheetah, just like you, also can't sustain a run at their max speed for very long (about 30 seconds max). But when it comes to endurance, very few animals come close to us thanks to how efficient we are. A lot that comes from us being bipedal, a good amount of our muscles being slow twitch, our ability to breathe independent of our muscle usage while running, and having a very high density of sweat glands across our bodies (10 times the density of chimps) giving us an efficient and superb cooling capacity.
This is going to sound crazy, but get a Garmin watch and zone 2 train. Three years ago I couldn’t ride 5 miles on my bike. This year I completed my second Unbound 100mi. Honestly I could go a lot further if I had enough nutrition and fixed all the creature comforts like seat and glasses.
That’s because you’re using more energy per time unit, and there’s only so much that you can sustain. The article is about energy per distance unit. So to translate this: run the same distance faster, and you’ve burned about the same amount of calories, but you’re more exhausted from having to burn through the calories at a faster rate. However, from an efficiency perspective you got there faster at the same cost.
There's no contradiction here. The ability to move at a cost of X kj/km has nothing to do with sustaining a power output of Y kj/s.
Your body can be thought of as a directed graph of different pools of energy with different edge weights representing how fast you can move energy between pools, and your fitness as being your ability to move energy into the ATP pool. If you can walk a km in 10 minutes for 200 kj, or run it in 5 minutes for 200 kj, and you can produce 300 kj of ATP in 10 minutes, then you're going to run out of energy running but be able to walk indefinitely, even though both are equally efficient. (In practice the numbers are going to be different, and there are more conversions than just glucose to ATP to think about, but I think the example illustrates the point).
I often have to use arm swinging and pronouced hip movement to get myself out of the wilderness faster/easier.
I have found it to be more efficient than mindless hiking/walking. I try to loosen my gaite and keep upright when I remember to.
Also, having done extensive Taibata, squats, weight lifting, and cycling. Nothing compared to hiking (often steep terrain) for conditioning. I'm strong from the inside out and it (strength) persists for much longer than other conditioning exercises. And it's crazy enjoyable. Cycling was enjoyable (and far more painful overall) but it guarantees nothing for core strength and will typically result in repetition injuries (years of experience MTB and road).
> I don't doubt the results but I cannot imagine how that can be true, I'm not fit but I've had many 20+hours hikes to the high mountain peaks but if I run to a bus stop
you are probably not trained as well as our ancestors, who were consistently jog-hunting since very young ages, which translates to more efficient mind-body connection, target muscles and energy systems development, and fat to body mass ratio.
There are plenty of people who can jog for many miles and likely has higher aerobic threshold for moderate sprinting.
Try running slower? If I run 50k at 7min/km I'm not tired at all, but walking the same distance at 12min/km leaves me exhausted.
The mental model in my head sort of accounts for effort it takes just to be upright for 10 hours even if you don't cover any distance at all. Low-effort running saves me half of that energy because I spend less time upright.
I agree and contrary to what the other commenters are saying, I can walk all day on a 16-17 min/mile pace but if I bump that up to a 10-12 min/mile jog, I am completely tired by the 3-5 mile point. It’s not a full sprint, it’s a pretty slow jog and somehow that completely taps me out.
Another way to think about it--i.e. hoofed animals can only walk or sprint. Humans can jog, so as long as a human hunter can pick up the trail after the animal sprints out of sight, the jogging will eventually win out.
I was trying to help with a simplified mental model. Sorry, I thought the "another way to think about it" part was clearer than it might have been.
The linked paper in the parent comment has a graph on page 347 (page 2 of the content). The human's walk curve is substantially more efficient than the other gaits, included on the graph, which is the point I was trying to make. Humans best their caloric/distance ratios over time ("endurance hunting").
I guess the precise definition would be most ungulates, but not migratory ungulates?
> Although not extensively studied in non-humans, endurance running is unique to humans among primates, and uncommon among quadrupedal mammals other than social carnivores (such as dogs and hyenas) and migratory ungulates (such as wildebeest and horses)
Anyway I was attempting a clumsy metaphor to aid someone's understanding, not trying to be pedantic. It's easiest to compare sprinting and not-sprinting.
I'm a runner and have had a weird question, could a runner defeat a larger human in this way? Like if I found myself in mortal combat with The Rock at 260 lbs after his steroids cycle, could I just repeatedly run away and follow him (while staying out of range) until he tired out and then bonk him on the head with a rock, like a tired antelope? (No offense to The Rock, seems like a great guy)
Might explain why we aren't all musclebound and huge? Although I'm sure food availability had more influence.
Somewhat related anecdote: When a friend of mine was in college, he got into some sort of amicable debate with another friend and they decided the way to resolve it was through a boxing match. Neither of them had an ounce of boxing experience.
My friend realized before the match that just holding the gloves up and swinging punches is more tiring than you'd think. So the strategy he settled on was to just put his guard up and not attack at all. He let his friend take a bunch of swings at him until eventually the poor guy was literally too tired to hold his arms up. Then my friend started swinging and quickly won.
The Rock would be bad at persistence hunting, but it would be weird if he was so susceptible to persistence hunting. What incentive does he have to fatigue himself in this scenario? When it's you vs animal, the animal runs from you since if you catch it you kill it. The Rock could just chill and say bring it on. If you were sufficiently mobile and clever, maybe you could prevent him from reaching food and water until he's weak enough for you to attack.
Juicing is gaining a lot of legitimacy lately. Not that it’s any better for you at this point but there are a lot of bodybuilders publicly talking about it. Its being normalized pretty rapidly which is a definitely not a good thing.
If you knew how to use a sling, and The Rock didn't, you could try to make The Rock chase you by staying out of his range and slinging rocks at him. Reverse persistence hunting.
I think this sort of technique is used in boxing and MMA: play a good defense, stay out of trouble, and let the aggressor exhaust themselves until later rounds when you feel you may have a fitness advantage. I think there were good examples of this in the early days of MMA, when there was much less, if any, specialized training, techniques and strategy. It's probably much less effective now, since a well trained aggressor will know how to pace themselves too.
Short answer no. This is because what gets exhausted is aerobic capacity. When you get within striking range The Rock will still have access to fast twitch muscles & some reduced amount of glycogen for energy release. This would probably be enough to grab you and choke you out. Basically the Mountain vs the Viper fight from game of thrones.
If you were of similar size then yes. Basically being smaller really sucks in a fight. So if you can reasonably deflect the Rocks wrestling & grappling offensive you could rope a dope him causing him to gas out and then win. Higher weight MMA fighters & boxers use this tactic all the time. They let their opponent “punch themselves out” and then get off their own offense.
Nope. OP stipulated that at some point mortal combat happens and also suggests that it happens within arms length for example dropping a large rock on an even larger Rock.
Layman: skeletal muscles are expensive to maintain in terms of caloric and protein/water intake, and larger muscles are less efficient at dumping the heat that their use generates because volume increases faster than exposed surface area with muscular hypertrophy. If food and body temperature regulation were more immediate concerns than violent conflict, then the ability to gas out your opponent was probably less influential.
I've thought about this kind of scenario, bizarrely, a decent amount recently. Long story short, assuming your opponent is so strong that once you're in arms' reach, you're done, you have to be faster than said opponent not only at endurance running but also at every distance between. E.g. assuming you start off somewhat close to them, you have to sprint faster and transition into a faster endurance running pace, and at no point can you be so much slower than them at a given distance that they're able to regain any ground you made on them at a different speed.
The reason it works against deer is that they can only get rid of a certain amount of heat; once they reach their maximum temperature they are not able to continue moving.
The Rock, being human is able to exhaust at least as much heat as you, taking away from your advantage.
>The Rock, being human is able to exhaust at least as much heat as you, taking away from your advantage.
I'm not so sure about this. The Rock has only slightly more surface area than I do (due to his larger physical size); it's not a huge amount more, certainly not double. However, he has much more muscle mass than I do, probably more than double. Therefore, his surface-area/muscle-mass ratio should be lower, meaning he should have less ability to exhaust heat than me. (Muscle mass is what generates all the heat.) Therefore, over time, he should get overheated more quickly than me, though of course this depends entirely on our relative physical activity while we're trying to fight or avoid the other.
Endurance advantage is a big factor in many sports and offers a viable strategy.
The issue with your suggestion is that it's not uncommon for massive heavy athletes to also have excellent endurance too, so even if they may not catch you, they would still be the one stalking you.
I'm a big guy, 6'5", 255 (aiming for 240), plenty of muscle, and when I was a young kid and teen I cycled a _lot_. I kept cycling through my 20s, and did a tremendous amount of walking too for enjoyment. At my peak I could run a mile in just under 7 minutes. I did the 50 and 100m sprints freshman year of high school for track and won a fair amount. I was on the swim team. And despite all of that, yes, the cross country kids had more stamina than me, although I could beat them in sprints.
So, anecdotally, yeah, me vs a runner and the runner takes off? If I don't catch them within a couple of hundred yards, they're gone. I can walk or cycle at a medium pace all day, but distance runners will beat me in marathons every single time. In caveman times I'd have been the closer, the guy who catches up to the runners and finishes off the bear or tiger or elephant when it's exhausted.
Lightly-armed Athenians trapped heavily-armed Spartans in hilly terrain, and instead of fighting them in a phalanx, wore them down with a long day of hit-and-run. Hundreds of exhausted Spartans were taken alive, which was a massive scandal for the Spartan reputation at the time.
i don't think it would work on human vs human because the other one would go find a tool to work in their advantage. In this case, The Rock would get a gun and a car and then you're SOL.
I've read the anatomical feature that allows humans a wider range of comfortable speeds with one base gait is bipedalism, and four-legged gaits have narrower speed ranges.
This is easy to observe for dog lovers. Walk with a medium size (say 50-60 lbs) dog off leash and you'll notice the dog has to choose between a gait that's a little slow for a human walk or a gait that'd be a fast walk for a human -- but you can still match either of those without much trouble. If you choose not to match your walk to the dog's speed, the dog will alternate between the two gaits to roughly match your speed.
I find this a very interesting observation! (Don’t have a dog)
Note though, that the paper describes the different speeds that are possible when walking with equal efficiency to be quite narrow in comparison to running.
There is this related saying that „the fastest marathoners burn just as much calories as the slowest to complete 42km, they just do it in a much shorter time“. This kind of range is not available to walking.
Yes, a human walking faster to match the faster dog gait is much more tiring than walking at your own pace. And that slightly faster gait is still a relatively slow pace for a healthy dog, they're usually happy to go faster!
However, it's possible for a human to match speeds with the same base gait, whereas the dog gaits seem more limited to their narrow ideal speeds.
It's an interesting question, but only looking at energy expenditure probably does not cut it.
I hike a lot and started running races in alpine territory (e.g. this one [1]) about a decade ago and think if you take into account fatigue (mental, muscle, tendons) and exposure to the elements (sun, rain, wind, snow), a light running pace can definitely make you arrive at your destination less exhausted than walking the same distance, given that you can move confidently in the given terrain.
So it is a multi-dimensional optimization problem (as opposed to only optimizing for energy expenditure) and very dependent on how comfortably you can move at the given velocities.
Having done some light ultra events myself I have definitely found that going faster can be less tiring overall because you reduce overall duration - less sleep deprivation, less time on feet, etc.
Less time on feet but under a bigger strain with less efficiency which will make you more tired. It's the same for all of these.
>(sun, rain, wind, snow)
You are are not as long in the sun but you are longer in the sun under a less efficient energy expenditure. You will sweat more because your are not in an ideal window.
If you look at the Ultra events with 100+ Miles and tons of elevation gain, even the winners have an avg pace of a fast walking speed. There are some hikers who only hiked these events and got very good results.
The more you weight the further the efficiency goes away. Even the top runners only walk the steep uphills. And in long races with lots of elevation gain at the and they are walking all hills. It's exactly because it becomes so inefficient even for lightweights
> If you look at the Ultra events with 100+ Miles and tons of elevation gain, even the winners have an avg pace of a fast walking speed. There are some hikers who only hiked these events and got very good results.
Sorry, but this is totally incorrect. The record for the Western States 100, which has nearly 19,000' of elevation gain, is just over 14hrs for men, and about 15.5hrs for women.
Fast hiking in that terrain would be 4mph which translates to 25hrs minimum.
The world's best ultra runners can maintain 6+mph average in insane terrain.
> The record for the Western States 100, which has nearly 19,000' of elevation gain, is just over 14hrs for men, and about 15.5hrs for women.
Tor des Géants (78,700' over 205 mi) men's record is 66:44 at just over 3 mph and that doesn't touch the Barkley marathon with 60,000' gain and under 2mph, though that's more to do with the rough terrain than elevation.
190' per mile isn't that much, especially since the Western 100 ends 5,000' lower than it starts.
There certainly are "ultra" routes that essentially require just speed hiking. But the majority of 100+ mile ultras are not like this, and allow capable runners of moving much faster than "speed hiking" pace.
OP said "Ultra events with 100+ Miles and tons of elevation gain" (emphasis mine).
"Tons" is subjective, but their statement is objectively true for a bunch of ultra marathons - Tor des Géants and Barkley were just the ones of the top of my head. He is not "totally incorrect" as you said.
Very true. First thing I thought when I read this - how much weight are we carrying? What are the water requirements?
Then again the opposite example (lets say a super hot desert with intense sun - but you can wear a shaded hat or something) might result in the opposite - your feet might still be more tired because walking is slower (and more time on them) but the environment is a huge factor.
I'm no athlete, just get around town on foot a lot. Even on sidewalks with no baggage, running at a medium pace with a springy step seems less tiring.
If I'm wrong about that, at least it's obviously easier to run downhill. When walking, it can even take more effort vs flat. But when running, by definition both feet leave the ground at some points, so you have less friction and can let gravity do its thing.
That's my experience too. When I hike in the mountains there are places where I can run for a while without getting tired and gain a lot of time. Usually it's the slightly downhill sections. Wouldn't want to fall there though.
The article seems to actually be answering a different question than it poses.
From my experience of roughly analysing this a couple of years ago when I was losing quite a lot of weight, I drew two main conclusions:
* Calories used is a function of total distance travelled and your weight, your speed isn't really that significant a factor.
* Walking rather than running uses about 80% of the calories for the same distance compared to running. It seems to be based on the mechanics of changing gait. If you at walking speed (google MAF - maximum aerobic fitness for more info), you use more calories than just walking.
While these would seem to be opposite to the conclusions in the article, it's worth noting that the MET value is a function of calories over time, not calories over distance. The faster you're moving, the more calories you're using and the greater the distance you're covering, and they roughly cancel out.
I also found it interesting that running slowly and/or walking is better for losing weight as running faster primarily uses glycogen (and makes you hungry), and running slowly primarily uses fat. This doesn't really affect energy efficiency, per se, but fat is a more efficient energy storage source, so this might be relevant in answering the posed question. But in any case, if you want to lose weight, walking is significantly more useful than running as you can generally sustain the activity over a longer period of time, and with less stress on your body.
Purely anecdotal, but I was surprised to find out that I gained significant weight when I switched from walking 6 hours/week to riding a bike for the same amount of time. I find it much harder to recover from riding, which makes sense because my heart rate goes way higher.
Riding is much more fun, but I suspect you are completely right about walking being the better choice for weight loss. I was at my leanest when my breakfast was just black coffee and it was followed by a 60-90 minute walk.
Also purely anecdotal, but I once lost 17kg (37lb) just by walking an additional 90 minutes a day for several months straight. And successfully maintained the new low weight for years afterward, also by walking moderately more than the usual.
The great thing about walking is that you can just keep doing it mindlessly, while also doing other things such as commuting, shopping, running errands and taking care of the dogs, which you need to do anyway. The inefficiency, compared to running, is more than offset by the fact that it's so much easier to find an opportunity to walk.
Add a weighted backpack and you can massively ramp up the calorie burning aspect of those shorter walks.
"Load carriage" is a thing the military has put some effort into studying. A 50lb pack turns a brisk walk into something that burns 100s of calories. Even an extra 20lbs on your back adds up. It might not feel like a lot, but the difference in heart rate for same perceived effort is shocking.
I have lived on trail, hiking thousands of miles a year with a backpack filled with food, water, and shelter. To hear the claim that hiking with a 50lb pack has the "same perceived effort" is absolutely untrue for me. The difference between 0lb and 20lb is significant. The difference between that and 50lb is monumental. For me, rucking a 50lb pack after about 30 minutes feels like I'm taking hallucinogens, and not in a fun way! Time slows down to a crawl, I can't really understand audio language or even really form thoughts at all. It's like my whole brain stops working and I am nothing but resistance to getting crushed into the ground.
I can ruck a 20lb pack for 20 miles a day for weeks, but even that took a lot of training. Doing that with 50lb feels like it would be impossible. Maybe my 135# body has some limiting factor.
That being said, I love taking out a 50lb pack just to clear my head. It's like forced meditation.
Is a lot and is not a lot at all. When I was using buses to get to work, I got almost 90 min of walking and walking like activities a day just by existing - going to stop, standing on the bus, going to store, walking for lunch or to the office toilettes.
It is kind of nothing if you live "the old school way", that amount of walking just accumulates. If you live "the post covid way" or "car with close parking lot way", then it becomes large block of time you have to carve separately.
6km/h is a brisk walk. You need to concentrate on the walking aspect if you want to maintain that pace.
Slow down a bit to 4-5km/h and you can last much longer, not to mention multitask more effectively (listen to an audiobook, be on a phone call, just brainstorm, etc.) so you don't actually need to set aside hours a day specifically for walking.
Also, walking doesn't trigger your appetite as much as running or weight lifting for the same calorie expenditure. That's purely anecdotal but what I've come to conclude. One poster said walking doesn't burn glycogen, which is your immediate fuel source. That correlates because your body needs immediate fuel much more than fat stores.
Wow, that's really insightful. Glycogen is consumed during all forms of exercise, even low intensities. What changes is the ratio of glycogen as a percentage of all energy expenditure, called the Glycolytic Quotient or simply Q factor.
It sounds plausible that the amount of hunger we feel when we feel a fixed number of calories may depend on how much that depleted our glycogen stores, among other factors.
Thanks for the extra detail. Maybe another brush on it is something like, walking burns glycogen but since the ratio is lower for the same calorie expenditure, it’s harder to fully deplete your glycogen, which is what causes the more intense forms of hunger.
Sure, but I don't think it is reasonable to perform a single physical activity if your goal is maintaining good health anyway. There is a neeed for resistance training, cardio, mobility and balance. E.g. lift weights, ride a bike, do some yoga. It is only a matter of finding activities that you enjoy.
I don't think that's reasonable at all. I ride and trail run regularly, and the amount of time that it subtracts from my nerd hobbies is *immense*. Other poster is right, the 99th percentile regular non-professional shredded athletes I know do one thing consistently.
Since you are spending an *immense* amount of time trail running, have you contemplated the pros and cons of reducing some of that time commitment and complementing your running with other physical activity to build other areas of your fitness beyond endurance?
You do you, but it's a bit like somebody consuming only large amounts of meat and somebody suggesting that it may be beneficial to reduce some of that and balance the diet with some other nutrients.
I'm more tempted to stop running again. I am less skilled at mountain biking today since I moved to a 1:3 weekly schedule (4h running and 6-16 hours riding). Our insane single friend who XCs from summit to summit 7-14 days straight 3mo/year is enjoying my conjured dream.
Health isn't my goal, it's a second-order effect. I just know that you can achieve top 1% fitness without the time-consuming yoga and gym routines.
I'm not a particularly fast cyclist (usually average around 20km/h), but I'm generally in zone 2 for most of my ride and just creeping into zone 3. On the other hand, being quite fat, I find hills push me much harder than running because I'm forced to go at least 5km/h * because of the gearing of the road bike and having to maintain a cadence of at least 60 (because lower cadence actually makes it harder).
Last year, I mostly switched from a road bike to a gravel bike and found the lowest gear far more comfortable for steep hills because the lowest speed was about half.
* I actually can't remember the exact speeds, but I think it was about 5mph / 8km/h on the road bike and roughly about 5km/h on the gravel bike.
Common gear ratios for MTB (and gravel) do favor steep inclines much more. It doesn't matter how exhausted you are, if you have a granny gear 46-52t cassette and 30-36t chainring setup, you're solid.
Higher heart rate zones are notoriously not for weight loss/fat burn. That happens in 1-3, and only for a sustained period. Above you are just destroying your glicogen stores
I also gained weight when I started running 2-3 times a week + gym 2 times per week. But I strongly suspect that's from increased muscle (though I have also been eating more)
> I also found it interesting that running slowly and/or walking is better for losing weight as running faster primarily uses glycogen (and makes you hungry), and running slowly primarily uses fat.
This presupposes running using glycolysis for energy. Most runners will do this, but there are quite a few ultra runners who use ketosis instead, and derived almost all their energy to run from fat. It's not great if you want to go very fast (say, track and field events), but it has some distinct benefits for very long ultra trail events.
Well, the answer to the initial question is kind of obvious I think: running is less efficient (for the same speed) because when running more of your energy goes into vertical motion (jumping from one foot to the other) than into horizontal motion. Of course, above certain speeds walking just isn't "feasible" anymore, but running will never be as efficient as walking at the optimal speeds for walking.
...but if you want the most efficient way to travel only with the power of your own muscles, you need a bicycle :)
That gives you a hair over 13 min time on a 3000m run. When I was in the (Norwegian) military, that time would get you a 7 out of 9 score for males, and 8 (or 9) out of 9 score for females on a physical test. Pretty solid score.
It would also almost give you a sub 3 hour marathon.
You'd be a pretty capable runner if you can keep a steady 7 min mile, for the sake of running efficiently!
You actually need to run 6:51/mi to break 3 hours in a marathon.
Source: Guy who once ran a marathon in 3:00:06.
I did eventually break 3 hours multiple times but that near miss hurt for a long time. And yes, anyone who can run that fast, even for a single mile, is above average by a fair bit.
Another commenter talked about prehistoric hunters chasing game. I would assume that those hunters were quite a bit more fit than the average Western dude today. It's also not surprising that a human body in good shape is still optimized for that prehistoric lifestyle.
I think they benefited from slower runs across the course of days rather than sprints to chase game. Lots of animals are faster than humans, but in order to cool down they have to stop. From what I've read, humans' ability to run and stay cool through sweating allowed them to, over the course of days track and just simply wear out animals to the point the animal would just collapse from exhaustion.
A 7 min mile would pass most special forces (selection) requirements around the world.
For BUD/S (Navy Seals), it seems like a 1.5 mile run is part of the physical screening test, a 10m30s time would put you 10 seconds from the "competitive category". Minimum requirement is 11m
And from my memory, that was roughly the same requirements in my country for most SOF positions.
But, of course, those screening tests aren't necessarily done under ideal conditions. But if you can do a 7 min mile, it's not your conditioning that will stop you. You should be able to pass the minimum requirements for every position in the military.
My lay observance is many soldier's are stronger+heavier than WWII for example. Strength doesn't quite offset the increased body weight effects when it comes to running medium to long distances. So typically you'd be right, but recently I think we're selecting for strength which requires higher bodymass more than in the past.
I use the Navy standards as a rough guide to reclaiming some fitness I've lost over several years.
They are remarkably non-stringent. Basically the ones I pay attention to (running, rowing (on an erg), pushups etc) have a highest level that means "good athletic conditioning, but not particularly competitive at this activity".
Special forces tend to care most about physical endurance and mental tenacity/toughness. 1 rep max, 3km speed PR, not so much. Can you hike for 48 hours without sleep matters more.
7:00 min/miles is a 4:21 min/km, which would result in 21 min 5K, 43 min 10K, 1h 32 min half marathon and 3h 3min marathon.
I can run a 7 min mile pace, but I can't sustain it for a long time, and when it comes to comparing running VS walking, 20-30 km feels like the distance you should use, as that's a distance most people could walk daily over an extended period of time (e.g a week).
I was never a great long distance runner, but I took it seriously for 1.5 years and I could run a half marathon just under 2hrs. The pace the whole time felt dynamic, everything went perfect, I was significantly faster than all the joggers by the river. I needed two days to recover, and the suggested place would have been 30 minutes faster.
> when it comes to comparing running VS walking, 20-30 km feels like the distance you should use, as that's a distance most people could walk daily over an extended period of time (e.g a week).
20-30km every day for a week, i.e. 140-210 km/week?
Fun fact, according to [1] 160-220 km/week is the training regime of world champion marathon runners like Eliud Kipchoge.
That guy that ran across America did 72 miles (115 km) per day [2]
But these certainly aren't "most people" weekly running distances :)
When I did a running course, I started from a bit above nothing (hence first weeks were boring) and ended at 5 km in 30 minutes (easily, with 8 min remaining). The course took 12 weeks to reach, approx 3 runs a week (so sometimes one extra day off). I was around 35 y.o. then, so it was still relatively easy to get in shape. If you're older, this is more difficult. But the course was nice because I had a (Belgian) woman in my ears telling me what to do. Really easy. You do what she tells you to. And if you can't, you still give it your best. Oh, and dear reader, do yourself a favor: do a proper warming up, every time. You don't want to retract a muscle.
You're probably just getting old and I don't think most people appreciate the effect that years of being relatively sedentary can have on you. I ran competitively in high school and stayed at it mostly recreationally, but not consistently, joined the Army at one point, then got badly injured in my 30s and didn't run for nearly a decade. Now I run again in my 40s, frankly more than I ever did before.
At age 12, I ran a 5:05 mile with no training except running a weekly all-out mile for PE class. At age 14, I ran a 17:14 5K after three months of training in my first cross-country meet of my first season. I PRed at 16:04 two years later. In my late 20, I was still hitting an 11:30 2-mile in the Army's fitness test pretty easily, mostly without running. I swam every day, did a lot of rowing, and ran track repeats for 8 weeks leading up to the test.
Today, I run almost 80 miles a week right now, a structured, principled program, and I can't get anywhere remotely close to the times I once used to run almost effortlessly. Same person, same genetics, but in my 40s after a decade of being mostly sedentary. It takes its toll and it makes people who take this up as a hobby because they got fat in their 30s think something is impossible that likely would have been quite doable if they'd been doing it their entire lives.
Same opinion. There are so many wrong things with how the data is used.
For starters, the data is biased because the basal metabolic rate of someone who does sports is higher than someone who doesn't, and that's without taking into account the higher metabolic rate of people who are overweight/obese (albeit for different reasons), and even for people who are fit, runners are trained to be more efficient at running (duh).
But the underlying message isn't really all that insightful: the optimal running pace isn't the slowest nor the fastest, but somewhere in the middle, which is pretty obvious to anyone who's done some running.
It's true for most machines (as in, energy conversion).
The main exception would be heating, and even then, it's usually that the optimum performance is just really close to the top performance; e.g. imperfect combustion of more fuel being less efficient than perfect combustion of less.
I don't see why that means there's anything off. Just because most of us can't produce enough energy per unit time to maintain this pace doesn't mean that it's not the most efficient pace per unit distance.
Anecdotally, when I start (or re-start) running I find the pace I can run at increases quite rapidly. That makes sense with this data - although my fitness is only increasing slowly, being able to produce slightly more power actually gives a disproportionate increase in pace because the higher speed is more efficient per km.
As a 17 year old I got there by running an hour three times a week, maybe I just had the body for it low weight and long legs. You will be top 25% in our local 10 km competition[1]. The track is considered perfect for running in a fast pace, people compete to get a good PB.
I was curious so I looked it up, it turns out that the men’s world record for a mile is 3 minutes and 43 seconds, the women’s is 4 minutes and 7 seconds. These are the very best in the world at their prime. I would conjecture that less than 50% of adults in an industrial society would be able to run a 7 min mile, which is less than twice the world record times.
Lots of missing variables in the equation: how much do you carry, how much of your body weight is useful muscle versus the rest, etc...
I suspect the announced most-efficient run speed is for the most efficient (light) runner.
I wouldn’t be surprised if it was quite generalizable. The lost efficiency has to be from the increased vertical travel required from running (followed by the additional stabilization required), I wouldn’t be surprised if the most efficient ratio of vertical to forward travel was very similar for a wide range of weights.
I’d be more interested in how they collected the data. A skilled and fit runner will run a lot more efficiently than a less skilled and less fit runner, and you’d also expect a skilled/fit runner to run faster than a less skilled/fit runner. So depending on how they collected the data, that could be a big confounder.
No, I don't believe that it would be. In terms of "calories expended over distance", it'd be pretty close, but we're made for endurance, not raw speed. From what I understand, the energy budget of the human body is tuned for 2 things: neurological activity (the energy consumption of which far exceeds any other animal on earth) and endurance.
It's what makes us such terrifying hunters... prey can outrun us but then when they invariably have to stop to recover, we eventually just turn up and they have to keep running again.
So, any activity where you're cranking the ol' powerhouse up to 120% and going for a run is going to incur a cost, both in terms of energy consumption (which, as the post demonstrates, is slightly more efficient than a fast-paced walk), but then also the resultant metabolic waste which needs to be eliminated, which is a process that takes place during recovery in the 24hrs or so after you've completed your "efficient" 7-minute mile, and I don't believe the article takes this into account.
I watched an interesting video recently (I think it was Kurzgesagt?) that talks about the illusion of high-intensity activity vs low-intensity but longer-duration activity.
Who does science in imperial units?! Thats what crashes stuff and people into hard objects.
Well, then again, they use kcal, instead of Joule. Which has conflicting definitions by a small percentage. And usually, the kilo-part is hidden. Making some calcuations off by a factor of one thousand.
The difference between an untrained runner, a trained runner and n elite athlete are left completely unanalyzed. Given how seemingly varied for no apparent reason some of these points on the graph are and coming from an anecdotal perspective this analysis is not very useful, and probably even wrong.
Seemingly an elite athlete must have been tracked because almost nobody(considering the whole population) can run the given top-end pace for a sustained amount of time (More that 100metres).
I was hoping for more from the article, or at least that it was called 'calorically More efficient'.
As far as human endurance goes (more the topic of various comments than the article), humans can outrun a horse, most recently last year: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-65867327
I seem to remember reading as a kid that this happened first in some Victorian bet (I would have read this in one of my dad’s kid’s books from the 1930s).
This was also a plot device in a Larry Niven short story (one of the Draco’s Tavern stories).
Need to take into account different body types, and whether the goal is to burn calories or not. Whether there is time gained or not. Say, walking is evidently more efficient than running. Why do people run then? Because circumstances demand it; because they like to stay or get into shape, because they want to burn fat, because they enjoy a change of pace, or because they need to catch a bus. Or simply: because they can / find it fun (children). Speaking of children: hopping is the most efficient form of movement for small children (IIRC around the age of 6).
Efficient or not (the conclusion may be premature due oversimplified numbers, IMHO), the repetitive impact of running will wear down the cartilage and meniscus, essentially causing premature ageing of the knees when used routinely; this variable should be considered as a deferred efficiency cost also.
It doesn't seem that our body sees running as a method of travel, given our inability to regenerate cartilage and due the dehydration through cooling, it sounds more like a momentarily needed resource for survival.
> the repetitive impact of running will wear down the cartilage and meniscus, essentially causing premature ageing of the knees when used routinely
This concerned me as someone who benefits from running. I found the following study which says "Cumulative number of years running, number of marathons completed, weekly mileage, and mean running pace were not significant predictors for arthritis".
I found running style is a major contributor. I got knee pain preparing for a 10K run in my early 20s. When I stopped for a month it would go aways, but when I started again it would instantly come back.
I then learned about natural running (forefoot strike, using your joints for suspensions) which made logical sense to me. I could run again, even every day, and even more than a decade later no knee pain when running.
It does have the added benefit that you don't even need expensive running shoes anymore, because you use your body's joints for suspension instead of some gel midsole.
There is a slightly higher risk of ankle injury, which did happen once in over a decade. But otherwise I think natural running just makes so much sense.
You should also ease into it, because you need to train your calf muscles to do a bit more work.
Thank you for providing this information. I've been getting hip pain when running so I'll see if I can incorporate and test the effects of a forefoot strike.
Every time I have had a leg-related running injury (knees, ankles, calfs, hip - you name it) the solution from the physio has always included doing squats.
Now if I feel a niggle coming somewhere I just do a bunch more squats throughout the day (whenever I remember really) and that usually solves it after a week or two. Nothing super strenuous - just like 10 to 15, perhaps 2 or 3 times a day
I have tried minimal shoes as well as super-spongy ones over the years, or trying to change heel strike Vs forefoot rtc and it seems it is only squats that make a difference!
I can't say I agree with the running findings, having had to start training for a long distance run recently from not having run any sort of distance in over eight years. My physical heart cannot cope with 13km/h for anything longer than 1.5k on a treadmill. However the author has a full Wikipedia page about himself which is impressive.
I referred to it in my other comment in this thread, but if you really want to boost your range, look into MAF (maximum aerobic fitness).
The general principle is that you stay in the metabolic range where you're primarily burning fat reserves rather than using glycogen. The body typically has sufficient reserves for about 30 minutes of maximum glycogen use. The faster you run, the more glycogen you're using compared to fat, and so the quicker you'll run out and hit the wall.
A lot of people don't get on with MAF because it forces you to stop running and walk a lot in the early stages (essentially, you have a target HR of 180-age and if your HR is above that, you switch to walking), and even when your body does adapt and you can keep running all the time, you have to run much, much slower than you think you're capable of and that you probably want to be running at. But, over time you'll find your body gets more efficient and your speed at the target HR goes up over time. But to translate it into normal terminologoy, it's like you're always training in zone 2, although for most people 180-age is lower than the calculated top of zone 2.
An anecdotal result is that I used to be exhausted at the end of a 5km because I was running as fast as I could. Within a few weeks of switching to MAF training, I was routinely doing 10km-15km without really feeling tired and within a month I'd accidentally done a half marathon (very slowly, of course) after getting lost and being stuck on the wrong side of the river for 4km longer than I planned, and then an extra 3km the other side. I was tired at the end of that, but I also never would have believed I was even capable of that distance a month earlier.
That works out to a 3:03 marathon time. That's years of work to become so efficient.
I'm a little bummed that the article doesn't touch on how can maintain that pace for x amount of miles, since plainly: only people who have trained very carefully have a chance. So that running speed is off the table.
A nitpick: the author states that `kcal/kg/h = kcal/kgh`. This is false, because multiply and divide have the same priority and so are applied left to right.
The correct way to write this is:
`kcal/kg/h = kcal/(kgh)`
The actual computations in the article are unaffected.
These guys need to get with the program and use metric units. For example, the cycling world uses watts per kilogram (W/kg) to quantify an athlete's output. This is the correct unit to use.
The calorie is not part of the current SI. The SI unit that measures the same quantity is the joule (J).
Like all SI derived units, the joule is obtained by multiplying or dividing any number of SI base units, without using numeric scaling factors. 1 joule = 1 newton × 1 kilogram = m^2 × kg × s^−2.
The calorie measures the same quantity as the joule (energy or work), but 1 calorie = 4.184 joules. SI generally disallows having multiple units that measure the same quantity (e.g. tesla vs. gauss), especially ones that have numerical scaling factors (e.g. 1 bar = 100 kilopascals).
Quotes and references:
> the kcal is not officially part of the International System of Units (SI), and is regarded as obsolete, having been replaced in many uses by the SI derived unit of energy, the joule (J)
I can walk for hours but can't run more than a few minutes. So obvious conclusion. If the goal is "traveling" then running doesn't even qualify. Soldiers marching 20 miles a day don't run'em. They walk.
I suppose a lot could depend on form. Most people run in a manner where they push them selves up and slap back down. If you run so that from the hips up you stay at the same altitude, I expect it would use much less energy.
A little bit stretch but as someone who decide to run "slowly" in long distances, the other metric is sweating. If it not were by sweating I prefer to run at a controlled pace than to walk.
7 min/mile, or 100 m in 25 seconds seems doable if you excercise regularly, but not for an average human. Higher speeds mean higher power (watts or cal/sec), to which there are limits.
> 7 min/mile, or 100 m in 25 seconds seems doable if you excercise regularly ...
I have to disagree. I run 20 miles per week at about 11 min/mile yet could not run a single 7-minute mile to save my life. The best I can do at a "max effort" is a single 9-minute mile. Never even a 100-yard stretch in the 8s.
But then, I'm 77 years old.
Nowhere in this discussion have I seen an accounting for age. Perhaps with advancing age walking is more efficient (whatever the metric) regardless. Anecdotally (I see that word used here a lot <g>) I don't see any other runners my age, only walkers, so that must be true.
Depends on how many miles you are doing. If you only want to do 1 mile at 7 min, then that is doable, if you want to do 10k at that pace... I reckon you'd have to be a VERY fit and strong runner.
It shows that in contrast to most animals, the efficiency curve of humans for running speeds is extremely flat, ie, we are about equally efficient at many different speeds, while the kind of game that we hunted was not.
The discrepancy allowed us to find a speed where we could exhaust the animal after 10-30km (as I understand) provided we were also excellent trackers.
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature03052.epdf?sharing_tok...