July 30, 2007
Bob on Nature:
Nature on Endurance Running
By Bob Francis, Owner
soundRUNNER
The scientific journal Nature ran an article on “Endurance Running and the Evolution of Homo” in November 2004, a copy of which Suresh Shenoy was either kind or cruel enough to send me after a spirited discussion over the paradox of pleasure v. pain. It turns out that not very many species engage in endurance running. Homo Erectus does, as do social carnivores like dogs and hyenas, and migratory ungulates like horses and wildebeests. No other primate practices endurance running, perhaps because it costs so much energy—the “cost of transportation”—compared with walking, and doesn’t have obvious advantages over walking for survival and security.
So why do we run long distances? In evolutionary terms, the authors speculate that Homo developed improved walking performance in open terrain by running, which has a lower cost of transportation once a certain speed is attained—think how much easier it is to run a twelve-minute mile than to walk it. Humans are not very good sprinters compared with lots of species, but we are remarkably good endurance runners. Humans store and release energy from spring-like connective tissue, like the Achilles tendon. Other adaptive features, like a narrow waist and developed gluteus maximus, make us stable and give us booty. The authors note that endurance running poses “extreme mechanical and thermoregulatory challenges” as evidence that running is more than just an evolutionary advance over long-distance walking.
The first hypothesis is that running helped hominids exploit protein-rich resources such as meat in the days before rifles and fishing rods. The second concept, considerably less appealing to me, is that the ability to run distances helped hominids compete with hyenas in scavenging carcasses. I have a different hypothesis for explaining this two-million year old proclivity for running long distances. I think Stanley Kubrick gave us a clue in 2001: Space Odyssey. Remember the encounter between the two groups of homonids, turned tragic when one got the idea of using a bone as a tool to crush the skull of one of the others? The victorious group did that aerobic end-zone dance to the tune of Also Spake Zarathustra, flooding their brains with endorphins, while the others skulked away.
My guess is that one of the brain’s responses to the thermoregulatory challenge of distance running is the release of satisfying chemicals: the runner’s high disguises the runner’s discomfort. I donŐt think there will be any evidence for this idea in fossil records. But the ability of the species to cover long distances rapidly must have grown in importance as intra-species conflict developed. Thomas Hobbes articulated the view that man’s natural state is to be in conflict with his fellow man. Superior runners could steal meat from their slow-footed foes. The modern-day culmination of these evolutionary forces can be seen at the finish line of any major endurance event, where exhausted and often distressed participants spontaneously break into tears of joy over what they have just done.
Archive of Bob’s Lane
Issue 1: May 1, 2007: Bob on the Bash
Issue 2: May 10, 2007: Bob on Dave Parcells
Issue 3: May 24, 2007: Bob on the Branford Road Race
Issue 4: June 1, 2007: Bob on Being Green
Issue 5: June 15, 2007: Bob from the Left Coast
Issue 6: June 23, 2007: When Pain is Leisure
Issue 7: July 6, 2007: At Seventeen
Issue 8: July 13, 2007: Bob on Cities
Issue 9: July 30, 2007: Bob on Mike
