More on Muscles (and the brain, and energy)

Yesterday's post was about muscle memory. This morning I was listening to a RadioLab podcast. Yes, I know, I've posted about their show about 100 times (okay, actually maybe 3), but it's really interesting. They do both hour-long episodes which get pretty in-depth, and they also do "shorts," which are subjects that for whatever reason never made it to the hour-long version - not enough material, distraction by the producers (which they do seem prone to), etc. There are also random segments where they play music or something. It's hard to categorize the show; the best I can do is to say it's structured a little bit like This American Life (one theme, and a number or variations on that topic), but is more relaxed and fun and random. The RadioLab guys like to use sound effects and weave little snippets of interviews into their story, sometimes to move it along, sometimes as background. It's interesting stuff. Anyway....

The episode I was listening to was called Limits (you can listen to the whole show online), and the first segment was about the physical limits of the body (which is why I made the connection to yesterday's post). The first interviewee was a woman named Julie Moss. She was a P.E. (as in gym class) major in college, and decided as her senior project that she would do the Ironman Triathlon and write about the physiological effects of such an endeavor on the body. The Ironman consists of a 2.4-mile swim, a 112-mile bike ride, and a 26.2-mile run. And it's a race. It began as a challenge among a group of Navy SEALS, and is now participated in by a broader swath of people, all of whom are equally as crazy as the first SEALS were. Back to the story: Julie was going to do the Ironman as her senior project. She was fit, as a P.E. major should be, but did no specific triathlon training to speak of. Lo and behold, she found herself in the lead! She said in the interview that her motivation to keep moving was that she had to finish her school project. Witness what happened at the end of the race here.

Another interview in this segment was with Stephen Auerbach, who produced a documentary film called Bicycle Dreams, about the Race Across America. RAAM is a 3000-mile coast-to-coast bike race, with no stages and no rest days. The clock is running 24/7, so every hour a rider stops to sleep is an hour that another competitor might pass them by. Half the people who start the race don't finish, and those who do are not in good shape. Some riders' necks give out and can't hold up their heads anymore, so they tie a rope to the back of their helmet, and run it down their back to their waist or belt or the back of their seat! Just to hold their head up!

The discussion on RadioLab focused mainly on a Slovenian racer named Jure (YOO-ree) Robic. (There was also some discussion of a French guy named Patrick Autissier, but he's not quite as crazy as Jure.) Jure has now won the men's solo RAAM 5 times, most recently this year. It took him 9 days.

Earlier in the podcast, the hosts discussed this little internal regulator mechanism that we all have called the Central Governor. This governor makes your body hurt when you're spending your reserves of energy; its job is to make you stop because it wants to preserve what energy you have left. But the governor will send signals to stop way before you've actually used up all your reserves. Great athletes have mastered the art of pushing through this "stop!" message, and get another boost of energy once they reach that safety reservoir the governor is trying to protect. Crazy athletes like Jure have gone even beyond that. The RAAM riders and other extreme endurance athletes bust through that barrier, and go even further. The governor kicks in again when you've passed tired and you really feel like you're dead, like you absolutely cannot even lift a finger. This feeling is the central governor trying to save your last little drop of energy, in case you need to run for your life from a bear or something.

So, back to Jure. When he starts to hit his first wall, he has his van team drive alongside him playing Slovenian war songs (did I mention he's a soldier?). That seems to help him cross his first "stop and save your energy!" barrier. It works until he gets to Ohio or thereabouts. By this point, he's been through heat, cold, mountains, plains, dehydration, physical exhaustion - the works. After enduring all that, it's clear that the physical integrity of the athlete is strong; so now an athlete's body will send all the stress signals to the last possible point of breakdown: the mind. Hallucination ensues. Patrick saw shadows running across the road in front of his bike, and saw the trees reaching out to grab him. Stephen (the producer) also reported that riders saw secret codes in the cracks in the road, jumped off their bikes to get into a fistfight with mailboxes, and other madness. This is where a lot of people quit the ride. Jure, on the other hand, saw bearded Afghan horsemen - the mujahideen. And they were shooting at him.

So, remember how that regulator is packing away your last little bit of energy for when you need to run for your life. Well, Jure really did think he needed to bike for his life. He was convinced that he really was going to die if he couldn't get away from these guys. And his central governor really believes he's going to die too. So off he goes, biking like mad and feeling no pain, though he won't really remember it later.

It is amazing what the human body is capable of. This is fascinating stuff, people. Really.

[If you want to read more about Jure and this crazy stuff that happens to athletes like him, there is a New York Times article, and some interesting stuff in the Scientific American about the "sensed presence effect," though you can't read the whole article unless you have a subscription.]