WATCH THE FIRST 3:34

In 490 BC a Greek messenger named Pheidippides ran from the Greek town of to the

capital Athens to deliver a message that the Greek army had

just beaten back the , and the distance between those two towns is , and

that’s the origin of the modern sporting event that we call the marathon. You might

know that story, but what they don’t always tell you is that when he got to Athens after

those 26.2 miles, Pheidippides died.

So why on Earth would anyone want to run one of those for fun? How are our bodies even
able to? I decided , so I ran one. In the process, I
a lot about what I’m made of, in more ways than one. You guys ready to run
the marathon? My training started millions of years before I ever got to the starting
line.

The first step to becoming a runner is, well, , and bipedalism is only seen in
animals, except for a few species of birds walking on two legs is only uses
a temporary form of transportation. Our ancestors first stood up over ,
and well we were running probably not long after that, were made for
it. You could say that humans are built for long distance running but the truth is, long
distance running build us the most four on the floor quadrupeds could easily beat me
in a sprint, but humans are medal contenders in nature’s distance running events.

Even the cheetah, the most perfectly crafted running machine on Earth could only run for maybe
a mile and a half before it . Today’s fastest Olympic marathoners, they would only
be beaten by a handful of Earth’s animals in that long
distance. One theory of human evolution says that our adaptations for distance running
work feast or hunting success like we talked about in my episode “Why Do We Cook?”,
bigger, richer meals mean that we could evolve, well, bigger, richer brains. There’s a whole
list of ways that we are made to run. In large tubes in our skulls help us balance while
we’re running, reflexes in our eyes keep our heads steady as we move up and down. It’s
short arms and thin ankles that take us less effort . Wide shoulders, a thin waist,
and a pretty narrow pelvis help us counter our moving legs. We have sweat
glands, and less body hair, and tall thin bodies that let us disperse more heat. Better
away from the brain to keep it cool, your maximus muscles to
stabilize our upper body, high surface area knee, ankle, and hip joints for shock absorption,
and most importantly, our lower legs are built like rubber bands.
This is by far our coolest running adaptation. Every time my body hits the ground, it delivers
up to 8 times the force of my body weight. That’s over ! In order to keep
that up for 26.2 miles, my foot expands and spreads like a shock absorber. This is the
most important part of a running human: . Though my foot hits the ground,
my calf muscles flexed, but even then the muscles and tendons are still a little bit
elastic, and then my ankle joint acts as a lever, which transfers as much as percent
of that energy into the next step. By using stored , instead of chemical
energy, we’re able to go farther with less work.