Stuff You Should Know - How Marathons Work

Episode Date: October 9, 2018

You’d have to be crazy to try to run 26.2 miles in a single stretch, right? Right. But people still try it anyway. And a lot of them even survive! Find out all about the pitfalls of marathons and th...e obsession they can inspire in this episode.  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Starting point is 00:00:00 On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.
Starting point is 00:00:17 We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass
Starting point is 00:00:37 and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.
Starting point is 00:00:57 Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck and Brian over there, and there's Jerry.
Starting point is 00:01:21 And this is Stuff You Should Know, the hot and sweaty edition. It is hot in here, although I know that you were talking about marathon running. Yeah, I was, but it worked both ways, you know? You ever had an urge to run a marathon? No. Same here.
Starting point is 00:01:37 Not really, even researching this. You know, I get kind of caught up when we do research, and I'm like, oh, I'm gonna start growing bonsai. I'm gonna grow orchids. I'm gonna start clipping those little indentations into currency to help the blind. I'm gonna start cleaning up crime scenes. That was another one, yeah.
Starting point is 00:01:58 So that didn't happen. I felt the beginnings of an inkling of it, and I wanted to go jog, but I don't want a marathon, no. Well, my joke that I've been saying for about 30 years is I don't even like driving 26 miles. That's a good one. Yeah, it's gotten a little stale. Yeah, I've never had the urge.
Starting point is 00:02:23 I think it's great if people want to run marathons. Sure, yeah. But it is not for me. I hate running. See, I like running. I just. I hate it. I don't have any desire to run that far for that long.
Starting point is 00:02:38 I like walking. I like spinning. I like all kinds of great aerobic exercise. You mean spinning like cycling? No, no, no, like a kid. Like twirling. Yeah, twirling, twirling and tumbling. I like rolling down hills.
Starting point is 00:02:52 No, no, no, spinning on a bike. It's all great, but I just, I hate running. I hate it. Okay. Never have liked it. Well, then yeah, a marathon's probably not for you. No. But it is for plenty of people.
Starting point is 00:03:04 And it's growing in popularity. I don't know if you know this or not, but marathons are quite popular, Chuck. I saw that in the upcoming, I believe it's in November, the New York Marathon, they're expecting 50,000 plus people to run it. And that's out of like 100,000 plus people who are applying to be chosen to run.
Starting point is 00:03:30 Wow. There's a lot of people. And then the half marathon too, there was, I think in 2014, four full years ago, there was something like two million finishers. That's a lot of people running marathons and half marathon. So clearly it's popular and that's okay with me. Like do your thing.
Starting point is 00:03:49 Yeah, I've flirted with the idea of a 10K with our famous Peach Tree Road Race. Yes. Because it's, and we'll talk about this some in the show, but it's a social event. And from what I see, it's a good time to go out and run the Peach Tree Road Race. And growing up in Atlanta,
Starting point is 00:04:13 seeing everyone with those shirts on the 4th of July, I'm always like, man, I want one of those shirts one day. You can just buy one from eBay. But then I remember the running part of it and then I quickly just say, no, thank you. And it's on 4th of July, right? Yeah, I mean early in the morning, so. It doesn't matter, it's the 4th of July in Atlanta.
Starting point is 00:04:35 It's already like 100 degrees. I know, it's hot. That's crazy town. But I think the idea is you get it done before like 9 a.m. Yeah, that's what I understand too, but still it's probably pretty hot. All right, should we talk about history here? Yeah, let's.
Starting point is 00:04:51 So I think most people realize that the marathon is based on Greek history. But there's a pretty decent story to it, if you ask me. Yeah, so let's go back to ancient Greece. Okay. Let's go to Athens. Okay. Where we're hanging out, we're a little drunk.
Starting point is 00:05:10 Sure, on wine. We're eating delicious olives, maybe. Man, I love olives. Maybe some lamb, what else? I've given up lamb. Yeah, I don't eat lamb either. Let's see, we could be eating rice filled grape leaves. Okay.
Starting point is 00:05:30 And would it kill somebody to give us a little tzatziki sauce for him? I don't think so. All right, well I'm happy then. All right, so we're hanging out the Azure Blue Seas, the beautiful white homes on the seashore. But things are not looking good because next door the Persians want to come in here
Starting point is 00:05:50 and kill us and take our city because it's so beautiful. Yeah. And there's a lot of them. There are, there's something like five to one compared to the Athenians. So we're worried. So the Athenian army, like most other Greek armies and like the Inca later would, employed runners
Starting point is 00:06:10 who were soldiers, but their job as a soldier was to run as a messenger from place to place as fast as they could over very long, rocky mountainous distances. Yeah, did they not use horses because of the terrain? I don't know. Maybe horses hadn't made their way down there by then. All right, so for whatever reason,
Starting point is 00:06:31 they use human beings that were fleet of foot to literally run messages back and forth. And it was a big job because you're not just handing over a piece of paper. You are taking the place of a FaceTime call or a phone call and that you need to go back and say, well, I gotta say, when I gave him the message, he initially seemed interested, but then his face turned
Starting point is 00:07:01 and although he said it's okay, his face said it's not okay at all. So I would really be worried if I were you that his official reply isn't really on the level. Yeah, and they would go Fidipides. You are one of the best ever. Thank you. So Fidipides was actually the name
Starting point is 00:07:20 of the Athenian army messenger at the time of the Athenians fending off the Persian invasion about 490 BCE. And he ran off to Sparta from Marathon and he ran off to Sparta to say, hey Spartans, we need your help. We've got this Persian invasion coming and we need your help.
Starting point is 00:07:44 And he was very famously kicked into a bottomless hole. Yeah, that the Spartans said, we have to oil our abs and do some crunches. Yeah. So no dice on the help. Yeah, they said no. And from what I understand, he made it back and said, they said, no, I have to go to sleep now
Starting point is 00:08:06 for a couple of days because he made this trek about 25 miles, about 40 kilometers in a day and a half. Yeah, but from where? From Marathon. Okay, I don't think we pointed that out yet, did we? I did. Oh, okay. I said he made it from Marathon.
Starting point is 00:08:23 All right, I think we just, I was missing the drumroll. Oh, sorry, are you ready? He was in. Marathon. That's where he started out. Yeah. Oh, I really blew it for us, didn't I? No.
Starting point is 00:08:41 I didn't realize it was, see, this is proof positive that we don't coordinate before we record. I just thought it was supposed to be a big reveal. You were like, you're in the Marathon. It's true, I'm sorry, Dave Chuck. I'm sorry, everybody. So that's the big reveal, is the name of the place was Marathon.
Starting point is 00:08:59 Where? Marathon, that's right. So that's just story one. There's another story that may have happened, may not have happened. All this we should say is ancient Greek legend as far as we know. But the Athenians actually did manage
Starting point is 00:09:14 to stave off the Persians. And Phidipides was tasked with running from the battle. Maybe that was at Marathon. Back to Athens to say, don't burn the town down. The Persians have been vanquished. We're all good. But rather than being able to say all this, he has supposedly made it back to Athens
Starting point is 00:09:39 with just enough energy left in his body to say, Nike and fall over and die. And Nike was, of course, the goddess of victory. And victory meant that the Athenians had held off the Persians, don't burn down the city. Oh, so they didn't say, why are you plugging a shoe with your final breath? Right, he goes, just do it.
Starting point is 00:10:02 And the idea, if it sounds weird that they were gonna burn down the city, I think the idea was, is that they thought they were gonna lose so they were going to burn their city down because they just thought it was a bygone conclusion, a foregone conclusion, and that they didn't want the Persians to come in there
Starting point is 00:10:22 and like raid their city. I think they were like the jealous lover type, like, oh, if you can't, if I can't have you, no one can. Gotcha. Okay. You know? All right. But they said it to their city. All right, so flash forward in time to 1896, the very first Olympic Games,
Starting point is 00:10:38 which we should probably do a show on at some point. Yeah, we will. Like the first Olympiad. Yeah, yeah. And the, well, there was one guy in particular, Michael Breel, or Brell, who proposed including an homage to this and recreate this legendary marathon race
Starting point is 00:10:58 that Phidipides ran so many years previous, and the leader, I guess the coordinator of the games, Pierre de Cobartine, said that sounds good to me. Speed 25 miles, we're going to call it a marathon, and go forth and run. He did. And by the way, I took French in high school, so if you'll allow me, I think it's Michel Breel
Starting point is 00:11:24 and Pierre de Coubertin. Okay. You have to say it real snotty-like. But they were apparent. Supposedly, they're not like, they don't deserve all the credit. Robert Browning had written a poem about Phidipides' run to Athens,
Starting point is 00:11:40 and it was pretty popular at the time, so they were probably inspired by that. But they did. They said, we're going to redo the Olympics, we've got to have a marathon race, which was not exactly chock accurate, because the Olympics had been going on for hundreds of years by the time Phidipides was around.
Starting point is 00:11:56 Yeah, these are the first modern games, we should say. Right, right. And they went on for a couple hundred years after Phidipides had come and gone. And at no point during this, I think maybe 500 or 700 year run of the first ancient Greek Olympics, was there anything even remotely close
Starting point is 00:12:15 to a marathon as one of the races? I think the longest that they had was somewhere around between a five to a 10K run. That was far and away as far as they ran, but these guys decided to, again inspired by the Robert Browning poem, create a marathon. And a lot of people said, you're going to kill somebody. Yeah, that was the thing, it wasn't roundly accepted.
Starting point is 00:12:39 The whole 25 mile thing in 1896, a lot of people did say that it's too long, it's too hot, not a good idea. Right, and they said, to heck with you, we don't care if we kill anybody. This is the Olympics, don't you understand how big a deal that is? And they said, no, not yet,
Starting point is 00:12:56 but we'll watch and see. So they held this Olympics, and it was from the very outset, the marathon was taken quite seriously. I think just because it was such a nut so thing to try, that no one had ever tried before, the Greeks in particular, who hosted this first Olympics, they had 13 of, I think,
Starting point is 00:13:20 the 17 competitors in the marathon were Greeks. And they held trials over the course, over the marathon course to see who could do it, and what their times were. And they came up with some pretty good guys, two of which eventually came in first and second for those first Olympic marathons. Yeah, this guy speared on Louis or Louis?
Starting point is 00:13:44 I don't know. He's Greek, his name's Louis. He won, he got a time of two hours, 28 minutes and 50 seconds. And legend has it. And this may not even be legend, it may just be straight up fact, that he stopped halfway through the race to have a glass of wine?
Starting point is 00:14:02 Yeah, I was thinking about that. And I'm like, I'll bet he was treating that like you would treat a Gatorade. He's like, I need to restore myself. So give me some wine. Maybe. The thing is, is that time you just said, two hours, 28 minutes and 50 seconds is insanely good.
Starting point is 00:14:19 Yeah, sure. And I'm sure that caught the attention of people who run marathons. They're like, what? That was the first guy back in 1896. The thing about the first marathon was they were straight up 40 kilometer races. So they were about 25 miles, not 26.2. Hence the reason why his time was so good.
Starting point is 00:14:43 But it's still a really, really good time, but that extra 1.2 miles at the end can really jack your time up from what I understand. Yeah, that didn't come about until 1908. In London, when they were the hosts and King Edward, the seventh wife, Alexandra said, and this is just so great. It was 25 miles and she was like,
Starting point is 00:15:07 I would like for the race to start by the palace. And they were like, well, that means an extra 1.2 miles on this already dangerous race. And everyone rolled their eyes and were like, all right. I saw that not only did she wanted to start by the palace, they said, okay, that's fine. It'll be like 26 miles then. She said, well, okay, after you've officially said that,
Starting point is 00:15:30 I wanna actually to start in front of the children's nursery so they can see the starting line. So they added another 0.2 miles because of Alexandra. So that is where- She's like, well, I kill them and they're like, maybe. Oh, well, all right, but still do it. Yeah, so for the 1908 Olympics, that's the first time we have a 26.2 mile marathon.
Starting point is 00:15:51 And it was so the children could see from the nursery. Which is kind of sweet actually. It is pretty sweet. And then, so there had been marathons before that 1908 one. Again, the first one was those 1896 Olympics. There was one in Boston held in 1897, which became the Boston Marathon and it's been held every year since then.
Starting point is 00:16:11 That's amazing. It is amazing. But from that point on, marathons up until I think 1970, they were elite events. You were an elite marathon runner. If you were in any marathon, you were there by invitation.
Starting point is 00:16:29 Most of the time, your competitors were from the country that the marathon was being run in. And it was an enormous honor to be invited. And that's who ran marathons. But then in 1970, a guy named Fred Lebo, or LeBow, I'm not quite sure how you say his name. He said, you know what, to heck with all this snobbiness,
Starting point is 00:16:50 I'm gonna start a marathon for everybody. And he started a marathon that ran around Central Park in 1970 with 100 runners. And it was not only just opened to everybody, it was opened to women too, which was a huge deal. And he started kind of the first mass for the people style marathon in the New York City Marathon. Although Boston, I believe,
Starting point is 00:17:15 kind of been toying with this a little bit, but Fred Lebo really kind of blew the lid off of it. And from that point on, marathons started to pick up more and more in popularity, especially when an American won the gold medal in the 1972 marathon at the Olympics, Frank Shorter. And then, of course, for anybody who's seen Forrest Gump, the whole fitness craze that started around that time
Starting point is 00:17:39 really gave marathon running a boost. Yeah, that was, like you said, 72, and I remember growing up in the 70s, I remember even knowing as a child that this was a new thing sweeping the nation. Fitness craze, a fitness revolution, I remember being just very aware of like running, everyone's running, like they're running magazines
Starting point is 00:18:06 and running clothing that's all over the place now, and everyone is running. And I remember just like feeling like, man, everyone's making a big deal about this running thing. And I didn't know at the time, but it was because it was sort of a new deal. It wasn't like you didn't have to be way 108 pounds and just be like a tiny stick of a person.
Starting point is 00:18:33 Like that's what you think of when you think of marathons. It really democratized it and said, if you wanna lose some weight, if you wanna manage your weight, if you wanna just have more energy or increase your cardiovascular fitness, get out there and beat the streets and run because it's sort of the cheapest, easiest form of exercise. Yeah, and it's also the most independent too.
Starting point is 00:18:56 There's no team, there's no, you don't have to do it with anybody else. You can, there's no coordinating necessarily, although as we'll see, as you get into marathoning, all that stuff really comes into play, but at its core, running is the most basic type of exercise there is. Low-fi.
Starting point is 00:19:16 It really is, and I think that definitely attracted a lot of people. Plus, I'm not sure what kicked off that health craze, but that really, really fit in nicely with it. The idea that all you need is a pair of shoes and some really, really revealing shorts and you too could be a runner. Should we take a break?
Starting point is 00:19:35 Sure. I find myself getting excited all of a sudden. It was the short shorts. But wanting still to not run a marathon. Okay. All right, we'll be right back. ["Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy"] On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called
Starting point is 00:19:59 David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends
Starting point is 00:20:17 to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal?
Starting point is 00:20:32 No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy,
Starting point is 00:20:46 blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to
Starting point is 00:21:03 when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help.
Starting point is 00:21:18 This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me.
Starting point is 00:21:29 Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general, can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody,
Starting point is 00:21:47 about my new podcast, and make sure to listen, so we'll never, ever have to say, bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. All right, dude. So we said the 70s are where the marathon boom started, but it really hit in, I think, the 90s.
Starting point is 00:22:19 People, like, that's when, that's when marathons started popping up everywhere. By then, like cities, major cities all have marathons. I think Berlin started their legendary one in 1980, and then London in 1981. But now you can go to just about any town, and there's a marathon there at least once a year. Did you see this weird stat in here?
Starting point is 00:22:41 Did that jump out at you? Totally. I'm just going to read it. They're trying to prove in this article, what a boom in popularity in the 90s. And it says this, from 1991 to 1992 alone, marathon finishers increase from 9,000 to 9,200. It's like, is that right?
Starting point is 00:23:01 Yeah. Is it missing a one? Is it supposed to be 19,000? I don't think so. I think they just are impressed by very small numbers. There was another one that came later. It said that the percentage of runners under 20 years old over the past 15 years has increased from 1% to 1.8%.
Starting point is 00:23:22 Whoa. Yeah. This is weird, man. All right. Those weird stats aside, there was a boom in the 90s. Running USA said that the number of runners in the largest half marathon and marathon in 2000 increased by about 10,000. I'm sorry.
Starting point is 00:23:42 Increased to 29,000 and 38,000, respectively, in the half marathon and the marathon. Yeah, again, that 38,000 number is now 50,000 plus for the New York City Marathon. So it's still growing quite dramatically. Catherine Switzer or Switzer came along. The first official female participant for the Boston Marathon.
Starting point is 00:24:09 And dude, she was almost thrown out mid-race when they found out that she was a woman running. She entered as a K. Switzer in 1967. Yeah, she wrote a book about it called Marathon Woman, where she not only talks about the fact that women are great at this, but you can do this. You don't have to be 19 and 20 years old. You can do this into your 60s.
Starting point is 00:24:34 And you see that. You see people in their 40s, 50s, and 60s. And beyond. Yeah, just still out there, pounding the streets. Marathoners are interesting people. Like when you see them on the street, you can tell the difference usually of like your average, like I'm jogging for exercise,
Starting point is 00:24:53 and like I'm running miles and miles and miles. You can see it on their face. You can. One eye is usually kind of like popping out more than the other. The hair's coming out in tufts. Their knees are bleeding, that kind of stuff. Here's the interesting stat for me though.
Starting point is 00:25:12 It says most long distance runners are college educated from 74 to 93%, which is interesting and they make a couple of points that you're not just exercising your legs or your body, but your brain because a lot of brain training goes into this. It's not the kind of thing you can just say, yeah, I'm gonna go run a marathon.
Starting point is 00:25:34 Let me see how that goes. With training and scheduling and just being out there running for 26 miles is a big brain exercise in and of itself. Yeah, yeah, just the run itself is, but also the months and months and months of preparation and dedication and self-motivation and discipline. Like that takes a tremendous amount of brain power
Starting point is 00:26:00 that you might otherwise be using to do. Do I want a little Debbie coffee cake or Drake's coffee cake today? Why not both, you know? Should we talk about the training? Sure. Because training is not, and I'm glad they said this in this article
Starting point is 00:26:21 because I was afraid they were gonna be like, here's how you do it. No, they very wisely did the opposite of that. Yeah, there isn't a single way to train for a marathon. There are so many and I started to look and it's just overwhelming. It really is, dude. There's entire magazines and websites dedicated
Starting point is 00:26:40 to just training for a marathon, not even just running, but like training for marathons and it's like there is a lot to it. Yeah, so it's easy to be intimidated by that or to go down the rabbit hole where all of a sudden six months later, you're still researching training methods and not just diving in,
Starting point is 00:26:59 but find something that you think might work for you and then just get out there and give it a shot and adjust as necessary would be what I gathered from this. That's great advice. I think also it's probably smart as with just about anything these days to do like just some preliminary research to see if there's anything you should look out for
Starting point is 00:27:17 or try first, but just get a pair of shoes and go try running and see what happens. Yeah, so you're gonna be running not every day depending on what training regimen you undertake, but almost all of them that I saw features that one time a week you're going to go on a run that's probably at least 15 miles. Right, and you're not expected
Starting point is 00:27:41 like the day you start training marathon or even the week you start training for a marathon to do a 15 mile run, like that's something you work up to, 15 or 20 or 26 is the max that you're going to try to run to and you work up to that over time. Like we should say,
Starting point is 00:27:58 if you decide that you wanna train for a marathon, you should start about eight to nine months. If you're starting from zero, you should start about eight to nine months to begin training for your first marathon because you are meant to slowly work your way up. If you try to do it other than that, you're going to pay dearly in pain.
Starting point is 00:28:18 Have you ever heard of couch to 5K? Yeah, I have. I don't know what it is though. I can guess. You're right. You want me to guess? Go ahead and guess first. It is you just jump off your couch and run a 5K
Starting point is 00:28:31 and then you go back to your couch. Oh, well, you're wrong. No, it's exactly what you would think. It's if you really do not run at all, it's a pretty good intro program to get you up to a 5K. I tried it for a little while when I was like, maybe I should run a 5K
Starting point is 00:28:48 and it just starts out with like running and walking and then running a little bit more and walking less until you're running a 5K. But that's a pretty decent way to start. But some people right out of the gate are like, no, you know what? I don't want to run a 5K or a 10K. I want to run a marathon.
Starting point is 00:29:05 Yeah. So you can do that. But you know, you just have to, you're training your body to run for 26.2 miles. But there's people out there who are like the, not only are you not supposed to do that, the human body's not meant to run. We're supposed to walk.
Starting point is 00:29:20 That's it. This is totally unnatural. Most other people say that's not true. But 26.2 miles across the board, people say the average person can't just do that. You have to work up to it. Yeah. So you're going to have that one weekly long run. You're going to be cross-training on your days in between,
Starting point is 00:29:40 which keeps you in good shape. And you're just using, I think the whole point here is to use your muscles and your lungs in a different way. Well, yeah. And you're also giving your, the muscles you use to run a rest. You're working them out.
Starting point is 00:29:54 You're keeping working them out, but you're taking a rest from running. Yeah. Although there will be a full rest day in there as well where you're, and we'll talk about the muscles and how they regenerate here in a minute. But then you've also got your speed work or interval training or the greatest words ever.
Starting point is 00:30:14 Fart like running. Right. Which I was like, what is that? And then I saw, oh, it's Swedish. Okay. Yeah. Swedish for speed play. They're so innocent, the Swedes. I know. And so good looking. But interval training,
Starting point is 00:30:28 that's when you're doing things, like you're working out different muscles, like by sprinting and spurts, or running real fast and slowing down. And it's just working out different parts of the body. Yeah. And again, we'll talk about why you would want to do that, but that is definitely part of marathon training.
Starting point is 00:30:49 And again, as Chuck said, this is not meant to be your how-to guide to marathon training. Nope. Just listen to this. And if it gets you like jazz, then maybe you should go try to learn how to train for a marathon, but that's not what we're doing right here.
Starting point is 00:31:03 No. And the other really helpful thing that it said in here was that, like what is your goal here? You need to figure that out. Are you trying to be competitive? Are you trying to just finish the race? Or do you have a time goal in mind? Do you want to like walk part of it?
Starting point is 00:31:19 Like just figure out what your goal is here. And early on, it's probably just like, I just want to go out there and finish this thing. Yeah. I think that's what a lot of people, their first goal is probably 99% of first time marathons is just to finish, you know? Yeah. Without pooping yourself. The, yeah, we'll talk about that later.
Starting point is 00:31:41 One of the things about marathoning is in everyone who is friends or a relative of somebody who marathons knows, is it can become something of an obsession. And one way that you can be right, one way you can become obsessed with marathoning is by keeping a training journal, which most training regimens encourage.
Starting point is 00:32:05 And there's a number of reasons you would want to keep this. So a training journal just basically is where you log your data from a run, whether it's like how your aches and pains were, what your heart rate was, if you keep up with that, which of your shoes you were wearing, how much sleep you got the night before, what the weather was like, what your weight was,
Starting point is 00:32:26 all this different stuff, you can log all that down. And over time, you can start to find patterns in that data. And you can see, well, oh, actually my orange shoes, I do way better in those than my blue shoes. So I'm not going to wear my blue shoes anymore. Or I run really well if I've gotten five hours of sleep, but I run terribly at six and a half hours sleep. You can find patterns like that and you can use it
Starting point is 00:32:52 to kind of guide your training a little more. Plus it's also a big motivator too, because especially if like you say you're logging body weight or your time or whatever, you can actually see physically intangible form, your improvement over time, which can keep you going, you know? For sure.
Starting point is 00:33:10 So a training journal is usually a pretty good idea, but it is kind of, it encapsulates like the idea of really becoming very focused on marathoning. Yeah, it's the same like if you're trying to keep up with your like food or calorie intake, like they say the best way to do that is to journal about it or use one of the apps that helps you journal about it. Yeah, for sure.
Starting point is 00:33:35 All right, should we talk about muscles? Yes. So there are a couple of types of muscles, and I know we've talked about this before in something over the past 10 years, but I can't remember what. I don't either, man. But the twitch, the slow twitch and the fast twitch muscles. And there's also, I saw intermediate twitch,
Starting point is 00:33:56 but we won't mention those. The muscle that dare not speak its name. Right. Slow twitch muscles are important for marathoning because they are your, which I guess you would call your endurance muscles for endurance events because the muscle fibers contract very slowly.
Starting point is 00:34:15 The fast twitch are for more like sprinting, but they do think that if you are like a top tier marathoner, you may actually have a physiological edge because you might have a larger proportion of slow twitch muscles to fast twitch. Yeah, I saw that slow twitch muscle, so that has way more myoglobin and mitochondria and capillaries, which means you get more oxygen
Starting point is 00:34:42 and more oxygen rich blood, and you have more oxygen conversion sites to convert energy into muscle movement right there in the muscle. So it's way better for long distance endurance running. They'll have more slow twitch than fast twitch because over time, when you're working out, you tear your muscles, you pull them,
Starting point is 00:35:04 you stretch them, you tear them. And you get stronger because your body repairs that muscle and it's stronger than it was before. That's how you gain muscle mass, right? Apparently with runners or with any athlete, but your body repairs it with the muscle that you need more. So if you're doing long distance running and you need more slow twitch muscle,
Starting point is 00:35:29 when you tear fast twitch muscle, it may be replaced with slow twitch. It's called muscle fiber recruitment. So yes, it would make total sense that long distance runners have more slow twitch than fast twitch in their muscle fiber than the average person. Yeah, that's pretty cool.
Starting point is 00:35:48 Because they trained that way and their bodies have developed, fashioned itself to fit their training. Yeah, so kind of the point of that is like, even if you don't have a literal physiological advantage, you can still train your body to become something different. Right. You may not win the Boston Marathon.
Starting point is 00:36:10 You never know. But you might win your age group. Sure. Or place. Yep. Or finish. Finish, that would be my goal for sure. You're also, beyond your muscles,
Starting point is 00:36:22 it is obviously an aerobic exercise. The oxygen feeds these muscles. Your heart is supplying this oxygen and your lungs. And it's all just an amazing and amazing aerobic fitness routine that you're going through. But it takes time to get there. Like you can't, like just like your muscles can't take pounding the pavement for 10 miles on day one,
Starting point is 00:36:50 your lungs are not gonna be ready and your heart's not gonna be ready for that either. No, you just, you have to start out slow and know that you're gonna work your way up. This is when you should come in with one of the famous Josh, like rhyming lines. Like get in where you fit in. Start out slow.
Starting point is 00:37:10 Yeah. So you can go. Why not? That was all right. But with the, so with the oxygen thing though, that I want to talk more about the slow twitch muscles because I'm fascinated by them. Okay.
Starting point is 00:37:23 The more oxygen you can train yourself to take in, VO2, I think is what it is, the volume of oxygen, the more that oxygen gets transported to your slow twitch muscles. And again, there, oxygen and glucose is being put together to form ATP, which is the energy molecule that powers muscles. That makes a move.
Starting point is 00:37:46 So the more glucose, the more oxygen you have at the site of your muscles, the more your muscles are gonna be able to contract and the further, the longer you're gonna be able to keep running. So it's just fascinating that like just training your lungs to take in and distribute more oxygen to your muscles will allow you to run farther. And that the muscles that you're tearing are being rebuilt
Starting point is 00:38:10 to specialize in accepting that oxygen and using it more efficiently. So I feel like the fact that the body is capable of changing itself like this, certainly suggests that it's not like we're not designed to run. If we were designed not to run, sorry for using the word design,
Starting point is 00:38:30 but then your leg would just come right off if you tried to run 26 miles. Something like that would happen. Your muscles wouldn't become more efficient at allowing you to run further. Yeah, good point. Very good point. It didn't rhyme, I'm sorry,
Starting point is 00:38:44 but I think it did get the point across. So if you're wondering about that heart rate though, and what like, how fast should my heart be beating? There is a formula, I mean named Gordon Biersch, no wait, Gordon Bloch. Yes, that was it. He determined a formula for an ideal training heart rate, which is 220 minus your age.
Starting point is 00:39:10 Yeah. And then you multiply that times 0.6 and 0.9. Why? That would be your range of your heart rate, your beats per minute, between those two numbers that you end up with for your ideal heart rate for training. I didn't see that anywhere else.
Starting point is 00:39:31 I don't understand what that 0.6 and 0.9 is. I couldn't find what that is. What do you mean what that is? Like what is that? Where does that come from? What explains that? I wanna know. Oh, like how he developed the formula?
Starting point is 00:39:44 Yeah. I don't know how he developed any formula. I guess trial and error. Yeah, he plug in numbers until you land on what your formula is. It's like, oh, that guy died. So 0.12 is too high. Let's try 0.11.
Starting point is 00:39:58 Well, how about this then? Forget that, throw it out the window and use the old fashioned talk test. Ideally, if you're in your ideal training zone, you should be able to talk. If you're going at it too hard and you're doing that thing where you're bent over and someone's asking you a question
Starting point is 00:40:17 and you hold up your hand and you're shaking your head, like give me a minute, you're working too hard. Well, this is, so this is while you're actually running, you should be able to talk. Correct. Okay, yeah. And if you do the thing that I just described where you're shaking your head
Starting point is 00:40:37 and you're waving your finger and going, no, no. Well, you can't even say that actually. Then that means you're working too hard. You need to be able to talk, apparently, if you can sing, then you're not working hard enough. Right. So if you see a marathoner that's singing, that's singing Billy Joel, then-
Starting point is 00:40:55 Singing piano man? Yeah, then they're not, they're doing it wrong. No one wants to hear that. Who sings that song, Billy Joel? Well, then let him sing it. He doesn't even want to sing it anymore. Yeah, I'll bet he doesn't, which is sad because it's a pretty good song.
Starting point is 00:41:09 And it's about him really. Well, and John and Davey and Paul. Well, yeah, yeah, but I mean, he's the piano man, right? Sure. It's not like a metaphor for, I don't know, like God or something, right? No, he's the piano man. John's a real estate novelist.
Starting point is 00:41:29 Davey's still in the Navy. A real estate novelist? Yeah. He writes novels about real estate. No, I think he's a real estate guy who writes novels on the side. Oh, okay. He never had time for a wife.
Starting point is 00:41:42 Boy, Billy Joel really was a poet. But Davey's in the Navy, you know, he probably will be for life. That's right. And America loves that song because it rhymes like a mofo. Like most great songs. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:41:57 Visualization has such a problem with that dumb word. That's a big deal, not only for marathoning, but any time you have something big in your life that you want to accomplish, you're supposed to visualize that and look at yourself in your mind's eye crossing that finish line without poop running down your leg.
Starting point is 00:42:13 Which we'll talk about in a little while. And there's a guy named Jeff Galloway who calls it positive brainwashing where you come up with some magic words for yourself that you can just repeat in the rhythm of your run. He recommends relax, power, glide. Oh, that's good. But you can choose anything you want.
Starting point is 00:42:35 Yeah. Like Metallica, corn husks. You know what's so funny is right before you said Metallica, I was thinking, exit light, internight. No. Yeah. No. That's the worst Metallica song of all too.
Starting point is 00:42:51 Is it? I don't know. I like the old stuff. I do too, but I'm saying like, surely there was another song on that album that was way worse. And there's been worse since then. I was just being coy.
Starting point is 00:43:01 Like Linda's Eyes, come on. I don't even know that song. I just made it up. No. It sounds like it'd be pretty bad though. Should we talk about the runner's high? Should we take a break before we do? Oh, geez.
Starting point is 00:43:14 I was on a podcast high. Yeah. Well, let's leave them hanging. Cause everybody wants to know, everyone tuned in just to hear about the runner's high and we're going to make you wait a little longer. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show,
Starting point is 00:43:41 Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slipdresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews,
Starting point is 00:43:59 co-stars, friends and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL instant messenger
Starting point is 00:44:13 and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper cause you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s.
Starting point is 00:44:28 Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road.
Starting point is 00:44:46 Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh God.
Starting point is 00:44:58 Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh man. And so will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander
Starting point is 00:45:11 each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye.
Starting point is 00:45:31 Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. All right, Chuck, we can't wait any longer. We got to talk about the runner's high. I've always heard about this. I was going to say, have you ever gotten it, but you haven't. I know if you, if you aren't a runner,
Starting point is 00:45:59 I've never gotten it either. No. Apparently the runner's high kicks in from what studies show. It does exist, by the way. There's a lot of back and forth about whether it exists or not. But what I saw, you need to run at about a six out of 10
Starting point is 00:46:15 level of exertion for two hours, basically nonstop at about the same pace in a rhythmic motion. That's where you're likely is to experience a runner's high. I've never done that in my life and probably never will. So I'll never get to experience a runner's high, Chuck. Yeah, I thought it was two minutes. And so I just got discouraged every time. Well, that's the funny thing about it is a lot of people
Starting point is 00:46:38 do run because they want to see what a runner's high is like. And it's like, well, maybe you'll find out in five years. Yeah, so here's what a runner's high is. And then we'll talk about what it may or may not be. But that's the state where you're running and you're, you know, you may be laboring and it may be tough. And then you reach a point where it's just like, everything clicks in, you got that even stride,
Starting point is 00:47:03 your body feels great, your breathing is steady, the rhythm, relax, power, glide, it's all happening. And you get this state of like euphoria almost. And they even describe sometimes like a meditative loss of time can happen. Yeah, I saw also that it's like, you feel like you can just keep running forever. You feel so good.
Starting point is 00:47:27 And apparently for a long time everybody was like, well, it's clearly endorphins. Endorphins are great chemicals that we know your body releases when you exercise, but they did a little further study and said, endorphins are actually too big to cross the blood brain barrier in a very short time. So it's probably not endorphins because it clearly affects your mood.
Starting point is 00:47:49 So there's something that's affecting the brain. And they think that, yes, your body does release endorphins when you exercise, but they go directly to receptor sites in your muscles to kind of dampen the pain. What they think the runner's high is is cannabinoids. They're specifically anatomide or anatomide. Yeah, Georgia Tech, our very own Georgia Tech
Starting point is 00:48:10 and Cal Irvine, they did a joint study. And they said that if you exercise for long enough, you can produce this, what is it? Anatomide, anatomide? Either one. And it is in fact a cannabinoid, not unlike THC. Yeah, I mean, exactly. Well, THC is a cannabinoid too, right?
Starting point is 00:48:33 Yeah, yeah, but the feeling that you get. Right, so since it's a cannabinoid receptor that's being activated, the feeling would be kind of similar to it, but I'm guessing you don't, I don't know, maybe you do just kind of get laughy or whatever, maybe paranoid. How about this? I wanna hear from someone who's experienced a runner's high,
Starting point is 00:48:53 for sure, who also had some experience with marijuana. Oh, hey, great. And I would like to know how they compare. If we need a control group, somebody who's had a runner's high that has never touched pot, if we're gonna compare your descriptions on the podcast, I don't know what, God, I'm so excited. And then we just need to hear from someone
Starting point is 00:49:15 who just smokes pot all the time and has never run. I don't wanna see what their experience is. I feel like we hear from them every week. I do too. As listener mail. Yeah. Okay, so the runner's high is probably pot. Yes.
Starting point is 00:49:31 It's basically the physiological explanation of it. But the weird thing is, again, it's not like we've not, either we don't know enough about it to say this is exactly what you need to do, or it is elusive for some reason that we've never figured out, but it's not like you're going to get a runner's high every time.
Starting point is 00:49:50 And some people never get a runner's high. Some people get them infrequently. It's just kind of like this elusive dream that runners love to work toward, but don't necessarily ever attain. You know, I mean, marathoning is impressive, but the people who really amaze me are the, I don't even know what you call it.
Starting point is 00:50:12 There's a word for it. The ultra, ultra racing, what's it called? Ultrathons. Really? Yes. Is that the name? Yeah, ultramarathon, ultrathon. And how long are those?
Starting point is 00:50:25 All right. So some of them are up to like 150 miles or longer. They'll be like overnight. Like you run for like 24 straight hours. I've got one, I got a couple for you. Yeah, I didn't look into this because it scares me. So ultrathons or ultramarathons, they probably deserve their own,
Starting point is 00:50:45 maybe like short stuff episode to tell you the truth. Ooh. But there's a guy named Dean Carnazas. He ran 50 marathons in 50 days in 50 states once. What? Yeah. There's another guy named Scott Jurick. He's a ultramarathoner, but he wanted to show off.
Starting point is 00:51:06 He set a record. He ran the Appalachian Trail in 46 days. Ran it. Ran the Appalachian Trail in 46 days. Something that frequently takes people six months if they're like trying to go at a steady clip. He ran in 46 days. Now I like that because I, for some reason,
Starting point is 00:51:27 like road racing just seems boring to me, but I have had friends. In fact, my old friend James from New Jersey is a trail runner. That always seems kind of cool to me because I'm into the woods and nature and it's hardcore stuff, but I've always thought kind of like mountain biking greater than street biking or road biking.
Starting point is 00:51:49 Well then there's another ultrathon that you would like. I can't remember the name of it, but it starts in Death Valley. Oh yeah, I've heard of this one. And then it ends on a mountain top and you run it in about 24 hours, I've seen. Man, those people are,
Starting point is 00:52:05 there's something psychological going on there too. Yeah, well, that's another thing. It's like, you know, everybody's heard that great Iron Maiden song, the loneliness of a long distance runner. Sure. That's real. Like that's a real thing that to stave off boredom and your body just being like, dude,
Starting point is 00:52:22 let's go get an apple fritter. What are you doing? That's like a real hard thing to deal with that you have to like stave off for hours on end and keep up a pace to try to finish the marathon. Yeah. I'm on an apple fritter kick big time right now. Oh, eating them?
Starting point is 00:52:39 Yeah, and wanting to eat them when I'm not eating them. All right, so you've got your runner's high, which is the positive side of things. You have the other side of that, which is called hitting the wall. Yeah. And that happens, I don't think it happens like to everyone all the time,
Starting point is 00:52:56 but generally in like the 17 to 21 mile point, your brain is, it says, and your body are like, what are you doing? Yeah. You're not supposed to run this far. And you hit a figurative wall where fatigue sets in such that you may, I mean, it depends on who you are. You may not finish.
Starting point is 00:53:19 You may collapse in a heap and you're done. Right. When you hit that wall and you're, all of a sudden you're in an ambulance. Like for real. Yeah, yeah. Seriously, I'm not kidding around. And it's a serious thing,
Starting point is 00:53:31 but what's happening there is your body is literally out of fuel. It's done. That's exactly right. That's perfectly put. Because to run a marathon or to run any race, but especially a marathon, you have to have a tremendous amount of stored energy
Starting point is 00:53:47 in your body. Yeah. Yeah. Remember when I said that like your muscles use or your body uses glucose and oxygen to produce ATP, which is this energy molecule that your muscles use. Well, you get glucose from stores of glycogen, which is basically just a little bit
Starting point is 00:54:06 of glucose tucked away here or there. And you can build up like the glycogen in your body by eating a lot of carbs, like the night before a race or something, hitting a wall is where you've not only used up the glycogen that you have eaten, right? Your body also deposits is little fatty lipid deposits. And it started to use up those emergency reserve stores.
Starting point is 00:54:33 And if you can't finish, if you're being carted off in an ambulance, you used up all the glycogen in your body. You don't have any energy stores any longer. That's what happens to some people from marathoning. Yeah, and part of the problem is those fatty acids, those emergency reserves, they release very, very slowly. So if you're running a race,
Starting point is 00:54:52 you just basically can't withdraw from your energy bank fast enough. Right. The ATM sort of shuts down and you're done for the day, basically. And some people will, you know. You can fight through it. You can, but it's probably far more responsible.
Starting point is 00:55:10 Eat like a gel pack, an energy pack, a little sugar pack, basically, or a banana or an energy bar or something like that. Because then you're keeping up the easily attainable, available stores of glycogen. I just, I don't understand how somebody who is well-trained in marathoning could hit the wall like that.
Starting point is 00:55:31 It just seems like you would know your energy stores better than that. So I don't know if that's amateurs that hit the wall or somebody that just didn't, wasn't paying attention to their energy. I don't know. But it just seems weird to me that somebody who knows what they're doing would have that happen to them.
Starting point is 00:55:49 I'd like to hear about that too. Cause I was just about to surmise, but I don't even, I have no idea. All right, I want to hear about hitting the wall too. I mean, I'm sure. Especially if you smoke pot every day and you hit the wall, what is that like? Or play the wall by Pink Floyd.
Starting point is 00:56:04 Yeah, no, no. Just keep that all to yourself. I'm sure a lot of times hitting the wall is maybe not enough experience and you have to rejigger your training and like what you eat before and what you eat and drink during. But it probably also happens on any given day
Starting point is 00:56:20 conditions might be such that, or maybe your body just doesn't react the way you usually count on it, you know? I guess, I guess, I can't help though. We have to bring up that episode of the office where they had the 5K. And Michael Scott thought that stood for 5,000 miles and he carboloaded right before the race
Starting point is 00:56:41 by eating like a giant styrofoam takeout thing of Alfredo. Oh man, so great. It really was great. So if you think about a marathon runner, you probably think, all right, if you're out there running 26.2 miles, you are the peak of health fitness and you will live forever.
Starting point is 00:57:00 There's still something called genetics everybody that are still in play no matter what you do. And that can lead to death. Jim Fix very famously, very celebrated runner died at 52. He wrote the complete book of running and he died in 1984 of arteriosclerosis. While he was running, right? I think so.
Starting point is 00:57:22 And you don't even have to be, I mean 52 is still pretty young, but in 2007, a 28 year old named Ryan Shea died and he was competing at the Olympic Marathon Trials. He had an irregular heartbeat. What happens when you run a marathon or doing any kind of intensive physical training like this is your heart size can actually increase
Starting point is 00:57:46 because it needs more blood to pump and that can lead to arrhythmia and heart failure. Right, you also can drink too much water and since you're sweating out salts and peeing out salts because you do have to pee, you can actually affect the electrolyte balance in your body and electrolytes are needed for electrical transmissions for your muscles,
Starting point is 00:58:09 which you think, okay, well, you can't run, but your heart's a muscle too. So it can't beat right if it doesn't have the right electrical or electrolytes. So there's something called hyponatremia. Yeah. Which is basically water toxicity and it can lead to sudden cardiac arrest
Starting point is 00:58:27 because your heart just stops getting the right electrical impulses. Do you pee during a marathon? Yeah, I didn't see what you do when you have to pee during a marathon. I believe there's like porta-potties everywhere. I'm sure. Right along the route.
Starting point is 00:58:46 But from what I understand, those are more for the diarrhea. Can we talk about diarrhea finally? I think it's time. I've seen some, and we have all seen very famous images on sports television of people that have lost their control of their bowels during an event like this.
Starting point is 00:59:07 And they end up on TV. They end up on TV. They're not exactly sure the single cause, or if there is a single cause of runner's diarrhea, but they think it could be everything from decreased blood flow to the intestines to changes in your hormones. Jiggling.
Starting point is 00:59:27 To just good old-fashioned jiggling of your organs. Yeah. But it is a thing. It's called runner's diarrhea. Stress, anxiety. Yep. That could contribute for sure. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:59:39 It could also be like if you eat something weird that you're not used to eating. That could be a problem. Eating high fiber foods. Sugar alcohols can make you poop even normally, but if you're running around, that can be a big problem too. Yeah, so they recommend for the day or two
Starting point is 00:59:59 before you run a marathon, like avoid those high fiber things. Don't drink a bunch of caffeine the day of the race, maybe. Maybe a few, three to six hours before don't eat at all. Right. But again, you don't want to hit the wall, so you need to juggle all this. You need to juggle your chronic runner's diarrhea
Starting point is 01:00:30 with your glycogen stores that you need to keep up with. But don't juggle your organs. But you can't help it when you're running, man. I remember Peter Sagle wrote, you know Peter Sagle from Wait Wait, don't tell me? He's like a big time runner. He has a column in runner's world. And one of them was just about runner's diarrhea
Starting point is 01:00:49 and how everybody gets it. It's so weird. Should we finish up with dear Rosie Ruiz? One more thing before we finish up with her. We have to give a huge shout out to L. U. Kipchogi, who this month at the Berlin Marathon set a new world record of two hours, one minute and 39 seconds. Wow.
Starting point is 01:01:13 He beat the six-year-old record by a minute and 18 seconds. The six-year-old ran it in that. It's being compared to Wilt Chamberlain's 100-point game. It's that big. And the way that it really kind of sunk in for me was that it meant that he ran a four-minute, 38-second mile for 26 straight miles. That's astounding.
Starting point is 01:01:36 Yep. And they're like, this guy's going to break the two-hour mark. That's what he's been training for. Nike basically said, hey man, we want to basically throw everything we have at sports medicine-wise at your training to see if we can get you down to two hours.
Starting point is 01:01:49 Because he's like probably the greatest marathoner who's ever lived. And he said, all right, let's do it. So they've been working on it and everyone's expecting him to break two hours in his career for sure. Well, you know who's not the best marathoner in history? I do.
Starting point is 01:02:05 Rosie Ruiz. She's one of the worst actually from what I understand. Yes. She is a woman who very famously on April 21st, 1980, at the age of 26, got on a subway with a Boston Marathon runner's number, exited the subway and entered the race with about half a mile to go.
Starting point is 01:02:28 I saw a mile. Give her a mile, man. I saw a half mile. So let's just say not far. We'll say three quarters of a mile. And well, it was briefly crowned the winner. The female winner of the Boston Marathon and she still maintains to this day
Starting point is 01:02:47 that she ran that race despite mountains of evidence. Although no physical evidence, but mountains of anecdotal evidence from people that were saying like she was on the subway with me and we walked off the subway together. And I saw her jump back in the race and other people saying she wasn't at this stop or this stop or this stop.
Starting point is 01:03:12 Like we never saw her and she cheated. Yeah, and supposedly they looked into her New York City Marathon finish and found that there were people who said that she was on the subway with them for that one too. She's pretty crazy. Yeah, which her story both times I think was that she said that she was injured
Starting point is 01:03:32 and just wanted to go see the finish. And then when she got near the finish line was like, I'm an injured runner and like people helped her back on to the thing. And the article I read from this one guy, I can't remember his name, but he was some sort of official. His feeling is that she didn't mean to win. Like that was an accident.
Starting point is 01:03:52 I see. And that she just wanted to cheat through the race and finish. And then all of a sudden they were like, you won. And she was like, what? Which is pretty interesting. She's like, great. Yeah, it's a weird story.
Starting point is 01:04:10 It is. Apparently she was busted stealing 60 grand from a realty company she worked for. I think a couple of years later. Yeah, a couple of years later and then the year after that she was busted for selling two keys of cocaine to an undercover detective. She's the last kind of person you want to sell
Starting point is 01:04:28 two keys of cocaine to. Yeah, for real. So she had a colorful life and I guess still does, huh? Is she still around? In her 60s? They've made it much harder to cheat nowadays. There are checkpoint computer checkpoints,
Starting point is 01:04:45 there are video checkpoints that are hidden and you don't know where they are and all of this is in an effort to. And I think one of those cameras in fact is what eventually captured the Boston bombing. If I'm not mistaken. Oh, is that right? I think so.
Starting point is 01:05:02 That totally makes sense. Wow. Yeah, so that one I wanted to point out too. Remember how we said the Boston Marathon's been run every year since I think 1897, including the year after the bombing too. So I remember in 2014 when they had it again the year after the bombing, they were like,
Starting point is 01:05:21 you know, this is a big deal. I didn't understand quite why it was a big deal. I thought it was strictly because they were coming back from the bombing. They were also saying like, we're not about to miss a year because of those terrorist jerks. Boston strong.
Starting point is 01:05:34 We're going to keep a, yeah, for sure. I want to see that movie with Jake Gyllenhaal. Which one? It's the one where he plays the guy who had that very cheese gruesome famous picture. He lost his legs in the bombing. And they made a movie about his life. Oh, I thought it was like Mark Wahlberg was in that movie.
Starting point is 01:05:55 Is there another one that he was in? He was in another one. I think he was, I mean, it's Marky Mark. So he was the guy that saved the day. I think he was one of the. I got you. The cops chasing him down or a special investigator or something.
Starting point is 01:06:08 I don't know. Gotcha. I think you're probably right. I don't think we need to even see that movie to know that's exactly what it is. I love Marky Mark though. Sure, man. How do you not?
Starting point is 01:06:17 Has a hamburger place. Does he? Yeah. Wahlbergers. Yeah, that's right. So you got anything more on Wahlbergers? Nope. All right.
Starting point is 01:06:28 Neither do I. Which means if you want to know more about marathons, go find out about how to train for a marathon and get out there and do it if this floats your boat. And since I said that, it's time for listener mail. Yeah, actually no listener mail today. What we're going to do is something we almost never do. And that is plug our stuff and ask for your support.
Starting point is 01:06:52 People are always writing in saying, what can we do? It's a free show. We love stuff you should know. How can we support you guys? And stuff you should know is doing great, everyone. So continue to listen to that. But we have our own solo ventures. And it's hard to get a podcast off the ground these days,
Starting point is 01:07:10 even if you're big hot shots like us. So I have a show called Movie Crush, where in once a week I sit down with someone in the entertainment industry from a musician to an author to a writer, director or an actor or comedian or podcaster and talk to them about their all time favorite movie and their life and how movies have influenced their life and career.
Starting point is 01:07:34 And then on Mondays, we release many episodes called Mini Crushes with producer Noel, where we just kind of shoot the S and shoot the breeze about movies and what we're watching and they're very interactive with a lot of people on Facebook and we do polls and listener questions and certain segments and it's a lot of fun. So subscribing to Movie Crush is a big, big way
Starting point is 01:07:56 to step out Chuck and you have a little something special coming out soon too. I do, it's coming out and Movie Crush is wonderful by the way, I can attest to that. I have something coming out called The End of the World with Josh Clark. And it explores this idea that we have a lot of things coming down the pike, something called existential risks
Starting point is 01:08:18 that are big enough and threatening enough and menacing enough that they could actually wipe the human race out of existence. And you might think like, well yeah, there's climate change or yeah, there's nuclear war. Those things don't even register on the map of existential risks. These are brand new things that we're not used to
Starting point is 01:08:36 and we're not equipped to deal with at this point. And we suddenly have to figure out how to handle them exactly correctly in the next 10, 20, 50, 100 years or else we're probably going to accidentally wipe ourselves out as a race. It's really fascinating stuff and sure it's a little grim and it's dark
Starting point is 01:08:57 but I try to approach it scientifically and interestingly and fascinatingly and hopefully inspirationally because it really is. I saw one of the guys I interviewed said it was the moral question of our time and he thinks that we will kind of rise to the occasion and I hope that's the case and hopefully this series helps with that.
Starting point is 01:09:17 Well, I can't wait. I can't wait for it to be out either, man. I've been working on it for a while now. Yeah, man and from what I've heard so far, it's great. If your name on it, it's gonna be great. Thanks. Subscribing to Movie Crush, subscribing to the end of the world
Starting point is 01:09:33 helps us out more than you know. Yeah. So that is how you can help and just keep on chugging along with stuff you should know too. We're not going anywhere. Nope and we've even added a new thing, short stuff that comes out Wednesdays too.
Starting point is 01:09:45 So rejoice in all of the stuff you should knowness. And thanks for your support everyone. Yeah, for sure, after all these years. If you want to get in touch with us, you can hang out with us on our website, stuffyoushouldknow.com. You can find all our social links there. You can also send us an email.
Starting point is 01:10:03 Send it off to stuffpodcastathowstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces.
Starting point is 01:10:34 We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Starting point is 01:11:20 Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

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