The Infinite Monkey Cage - How Far Can the Human Body Go?

Episode Date: March 18, 2023

Brian Cox and Robin Ince are joined on stage by biomechanist Polly McGuigan, evolutionary biologist Ben Garrod, comedian Russell Kane and Olympic gold medalist Sally Gunnell to find out how good humans are at endurance. Could anyone win a gold at the Olympics? Could a human outrun a cheetah? And have we reached the absolute limits of human endurance?Producer: Caroline Steel Executive Producer: Alexandra Feachem

BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. Hello, I'm Professor Brian Cox and I'm here to explain science. And I'm Robin Ince and I'm here to interrupt him every time you go, I've got absolutely no idea what he's talking about. I'm sure that man understands it, but I have not got a clue. Today we're talking about something very close to our hearts, which is, of course, physical exercise. You actually... I knew you as a crowd would then go, to our hearts, which is, of course, physical exercise. You catch it, Brian.

I knew you as a crowd would then go, that was the thing we hated most at school. Don't tell us there was science in it. Well, that is what we're going to talk about. In fact, it is genuinely true. You won't believe it, because Brian, he loves human endurance. I have, as regular listeners know, a bag of

gymnastic four badge, which means that I was able at primary school to jump without falling over, and also to do a forward roll. So both of us are very much at the cutting edge of physical stealth. We're exploring the science of

human endurance. How fast can we run? How far can we run? Can we run? I think we found out with me. No. Can I just find out from this audience, who enjoys running like actually as a leisure activity? There's a few. Yeah, about

five out of five hundred which is exactly what I predicted. Anyway. How is science transforming sports? So, to understand this, to go on an adventure into this, we are joined by an Olympic gold medalist, a biomechanist, the son of a silverback, and someone who I didn't shake hands with the last time I saw them

because they just dissected a llama. And it was still hanging off them. Anyway, they are... I'm Ben Garrod, Professor of Evolutionary Biology at the University of East Anglia, and the extreme achievementrett professor of evolutionary biology at the university of east anglia and the extreme achievement that i'm going for at the moment is to run the world's hardest mountain race called the dragon's back in wales my name is polly mcguigan and i am a lecturer in biomechanics at the university of bath where i study muscle and tendon and how they power locomotion.

And the extreme physical challenge that I would like to achieve is something much less dramatic than that, and maybe just being able to run 10K. I'm Sally Gunnell, Olympic gold medalist in the 400m hurdles, and my extreme challenge, I've sort of done one, but at the moment, I think it would be just to do one chin-up without the cheating

band. Do you know what I mean? That's hard. Can't do it. Never have. I'm Russell Kane. I'm a stand-up comedian, and my extreme physical challenge is trying to hold in the word bell-end when I'm watching Question Time. LAUGHTER APPLAUSE Sally we have to start with you and you are the only female British athlete to have won four majors four golds in the Olympics the world the European and the Commonwealth. So how do you train? What was

the process to get to that incredible level? It certainly doesn't happen overnight, as you can imagine. It's about consistency. Used to train six days a week, have one easier day, two sessions a day, five or six hours. And it's about just getting the balance because 400 hurdles you've got to be fast but you're not fast enough to be a sprinter so it's about getting that speed endurance technically you've got to be good you've got to do strength work in the gym to get that power you've got to do track work it's just a whole combination and training the mind as well and how did you find that sport do you begin by being just fast and a good runner and at school you were winning races 100 200 400 and so on and then you go to hurdles i remember winning my first

sports day i was five years old and i just had this natural ability to run fast but I actually started off as a long jumper I then went and did multi events so that was like high jump shot javelin 800 and I think at that age it gave me a real sort of cross-section of strengths that I was sort of building up then I did 100 meter hurdles because I wasn't particularly good at I don't know high jump and shot and javelin and then I just remember winning a commonwealth gold in the 100 meter hurdles and then my coach just saying to me I think you'll make a brilliant 400 meter hurdler and I was like why would I want to do that that hurts that's like you know and I always remember someone saying to me that you never choose the 400 hurdles the 400 hurdles choose you because it is a bit of a killer event.

If you get it wrong, you hit a hurdle, it hurts, you end up on the floor. But, yeah, Bruce was right and it just sort of clicked, really, and that was it. Was it running at the sports day? Was that actually the first thing? Was it running? Yeah, just running. Yeah, but I used to do beanbag, you know, all those sorts of things. Egg and spoon.

Yeah, egg and spoon. Egg heated up with the speed. It was hard-boiled by the time we got to the finish line. I just had that natural, yeah, competitive sort of edge. I was thinking about that, and I was thinking about the person on the same day who'd won the sack race. And then they watch you on the Olympics,

and they go, well, of course, if they'd ever put the sack race in, I'd have been with Sally too. She'd have won the running, but it turns out, if they'd ever put the sack race in I'd have been with Sally too she'd have won she'd have won the running but it turns out after eight years old the sack's gone it's just not part of the world anymore I remember when I left primary school the girl that was my sort of competitor in primary school wrote on my shirt see you in the Olympics so did you feel that that was the pinnacle that's as fast as I can go or did you think actually no I'm number one in the world the fastest ever at 400 meters hurdles but I can go faster I can go faster there's always more you always look at how can I improve you know I think the whole journey

for me wasn't about running fast traffic it was actually how good I could personally be you know when I broke that world record that's what it took to win that race and it just happened to be that two of us broke the world record and that's what it took but I straight away I was like well I could knock a little bit off here and technically I was a little bit too high and the angle of the dangle wasn't quite right and you just and now you realize it's all those little things that add up it's not just one thing there's so many little tiny things that you have to get right on that one day i love that idea you're saying that brian the idea because i think that probably wouldn't be a very good coach was it it just goes yeah that's fast enough 53 seconds is all right

don't try and go faster. Polly, hurdles, could you talk us through that? Because it's running fast, but also jumping high, and, of course, a lot of technique. So can you talk us through the biomechanics of hurdling? Sorry, can you just say that again? I just found you going, it's running fast and it's also jumping high.

It was like the most beautiful play school moment we've ever had. They were just talking about it's running fast and it's also jumping high, was like the most beautiful play school moment we've ever had. They were just saying it's running fast and it's jumping, it's boing, boing, boing, voom, voom, voom. Anyway, one of the audiences we found hard to get is the under fives, and I think we finally, thanks to that delivery, we've got it. So just to ask you, it was lovely. Well, I'd just like to come back on something that Sally said earlier about the fact that she's not a sprinter and she's... I mean, she is a sprinter.

She's running faster than anybody in this room could run and jumping high. But it's that business of running fast, creating power with your muscles because of the speed that you are running. And as we run faster the amount of time that you spend with each leg on the ground decreases and therefore the amount of force that you have to generate with your muscles to support your body weight gets higher and higher the faster

you go if you then bring into that the fact that you're having to jump a hurdle which is how high sally oh about that so for the radio audience as high as a big teddy bear bro it's high if the angle of the dangle is wrong exactly yeah and if your legs are hurting then you know and the further you go round those 400 metres, your muscles are starting to fatigue, they're not generating as much force as they were at the beginning of the race, and therefore, overall, it's who can hold on to that technique and keep generating that force in your muscles

as long as possible through that race. And how much of that is training? As you said, Sally, you're always good at running, so how much is natural ability, so genetics, and how much is training? So there's certainly a genetic element to it in terms of all sorts of elements that sort of lead to the composition of your muscles, your anthropometrics or the way that your body is made up, the length of the different segments of your limbs, that's kind of all has genetic sort of determinants to it. But then it's also about the way in which you condition that system through childhood, through adulthood and through training. But the extra thing that makes elite athletes on top of all of that is the ability to push

themselves through training and in competition as well so your record was 52.74 seconds 1993 current world record 50.68 it's a big gap what what do you attribute that gap to a very talented young lady right from a very young age you could see the talent she had yes sydney clockland it would be the science behind it you know i think now the thing is that you know i would get an injury and i might have missed you know three weeks or whatever whereas now the science that's behind it they're in they're found it's preventative it's that sort of stuff equipment plays a little bit you know the spikes the weight of the spikes what they're made out of

and things like that clothing shorts and the top that she's got on you know small little things I think it's really interesting because they did a I don't know if you guys know but they did a whole research piece about what made people succeed you know like mass medal winners the Chris Hoyes and the Matthew Pince and Stephen Redgrave and there was three things that came out with all of us and one was how active you are as a child so it doesn't have to mean you have to do you know your 10,000 hours or anything like that. But I grew up on a farm, so I was riding a bike, I was running up the fields, I was doing all those sorts of things. Second one was somebody that you wanted to please in your life. So it

could have been your coach or a parent or just somebody, but you wanted to get their approval. or a parent, or just somebody, but you wanted to get their approval. And the third one was trauma. So it doesn't have to be massive, but it could be a divorce or an illness. In my case, my mum was quite ill when I was 15 with mental health issues, so I sort of had to really grow up, and they think that was part of why I had that sort of determination and that, yeah, I just put it in the right place and that was part of why I had that sort of determination and that yeah I just put it in the right place and that mental sort of side of it I thought that's quite

fascinating well that's very interesting from Russell because I was thinking as you went through those things that is very similar to a lot of performers isn't it certainly a lot of the idea of trauma the idea of wanting to please all of those so I wonder how much in terms of different forms of performance we actually find out the divisions that sometimes people make that actually there may well be a lot of common ground in terms of whether it is doing something physically marvelous or puns whatever you're doing what would be the equivalent of physically active as a child though for the nascent stand-up but it's not dancing performing talking a lot yeah when you're five years old but isn't

it very often a younger a sibling that is one of the deciding factors about when you become a stand-up but also i'm an older sibling there's also a correlation between where you're born in the year this is also true for sport so you see a disproportionate amount of people in the uk at top game and sports born in september and october purely because when you're learning sport at school when you're five six seven you're the tallest and the fastest so your confidence is sort of building itself because you're always bigger and faster and then that feeds into i must be but i was a july baby yeah no it's not for and a little bit it's quite a few athletes but it's not it's not across the board it It's just more than chance. And the same with stand-ups.

Many more of us are born in June, July and August. And we were the smallest. It was be funny or be punched. They were your options. I was born in February. No wonder I don't get TV work. Ben, it's interesting that Sally was talking about the idea that an athlete will often begin early in life. But you, later in life life decided to take on an

astonishing challenge i hated sport as a kid and something you said earlier sally was i never liked being competitive with anyone else and it took me a long time to realize i could just do it against myself and then i was i have various illnesses and i had quite bad arthritis in my spine a few years ago and they operated and the pandemic struck so loads of metal in there and i thought i'm going to get fit again and as an academic i thought i'll be really science savvy with this i'll do the couch to 5k it's a good thing it won't be too bad i read up my science like a nerd and did couch to 5k and i thought i could have probably gone further so i thought i'll do a 10k and did a 10k and was quite proud of myself didn't hurt never had a blister

as a runner which i know i'm gonna regret saying saying that and then got to half marathon got to marathon and just kept going and i kind of forrest gumped it i thought well how far can i as a classic academic how far can i go so now having entered this 380 kilometer race over six days i don't know sally i like a challenge yeah but yeah you're right it was a late onset start. And in running, especially as you know, Brian, endurance running, we tend to do better as we get older. And we don't really know why. Maybe there's more research now, but a lot of it is the psychology.

And I think we haven't really understood the benefits of that driven psychology and that sense of well-being and the impact of that until recently. But I'm quite a late bloomer. I once got banned from a school cross-country because I got so distracted I found a dead shark on the beach and took it back to dissect and got massive bollocking by my PE teacher, who couldn't, to be fair, couldn't catch me. But I did have a big dead seven-foot shark over my shoulder.

380k? Yeah. Can you describe a bit more about that race? So that's not continuous running, is it? So it's over six days, so it's 250 miles in old money. It's twice the height of Everest in elevation across that time, and it's from Conway Castle in the north of Wales to Cardiff Castle in the south.

It's middle of September this year coming. There's about 500 runners each time and there are stops each night you've got to get certain thresholds across each day and just see if you can make it i think there's between a 17 80 percent dropout well or lack of success that's all about fueling a lot of fuel i've been really been going deep into this one and i keep thinking of why and trying to find out why they're not doing very well and a lot of it is it's lonely and i don't know about you again you Brian and Sally but I always train on my own and I don't really mind if I'm not in a group or I don't run with anyone else I think again

come back to the psychology I'm trying to prepare for lots of night runs lots of cold runs I do lots of exercise in Bristol on the downs and then go for a 10k afterwards it's that training when you're already tired what's the furthest you've been so far 50 miles 50 miles right and i'm interested now and i want to know from you so as well which is about where your mind goes i mean hurdling 400 meters is just to me such a remark i mean i can't imagine either what we're actually practicing for you know it's an idiot pole vaults to invade a castle 400 you know that's a long... But where is your mind as you are... I hope that hasn't in any way belittled you. Your achievement is remarkable.

Transferable skills. Some of them you go, right, I see what that would have been... And then you go, that's a lot of fences when you're running away, isn't it? From the Normans or whatever it might be. But where is your mind when you are are you able to go back and go i remember doing that it's a journey you go on you know when i first started out and if i think about the first olympics i did i'd be looking oh their bikes look nice and oh they've gone off a bit fast and you can't think like that i'm gonna have to re-watch

your racing. And that's what I used to do. I would be like putting myself down. So I had to learn that you can't do that. I only learned this probably a year before winning in Barcelona was that you have to do that whole mental side of it and the preparation. And that was about actually knowing what you've got to execute so i sat down sports psychologist and you work out your touchdown times yeah you know just how high you're gonna be over the hurdle absolutely everything what leg what happens if things go wrong absolutely and you just rehearse it in your mind so on the day you're not thinking about oh she looks nice over, or look at that nice little make-up she's got on, or whatever.

You are, you've gone through it all, you know exactly what you've got to execute, and it just happens. And I remember one bit of the race over the eighth hurdle, because the year before I made a mistake, and I started looking around and thinking people were looking good, and I was in the lead at the eighth hurdle, and I just had learnt to say to myself, you've got this.

And as soon as I said that, I was then on to that next bit. And you cross the line and you go, did I win that? Did I not? You can be on stage for 60, 70, 80 minutes and be in that flow state and sort of get to the end, like, how did I do that? But when it stops, it's the worst. If you float above yourself and start planning your delivery, or what wine will i have in the travel lodge and you're and you're and you're and you're holding a mic and you're oh my god there's 3 000 people it's the worst feeling in the world that must happen during

a long race you just lose that concentration that bit like russell when you were talking about by the way which travel lodge are you going to? He's got a selection of wines. They were bought at the BP garage and you well know it. Travelodge plus. But it's an interesting thing. I was just thinking that the physical side, I suppose some people can imagine that in physical things you can be so focused

that actually the conscious mind doesn't seem to be there. But from what you were just saying there, and I would agree with this as well, Russell well which is sometimes you can do a very long show and you're going off on all manner of tangents and someone will come up to you afterwards and say russell i really love that routine you did about giraffes and you go did i yeah and so even the conscious mind even words there is a point of as you said that flow state yeah which is both physical and can also be very specifically verbal and mental yeah which and it's more profound because we're working with language but i cannot remember using the

language like a fugue or almost but you're in control i've had that happen countless times where i've improvised a bit and then someone go i like that bit you improvise and i'm like what did i say so i can write it down because i can't i can't recall it i couldn't do it week in, week out. It was like I could do that at a major when it was all on and full on, but I would struggle trying to get into that state week in, week out. That's the state you have to be in every time you go on stage. I'm not trying to be overdramatic here, but if you're not in that state, you're getting a bottle of wee thrown at your head at the Leeds Festival. You sort of stay in it.

I'm being serious here. It could be a hundred seat at Art Centre, but if you drift out of that state you've described, time slows down. You'd need Professor Stephen Hawking to explain what was happening. It's like one second can last a year if you lose that focus. And if he can still explain that, that means that the brief history of time was wrong.

It can go backwards. Pauline, we've talked about speed and distance. And if he can still explain that, that means that the brief history of time was wrong. Polly, we've talked about speed and distance. And you study humans, but also animals. So the animals, you could name the cheetah, for example, it'll run faster than a human being. But in terms of endurance, where do humans rank in that league table? Actually, much better than you think they would. So in terms of sprinters, we're not great compared to present company accepted, of course. But compared to cheetahs, antelope, galloping species,

we're not that great. But in terms of endurance runners, running at a reasonably fast speed for a prolonged period of time, actually, we were remarkably good and that came from the fact that in terms of the origins of the human species and the evolutionary drivers of that actually running down prey and exhausting that prey became a sort of selection pressure on early Homo species. And therefore, those kind of characteristics that made us good endurance runners, such as having relatively long legs for our size, having springy bits within our legs,

so our Achilles tendon, the elastic structures within our legs so our Achilles tendon the elastic structures within our foot all mean that we are pretty efficient runners because as we run we store elastic energy within the muscle tendon units of our legs which means that our muscles have to work less hard than if those tendons weren't there we're also pretty good at thermoregulating compared to many animal species, and we can therefore run for longer at a speed which stresses our system to a certain extent. Because we're very good at sweating, we can lose the heat that comes from that intense exercise in a way that other running animal species are not as good at so this is our niche then our evolutionary niche is relentless essentially being relentless and

chasing all you've got to do is outrun a cheetah by about 100 meters first 100 meters then you're good sally's got a chance for the last one us. She'd be screwed. She'd be like, the bird was out for the cheetah like that. Jump out of your little ship. But, yeah, as you say, Brian, we've evolved... It goes back about seven million years. So our early hominin ancestors and hominid ancestors started going bipedal, so started walking upright. That was the catalyst that sort of cascaded everything else.

And I work with chimps and gorillas, mostly in the wild and across Africa, and they've got these wonderful feet with big toes that come out of the side just like our hands and we jokingly refer to them as four-handed but they're flat so chimps and gorillas walk on these big flat feet in the back and it's really it's just constant banging and it's not as you said not springy at all our big toe has just completely moved and when you do that and bring it to the side of your hand you create this wonderful little cupping area underneath and that's what we've got these big arches in our feet and it's all these little tweaks and changes nothing in particular but it's a little tweak here

a little change there the fact our achilles is about 11 12 centimeters and goes right into our calf a chimp achilles is about a centimeter and a half long and i've got terrible flexion of the foot who likes being sweaty no one especially wants to be sweaty it's one of the best unique features about being a human that we can sweat and as you said it allows us to go and go and go most animals can't sweat even horses have a different sweat system than we do and then chimps gorillas the rest of them don't sweat and so it's being sweaty being mostly hairless being upright having that lovely series of curbs in our backs. It's these tweaks.

And you mentioned cheetah. I dissected a cheetah recently, which is, again, ethically sourced. How do you ethically source a cheetah? White troughs. We expected a big heart, a big set of lungs. And it was just the physics. Not just the physics, Brian, sorry.

It was the physics. It was really interesting. It was the biomechanics. It was the slightly longer angles of the olecranon process of the radius and ulna, and it's slightly longer levers, and it's what's great, as you said to Sally earlier, what was it about you?

It'll be tiny micro-tweaks that's slightly different from Sally to the person next to her. The wonderful thing about... That's the person next to her. Are you saying I've got a tiny Achilles heel? But I think that's the thing, is these tiny tweaks that just set you apart.

It might be seconds or microseconds, but that's been going on for several million years now. So in evolutionary terms, it's being upright so walking on two legs that opens up the possibility of moving fast and also endurance absolutely yeah and it's and there are still a few tribal groups around the world in sub-saharan africa who will in terms of endurance go after these large ungulate these large hoofed animals and just go and go and go, for days sometimes.

And we're the only species that can do that, and that's the endurance that nothing can replicate. It's interesting, isn't it, the modern human, you think of the shape of a modern human, our body plan, and a great deal of that comes from this selection pressure, to just run. Yeah. Well, think about Kip Chega, don't you?

The Kenyan that's trying to run under two hours for the first marathon. And, you know, you just watch him and it's just incredible. He's makeup and you're talking about that. But it will be so much of the science that they're putting in, aren't they? To try and get him under that two hours.

The science is improving improving so people are still running as fast as they can but whether it's reducing injury time or whether it's the diet or whether you mentioned elliot kipchoge i watched his documentary with him recently in terms of prepping for this sub two hour marathon and what was really cool was he and his colleagues were doing loads of mindfulness and loads of chill time and i wonder when you're training how often did you sit there in a group and do mindfulness training, which is a really serious part of endurance racing now? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, it's funny because I didn't realise that when I used to get into the core rooms, you're in this horrible room for 20 minutes before you race with all your competitors, and this is where you sort of like... Like our green room back there. Like your green room. This is where you either psych everybody out, and that's what everybody used to try and do to me so you have to turn it into positive but i used to

do this thing which i never knew what i was doing but i used to like try and block everybody out so i just go and lie on the side and put my feet up and just go through the race and block everything out but i actually realized now that that probably was my mindful bit where it's the point where i could nearly fall asleep and i was just about to go out there and race but i think it was that whole sort of like the body just needed to be quiet and shut down and it's only sort of in the last five years that i've realized that's what i probably did without anybody telling me what i was doing what's the difference in the team between the you know the long distance runners the marathon runners and then the sprinters and the javelin throwers and the throwers

used to be drinking pints the night before. And they're all friends. The sprinters absolutely hated each other. And they would just be eyeballing each other and psyching each other out. Running away from each other quickly. And the endurance lot, they're quite friendly. They'd go for runs and they think they're friends,

but they're not really on the other side. So, yeah, it was very different in whatever group you were with, for sure. It was about 54 seconds that you did the 400-metre hurdles, is that right? 52.74. 52 seconds. Now it's gone down to 50 seconds, approximately. And I looked it up earlier and it was 54 seconds in 1980. So that should mean that in 300 years we can do the 400-metre hurdles in about nine seconds

if we continue at that rate. At that rate? It would depend on trainer technology. But my eldest sister, she does those things where you swim across a lake and then you get on a bicycle and you ride for Mars and then you go for a run. There's a desire in human beings that now that we don't actually have to necessarily endure,

we still, for some people, feel that they must endure. This is something that's brought up quite often, that we are apparently the only species that exercises for a non-beneficial reason. It's not play, you see young deer running around and it's all developing motor skills. I mean, most of us in here now have got the point where we're not developing new skills in terms of strategically important for your life, and yet we're the only species that goes for a run for no reason we're intentionally expending energy i think part of that comes from this concept that we're one of the few species that takes in far more calories than we could ever hope to burn on a regular basis

and we can afford to do that most of nature nature doesn't waste stuff. You don't see chimps like, oh, I'm going to go for a quick jog. Those chimps are spending up to 70% of their waking day foraging and feeding. They can't waste their energy. We have got so much energy, we just don't need it. Almost a by-product of our very efficient lifestyles. I've got another curious fact.

I've been making a documentary for Channel 4 about the decline in male sperm count globally and trying to work out what it is, and we've run a number of experiments. And one of the things driving it, the sports clothes that men are now wearing and our obsession with exercise and the improved technology in sportswear, and obviously the testicles are supposed to be 32 degrees and we're not. The rest of the body's 36. So this very tight clothing is part of the problem.

And men are doing all kinds of stuff we're waxing we're over bathing we're sitting in hot tubs so we're the only species on earth that attempts to make ourselves more attractive to the opposite sex by becoming more infertile i love that list you made because it means my sperm count must be pretty high still you just looked at me all the way through that muscle i've never felt so uncomfortable Because it means my sperm count must be pretty high still. I'm horrified. You've just looked at me all the way through that, Russell. I've never felt so uncomfortable. It blows my mind that we've got to a place

where we're exercising and doing things that actually make our chance of successful mating less. To be fair, that's way down my list of why I'm not successful. The fact my balls are too close because my lycra is not on that list, really. I just follow Robin. I carry mine over my shoulder for safety. You are, Russell, a very physical comedian.

You really struggle around that you move. I mean, I remember once, years ago, we were on the Radio 4 show Loose Ends, where you have to stand statically behind a microphone. Afterwards, I told you, do you realise one of your legs was still moving as if you were going round the stage? It was really fascinating. One leg had to remain still, and the other leg went, I'm sorry, I've still got to walk round the stage.

And it was kind of going... It was a really... Yeah, that level of energy that you have, you like to kind of explode on stage. And it also helps with what Sally was talking about earlier. Because there's such a physical component to what I'm doing, it helps me stay in the flow state. It's almost a distraction I'm not doing it on purpose I didn't like think up a persona in drama school or something it just happens naturally with nerves I'm naturally an energetic person I did put some technology on it I slung a fitbit on just to see what's happening

so in a 70 minute show I'm doing 730 calories about000 steps. My resting heart rate's 59, and it's at 110 as I walk on. That's amazing. Well, I don't know if it is, because if my heart rate is going up to 110 based on anxiety at the microphone, that's not good heart rate increase. But it stays within 110 to 150 for that whole 70 minutes, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang,

and then drops back down when I'm off. But, yeah, I'm exhausted. I get jealous of someone, you know, like John Bishop, who's probably burnt about 20 calories. Joke number one, joke two. Lying in a bath of Barocco. But, yeah, it's a way of handling the nerves. You know, when we do these stand-up gigs on radio,

something more is lost, because I use my body to tell the story as well, to communicate. I'm on the floor, I'm up, I'm jumping, so I really miss that when I'm in a medium that's not visual. No disrespect, Radio 4. So, I mean, when you have time off, how many days does it take you to not, seven o'clock every night start to go i

don't know i've got to go on i've got to go on and then you know you're kind of your partner's there and she's going oh god he's going to do a show next to the gas hob you know what he's making i'm very lucky i don't seem to have a sort of energy spike in the evening what i have noticed once i got past a certain age was i've had to stay fit, not because I enjoy exercise or I'm an athlete, but to maintain 70 minutes of super fast storytelling and not be going at the end, which is very unattractive. I've been blackmailed commercially by my own creative endeavors to stay unusually fit for my age. I'm 48 in August. So I exercise six days a week and I've got the opposite thing the reason I've never been into exercising my life until late on is I can't exercise if people are

looking at me so the types of things you're doing are my idea of hell running in a group of people I have to be on my own because I get bored so quickly I need an amazing podcast monkey cage would do it and or even better a screen open so i prefer treadmill so i can actually watch you know steven fry discuss adjectives for an hour or something while i'm running i can't just run i can't do it see that was interesting when brian and me first started when we first went on tour and uh brian went you've got to come do exercising with us and he basically thought i'd die right we went up on the moors with a great big long bit of the rope and it was properly on the moors wasn't it on a windy day i didn't have any tracks just

wore my jeans and it's like you know waving these ropes around all this stuff and then when i was still alive he seemed shocked oh yeah i know what you were disappointed or shocked but you have to remember i tour the whole time i don't drive so i have a rucksack on my back and I just perpetually go into Oxfam and buy more and more books. So it's kind of like watching a charity shop version of The World's Strongest Man. And so I've got stamina because the rest of my lifestyle, though it had no specific fitness to it,

was like, kind of, oh, I'm going to buy those encyclopaedias today and I'm going to have to take them all the way to Aberdeen and then down to Penzance. What your personal best the collected works of balzac polly could you describe what is happening in the body as you go further and further and further where are the limits is it purely fuel if you could continually eat and refuel could you continually run so i think that if we're talking about a marathon or something like that, I think the figure is something like 3,000 calories to run a marathon. And there was an amazing gentleman called Gary McKee who ran 365 marathons last year.

Just the most amazing feat of mental and physical endurance. most amazing feat of mental and physical endurance. There's sort of been lots of reports about how much he had to eat to fuel his body through that. In terms of finite periods of exercise like a marathon every day and things like that then yes it is an element of fueling yourself through that and you can ingest sufficient calories to provide your muscles with enough fuel to keep generating force and if you're physiologically fit enough you will have enough oxygen in those muscles to generate the ATP to keep those muscles contracting the things that become limits to that do really become mental limits. And also those limits of, well, as you get more fatigued and your muscles are maybe not generating as much force, then there are potentially injury limits to that as well. And what is fatigue physiologically?

That's a really hard question. fatigue physiologically that's a really hard question so from a mechanical perspective fatigue is the point at which for the same level of neurological input your muscle doesn't generate as much force but there are all sorts of different definitions of fatigue as well. It's about when your system, for whatever reason, cannot do what it could do because of the stress that's been placed upon it. Now, that can be mental, it can be physiological, and it's also different things for different people. So different people will reach their stopping point for different reasons.

For some people it will be the mental trigger of, I just can't keep doing this. For others it will be pain. For others it will be the fact that your muscles aren't generating enough force to support your body weight and you will collapse. There's a paradox in my life, OK? So I've got more power, I'm faster and more energy when I'm fasted and I've drunk coffee. So if I go on stage empty or if I do a workout empty and have a quadruple espresso, I'm so strong.

If I eat food beforehand, I'm definitely not as strong. And I definitely couldn't do that before a gig. I'm all sluggish. I couldn't live without coffee. I'm cradling strong, and I definitely couldn't do that before a gig. I'm sluggish. I couldn't live without coffee. I'm cradling one right now, listeners. But it's fake energy. There's no calories there. So what's going on? You've got massive stores. Thank you.

Listeners, I'm kissing the guns. But the gazelle on the plane is the perfect weight, that perfect balance, and it's on the knife edge. Again, we're all sitting here with a little bit too much in terms of the sores. I bet you couldn't do a week of gigs just on coffee. You would crash really, really hard. What I mean is I would eat at lunchtime, but I would always eat, like, I wouldn't eat before this.

No, but I think that's quite typical, because I think the process there is, especially because you're using your mind and you're thinking about blood flow, that if you have a nice big meal, it does feel also like, one, I wonder if there is a psychological thing in the evolution which is you have then succeeded because you have managed to gather

the food. And secondly also, your blood's going, I'm so sorry I can't help with this thinking, but we're trying to digest this savalloy. So I think that might be part of it as well. But anyway, we are now going to do an experiment. You're now not going to eat for the next week. This audience are going to stay and watch every night

of the show. They used to say two hours before you start doing our warm-up. You've got to have something two hours before. Did you have coffee? Did you have a shot of caffeine or anything like that? I didn't, but Mo Farah does. Yeah, that he's totally would be on espresso shots. Exactly.

I'm going to beat that cheater, I'm determined. Imagine if you had two shots of coffee, you'd be well in there. Just see the cheater with the macchiato, I'll be like, oh, damn it! By the way, I never told you what my sporting prowess is. I was in the 3rd XI cricket team at school. Yeah, and you know why? Because they only had six people.

Anyone else was there. They'd just go, can you get in the minibus as well? Turn up there. As soon as I finish this Savaloi, I will be. Don't worry about it. As usual, we also asked our audience a question. And today it was, what is your most impressive sporting achievement? This is from Mark, who says,

I once cycled from Land's End to Penzance without wearing Lycra. So, good news for Mark. Sperm count. Good swimming. Robert said, my biggest achievement in sport was once getting stuck on a cross trainer for 30 minutes. I couldn't get

my legs and arms to stop at the same time. my legs and arms to stop at the same time. I ended up having to jump off. And this is actually the only time I went to the gym and it only cost me £19.99 a month for a year. When I was 12, I was playing cricket with my mum in the garden before I accidentally bowled the ball too high, which ended up breaking her nose.

That Christmas, my three siblings got a lot more than me. I'm really sorry, Mum. Can I have that scale extra? This is from Toby, who says, I was runner-up in the 2013 World Pea Shooting Championship. And I would say that is the answer I would have expected most from an infant monkey age audience. Can I ask, where was it?

Was it in somewhere exotic? Oh. It was obviously a good match. It wasn't just Cambridge, it was the whole county. It's a pretty impressive pea shoot. It was a World Championship. Probably the parents' wheelbarrow race at Junior Sports Day. We won despite my wife's arm packing up midway,

resulting in her being ploughed over the line for the last ten metres. Apparently it was impressive to watch. Thank you, Paul and Karen. There we are, yeah. But when I was younger, I did three marathons over one weekend. But now I'm older, I reckon I could only probably do one Snickers. So, thank you very much for all of your answers. And next week, we are going to be talking about materials

that have changed our life. There's wool in it for you. It is. The cardigan has made me become the man that I am. And we'll probably also be talking about the material that Brian's face and body is made of. Certainly not human, that's for sure. So, thank you very much to our panel, Russell Kane, Sally Gunnell, Ben Garrett and Polly McGuigan.

We'll see you next time. Bye-bye. APPLAUSE APPLAUSE Hello, I'm John York and I want to tell you about Opening Lines, a new series from BBC Radio 4 in which I'll be looking at books, plays, poems and stories of all kinds that have made a mark and asking, what makes them work? I mean, this stuff is jaw-droppingly shocking. I'll be asking lots of questions. What's at the heart of the story? How does it achieve its effect? What makes it special?

at the heart of the story. How does it achieve its effect? What makes it special? History is usually written by winners, but he wants to give a voice to people who are not usually heard. I'll be hearing from people who know and love these works. Writers.

We do have an orgasm evoked on the page. Dramatists. Biographers. It's worn better as a book about England than it has as a book about sex, I think. And directors too. In the end, I'll be asking, what makes this work worth reading now?

Join me to find out in opening lines from BBC Radio 4 and available on BBC Sounds. This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon pull apart only at Wendy's. It's ooey gooey and just five bucks with a small coffee all day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply.