Here’s the coolest thing I saw last week (I’m late, I know)
Almost two weeks ago, Russ Cook, a UK-based “super-marathoner” — a term I’m making up for the feats he’s completed — became the first man to run longitudinally across Africa, top to bottom.
The founder of “Hardest Geezer” and no stranger to ridiculous running feats, Cook started this journey last year and made it his initial mission to run 360 marathons in 240 days.
I don’t quite understand how the math works there, but by my estimates, he’d need to run about 36 miles/day to hit that goal.
It seemed possible for Cook, though, given his background.
In 2019, he became the first man to run from Asia to London, completing 71 marathons in 66 days.
He broke the world record for the fastest marathon the following year while pulling a CAR(?!).
So if anyone could do it, it was him.
Not all Sunshine and Rainbows
Cook’s journey didn’t quite go as he expected.
When you’re running long distances, things hardly ever do.
According to New York Times coverage of his run, he suffered food poisoning in Namibia, and he was robbed at gunpoint in Angola — both at roughly the 1/4 mark.
In the Republic of Congo, he was hounded by men with machetes.
“It was a very traumatic couple of days — it did properly wobble me,” he told Good Morning Britain.
He also had visa issues in Algeria, dramatically slowing his anticipated finish time.
But Cook pushed on, raising more than $900k for charity and finishing the equivalent of 379 marathons over 352 days.
“Project Africa,” as he dubbed it on his social media live streams, brought running enthusiasts and everyday people out of the woodworks to cheer him on on his trail when he wasn’t getting attacked.
Finishing his 10,000+ mile, 16-country run in Tunisia, he spoke about the endorphin rushes he received when random people would join him in his run, which speaks to the communal aspect of running as a somewhat incomparable fitness activity.
Does the Body have Limits?
Cook’s run (which he summarizes in detail on his YouTube channel) begs the question of whether the body has limits and whether mentality is the sole factor that matters in exercise.
He makes a strong case for this.
In his fundraising efforts to get children moving more (something we can all get behind), the super-marathoner’s perception of his feat makes me wonder if simply changing the language around your fitness practice could be the key to better performance and longevity.
Late last fall, The Wall Street Journal ran an article called “The Power of Your Exercise Mindset” (it’s paywalled, FYI) in which Dr. Alia Crum, the head of the Stanford University Mind and Body Lab, discussed her large-scale study on exercise mindset.
“Whether they’re true or false, mindsets have an impact,” she said. “They change what we pay attention to,” which affects our performance and, apparently, our lifespan, too.
In the research that she coauthored with Dr. Octavia Zahrt that included 61,000 Americans, they found that regardless of how much exercise people, those who perceived themselves as less active than their peers were much more likely to die than those who thought they were more active than their peers.
Think about that for a second.
You could exercise less than your friend, but if you believe the intensity and strength of your workouts outdo your friend, you might be confirmation biasing your way to extra years in life.
It goes to show that if we allow it to, the mind really does drive just about all performance efforts, beyond muscular strength and cardiorespiratory ability.
That’s not to say that muscles don’t matter or that heart health isn’t essential.
But if you can derive any inspiration from Cook’s run, let it be that your body’s limits are plastic — maybe even non-existent — and you can do more than you might see yourself as capable of.
See y’all on Friday.