It's been over 18 months since my last post. Since then I've moved to Texas, and changed my focus from health/fitiness to competitive running. It entered my heart last year to pick up my love for sports performance again, and found myself spending a considerable amount of time thinking about a better way to run. Not just a refinement of our current methods, but something brand new and unique to modern athletics. Below is a journal entry from last year when I really began to believe this was possible.
To complete a mile at a world record pace of 3:43, a runner must maintain an average speed of about 16.5 miles per hour or roughly 55.75 seconds per lap around a standard quarter mile track. To most of us this seems fast, but is this really such a great achievement?
In the book of 2nd Samuel in the Bible there is a story of a young man named Asahel. The story says, “Now Asahel was as swift of foot as a wild gazelle. And Asahel pursued Abner…Then Abner looked behind him and said, ‘Is it you, Asahel?’ And he answered, ‘It is I.’ Abner said to him, ‘Turn aside from following me…’ But he refused to turn aside. Therefore Abner struck him in the stomach with the butt of his spear so that the spear came out at his back. And he fell there and died where he was.”
From a physiological standpoint, two things jump out at me in this story. First notice they were talking to each other. So they were not sprinting at maximum speed or they wouldn’t have been able to have a conversation. Second notice that Asahel died by the butt end of the spear, not the sharp end, and it went all the way through his back. Maybe it's just me, but from the story I get the impression that Abner simply stopped suddenly and let Asahel’s momentum carry him through a stationary spear. I’m not sure if many people realize just how strong abdominal muscle is (or any muscle for that matter) and just what kind of force is required to penetrate it even with a sharp object, let alone a blunt one. But, it is notable. In the narrative there is not enough information to calculate the speed at which they were both running, but even a conservative estimate is well over 20 mph (again, while holding a conversation).
Then the next questions are, if Abner was carrying a spear, what other armor or weights were they carrying as well? And how far had Abner run before Asahel caught up to him enough to be within ear-shot?
Besides other Biblical stories of great runners there are legends of ancient Greeks who would cover 140 miles in a day wearing armor, or stories of men who would run so fast at the coliseum their legs became translucent like the blades of a spinning fan. Ladas of Argos was famous for being so light footed that he didn't leave tracks in dirt. And his speed, as the incription on his statue says, "was demoniac, nor could it even be described." Today, we just dismiss these legends as exaggerations. After all, they were probably even unbelievable in their own day to eye-witnesses. But what if the stories are not exaggerations? What if there is simply no one in the public eye today that knows this lost art of running? And what would we think if we were to see it in our modern day?
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