Dr. Michael Joyner

So you had the right athletes on the right course on the right days.

And then the final piece of the puzzle was better equipment.

You know, that robot story is sort of interesting because the robot went a half marathon in 50 minutes, and the world record for men at least is 57 minutes.

But people need to realize that it takes an elite human athlete about 1,000 calories to

or maybe 1,100 to run a half marathon or 13 miles.

That's the equivalent of about 120 mLs of gasoline energy-wise.

Gosh.

Right, exactly.

So the human, you know, if we think about using the imperial system and think about gallons, the human's getting about 400 miles per gallon of energy when they run that fast for a half marathon.

So my big question is how much energy did that robot use?

And I bet it's more than the human did.

So the robot was an interesting kind of demonstration to make a point about how robots are improving.

You know, the robots don't have a soul, and it takes...

lot of effort and a lot of fortitude and a lot of courage to be able to push yourself the way these athletes pushed themselves over the course of a 26-mile or 42-kilometer marathon.

There's a couple of mental barriers.

This range is true for everyone, but for the elite athlete, these individuals are running 200 kilometers per week or more.

20 or 30 of those kilometers are pretty fast.

What they learn in their training is really how to manage their suffering.

You learn how to get right on the edge.

where if you go just a tiny bit faster, you'll have a catastrophic failure and kind of blow up.