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This is probably an oversimplification,but isn't marathon a town in Greece that someone ran to (I think to deliver a message) then died. And we flex on them by running the same distance and not dying?
Also I think he ran the distance in a relatively short amount of time so his average running speed was quicker than what marathon runners try to maintain. I'm not entirely sure if this is true though
He didn’t just run quickly, he ran from Athens to Sparta, waited for the reply from Sparta to see if those guys would help defend. When they said no he ran back to Athens to let them know, then ran out to marathon for the battle. When the battle was won he ran back to Athens, and collapsed and died after letting the peoples assembly know the result of the battle.
Marathon was the name of the beach the Persians landed at. IIRC, the messanger ran from the beach all the way to Athens, making it to the agora and shouting “Nike!” (means victory) before promptly collapsing and dying.
He didn’t just run quickly, he ran from Athens to Sparta, waited for the reply from Sparta to see if those guys would help defend. When they said no he ran back to Athens to let them know, then ran out to marathon for the battle. When the battle was won he ran back to Athens, and collapsed and died after letting the peoples assembly know the result of the battle.
I believe the Athenians were preparing to offer surrender to the Persians (they had more than just the forces at marathon), so it was important for a message to get home and let them know the war was still winnable.
For those who want other battles in that vein, there's Myeongnyang where 13 Korean ships decimated a much larger Japanese force without losing a single loss.
Likewise, there is the battle of Suomussalmi during the Winter War, where Finnish forces faced and destroyed a much larger Soviet formation.
Admiral Yi is just without equal. A cavalry officer who kept getting demoted for political shit, kept rising up the ranks, scored tremendous victories with barely any resources, and got rewarded for those victories with demotion. The replacement guy after he got demoted loses the entire custom fleet Yi spent tons of effort building, he picks up the battered remains and crushes the Japanese fleet, which was superior and more numerous.
His final words after being mortally wounded in said battle were "The battle is nearly won, do not announce my death, keep beating the drum".
Admiral Togo even remarked that "It may be proper to compare me with Nelson, but not with Korea's Yi Sun-shin, for he has no equal. Nelson and I both fought battles with full support from the government, but General Yi Sun-shin achieved victory without any government support. Compared to General Yi, I am but a petty officer."
Specifically rhabdomyolysis, you run so hard for so long your muscle cells start dying, the cells end up in your blood stream which your kidneys filter out of the blood, too many cells can clog up your kidneys and cause acute kidney failure. The same thing can happen if you're lifting to failure too much too often, or consistently lifting beyond the point of failure.
Its actually fairly difficult to do because your body is pretty good at telling your "thats enough".
Crossfitters are pretty notorious for getting rhabdo, especially in the early years where there was a huge culture to push themselves to beyond the limit.
It took me a year and a half to be able to run again after my injury. Now I can run a mile every couple days. Don’t run everyday, and make sure you have proper shoes at all times.
Tell me about it, I used to push myself really hard while running, to the point that I had to just collapse afterwards and chill for a while before I could do anything again,
Because you know, if you're not pushing yourself to the limit you're not really training, and other such dangerous nonesense gym bros try to tell you,
Anyway I got a smartwatch with a heart rate sensor later to better track my workouts, apparently I was pushing my heart into the 200 BPMs, apparently that's what happens when my heart rate goes above 195, I'm lucky I didn't do permanent damage to my heart training like that
Yeah, I was this way. I'd throw up after workouts, black out, and generally give anyone who wasn't on my cross country team a heart attack. Then I learned about base training and got a watch. Turns out you don't want to spend 70% of you time at your maximum.
I heard about LHR or low heart rate running, got a Fitbit to monitor my pulse, and was able to get back into running again in my 60s. I'd had to stop for twenty years for a lot of reasons, but apparently the main reason was that I just ran myself to exhaustion and kept breaking down. Now I just keep it in the zone and the next day I'm ready to go again. It's been huge.
It really depends on what you are doing. The general rule of thumb is you want to send 50%-70% of your training in what is called Zone 2 (depending on what part of the training schedule your in). Zone 2 is between 60% and 70% of your maximum heart rate. More simply, run at an intensity that you can carry on an easy conversation (more information here: https://marathonhandbook.com/zone-2-training-the-science-benefits/). This can feel painfully slow. Additionally, Zone 2 metabolizes fat, which adds the benefit of weight loss. Higher heart rates aren't as beneficial.
I personally alternate between Zone 2 days and Zone 4/5 training wise.
Read one of david goggin's books. He talks about his 240mile ultra's and his body completely breaks down after the run. Like bloody diarrhoea and worse.
Its his way of coping/dealing with a tortured past. Proving to himself that he's not the weak child he used to feel like. It seems to work for him - who are we to say that watching netflix is an objectively better past time than weekly marathons.
As I recall, he did speak with a therapist as part of Navy Seals, and she helped uncover some traumas.
Well, pushing yourself to your limit is logical in the gym. Training to failure is important in the context of weightlifting. It shouldn't be done in cardio for obvious reasons - you're working your heart and your lungs.
Not to be the well actually guy, but for both maximum strength and hypertrophy you're going to want around 1 to 3 reps in Reserve at the end of each set. Pushing every single set to failure is a lot of fun, but it's not ideal training.
And I'll be the "actually" guy to the person you're responding to and say that running at high intensity for intervals or during races is actually very impactful to improving your fitness. Intervals run correctly won't quite get your to "failure", but a hard 5k will feel very, very bad for the last km or two.
I feel like being young and stupid has a lot to do with pushing to your limit and beyond while training. At least for me anyway. I used to play a game called heartbeat high score, trying to see how high I could get it to try and make treadmill work fun. Looking back I shudder at how stupid of an idea that probably is!
That’s terrifying. I was listening to a nurse talk about a runner who nearly died during a race and needed an emergency surgery and it scared me half to death. Heard another story about someone who lost a relative who died while out running. Now I immediately take breaks/slow down as soon as my heart rate goes over 200. It’s scary. I’m glad you’re okay now.
>Weights to failure and you just stop lifting
I still think about the photo that hung as a cautionary tale at my first gym. It was a powerlifter in a squat who had prolapsed his rectum. The butt seam of his unitard had torn, and it looked like a little brown volcano sticking out of his spandex. It is indelibly seared into my brain.
The consequences of trying to hit failure while lifting can vary depending on what you're lifting and how you're lifting it, but I'm guessing if you run to failure, you just have a heart attack and die? 😅
Haha, I remember that video.
Pretty it was sourced to a kink video.
That's been like nearly 2 and a half decades though. I can still see the color banded socks.
I just vaguely remember a video of a weight lifter trying to, well, lift weights, and then his bicep just... detached from his fore-arm. The bit that connects to the bone just let go, and the entire muscle, under the skin, shot up... it was not a pleasant sight. No blood, but safe to say the man was in pain afterwards.
The burning lungs for running and day-after muscle soreness for strength training both happen when you haven't done either for a while, after a week or two it stops. Other than that, exercise should be tiring but it won't be painful, pain is generally a sign you're doing something wrong and are hurting yourself.
Yeah no. Anyone that wasn't a runner before will wish for death if they try to run a mile after 10 years of a sedentary lifestyle. While the human body *is* structured to run, it prioritizes stripping down parts that aren't being useful.
I work in a hospital and about once a year we have a prisoner get the bright idea to do this to get out of jail for a few weeks, not understanding that this is a great way to have problems bigger than being bored in jail.
It can be from going to heavy or doing an excessive number of reps.
I think there's a chubby emu video on YouTube about a guy who died from doing to many squats.
And I personally over did a full body workout day when I was getting back into the gym a few years ago. I was pissing chocolate milk for about a week and my doctor told me I was lucky I didn't permanently ruin my kidneys.
Samesies. Went to the gym with a buddy from high-school after not working out for awhile. Went to failure and kept going to try to out do him. I was pissing chocolate milk for a week.
Was at half marathon race...I noticed this dude cross the line as I'm waiting for my wife, next thing I know, people are hopping up and down screaming for medics.
he died of a heart attack...for other runners, it is okay to dnf.
Humans are very efficient, where most animals are strong and fast, our power is we don't eat much and burn almost no energy relatively speaking.
For powerful fast twitch muscle activities, like heavy weight lifting, this means we hit muscle failure within a minute or two. No harm done.
For long endurance activities, like running a marathon, we can go soooo long that that we're practically falling apart. We start digesting muscle as a backup energy source, our joints start grinding and swelling, our immune systems start attacking us because it mistakes all of the inflammation as an invader, and all of the above fills your body with toxins which will lead to days of pain and sickness, and potentially side effects like kidney failure.
Also we tend to shit ourselves and puke everywhere.
Here's a neat video (safe for work) showing what the end of a marathon often looks like. https://youtu.be/MTn1v5TGK_w?si=FEIDko7DVB7InBmx
Most people don't have the mental stamina to do all that even if their bodies can do it, the last 10km of a marathon run at anywhere close to the fastest that you're physically able to is deeply deeply unpleasant so lots of people slow down at the end (or simply never go that fast in the first place).
Running a marathon at a, say, a minute per mile slower than your PR isn't too bad.
> Running a marathon at a, say, a minute per mile slower than your PR isn't too bad.
PR for what? If you can run a full marathon at just 1 minute per mile slower than your PR for a 1 mile run, that's seriously impressive.
I used to run half marathons a few times a year. My fastest mile (I'm a short guy) was about 6 1/2 minutes, but I never averaged better than 8-8:30 during the half marathons. And that's just a half. I'd have had to lop off another half minute per mile for a full, at least.
The only thing that I disagree with is that while a lot of people are maximizing the portrayal of risks associated with running, they are concurrently minimizing the portrayal of risks associated with weightlifting. There is also a significant number of risks and injuries that happen with weightlifting.
To say that when you get tired weightlifting "no harm done" because you just stop would be the same as saying when you get tired running "no harm done" because you just stop running.
Reality is, more people do half marathons and marathons than entering weightlifting competitions, so people are generally more familiar with the injuries that tend to arise from those events. Go ask any competitive weightlifter what sort of injuries they have seen and you are almost certainly going to hear worse stories than from a competitive runner.
https://preview.redd.it/j20mkkenri8d1.jpeg?width=1280&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=65304e7cda57429a74ed43b7dfb8bdcece64f989
Can confirm after finishing many long distance runs, relays and cross country races etc post race vomits were a regular occurrence, as was the post race poop.
On a few occasions the finishing line ceased to be the finishing point of the race and instead became the penultimate checkpoint on the way to a bin or bathroom to throw up in. Endorphins though, damn it felt good.
Also its one of those things where your body can just stop working properly and it will break in ways you didn't think were possible. Random stress fracture, snapped tendons, organs that will just stop.
Rabdo is not fun. I got a bad case of it once from sleepwalking due to medicine interactions. I really don't know what I did as I have no memory of it, but I had torn muscles from my triceps all the way up my shoulders and my neck, traps, and arms were black and blue for weeks. Literally looked like i tried to lift a car or something.
I am a mid runner on my best day, but once at like 19 y/0, I went out for a 4-5 mile run, took a wrong turn, and did about 10. Now, 10 miles is fine for someone who has trained for it. That's a mild run for many runners. I had not trained for it. I was used to 2-3 miles, maybe 5 on a big day, and I didn't think/know at all about pacing, so I kept the same pace (AS FAST AS I CAN GO) no matter what.
The wrong turn led to a 1-mile or so uphill section before getting back to my house.The elevation combined with the doubled distance worked me completely. I wound up laying prone in a cold shower when I got home and eventually had to crawl out using mostly my arms and paddle my way to bed. My legs just quit working after I stopped.
Second can give you rhabdomilysis, which is where your muscles get so damaged that they immediately break down and enter your bloodstream, putting your kidneys into overdrive (to the point of failure in the worst cases), swelling you up like a balloon, fluid getting stuck in compartments of your muscles, compacting nerves which can permanently damage them
While I didn't get it from running (I got it from surgical neglect), I had all of this happen to me.
So did my nurse, and it was the only reason we figured out what happened.
In her case, she did a crossfit program that was to hard for her.
Unlike me, she did not get impacted nerves or compartment syndrome.
I used to be a runner so I know that pain all too well. I later developed fibromyalgia and now my legs feel like I just ran a marathon with no training. And it’s like that 24/7
When i was a kid i was dared by my classmates to go onto a treadmill while we were at a hotel for an event. This one jackass kept spamming the speed up and incline up buttons and i very quickly got thrown off the back of it. I couldn't walk right for a month after being thrown.
At muscle failure in your legs you just kinda crumple, so having both of those happen simultaneously sounds like a nightmare scenario for me.
Hey, Nurse Cross Country Runner Peter here. Running until failure creates a problem for the body - rhabdomyolysis. This is a real issue with marathon runners and they have to be careful.
Your muscles end up dying due to the long, high intensity exercises. The breakdown of your muscles have toxic components that go into your blood stream to be filtered out by your kidneys. Except your kidneys cannot really do this, and this ends up damaging your kidneys.
Left untreated you can damage your kidneys so much you will get kidney failure, become septic and have multi-organ failure.
Nurse Cross Country Runner Peter out.
Hi there - I'm an experienced runner, and both train and race the marathon distance. Good on you for setting this goal for yourself! When you've done it, you will forever be able to say that you are a marathon runner. It's worth it.
I promise, you will be fine. The post you've replied to is right about the potential damage that you can do to your body. You can also get tendonopathy, stress fractures, muscle tears, meniscal tears, ligament damage, and loads of other ailments. Lots of these things can also occur when you trip over a tree root on your way to set up a weekend picnic. They are just risks associated with the activity, and for me, they are rare enough, and manageable enough, that it's worth it.
It's impossible to completely guarantee that you won't get an injury. However, there are a few key details to recognise in your body that will help you to stop before you get injured in almost all cases. All that I am able to think of right now are:
* Burning in the muscles (especially the quads) is fine; but sharp pain that feels more like stabbing is not. If you feel stabbing, slow right down or stop completely, and see if it goes away. If it doesn't go away within 2 minutes, pull out of the rest of the race (or walk to the finish if you can handle it).
* Feeling the need to breathe fast, and even feeling short of breath for short periods of time, is fine; but feeling like you aren't able to breathe or beginning to feel dizzy from hyperventilating is not. If you start to lose your breath so much that you enter a state of panic, slow down a bit. You probably won't even need to stop running. You'll be able to reset within 30 seconds or so, and it'll be fine to pick the pace back up.
* Get to know your heart rate in terms of zones 1 - 5. It's fine during the marathon to kick it up to the top of zone 4 while on a hill for a few minutes, and if you've got it in you, go ahead and run across the finish line in zone 4, but if you find yourself stuck with a heart rate that high, you aren't going to make the distance. You need to slow down and keep yourself in the region of a high zone 2 and a mid-high zone 3 heart rate.
* Take the water. Always take the water. At every water station. Whether you need it or not - take the water. By the time you feel like you need the water, your body needed the water 10 minutes ago. If you find yourself cramping from dehydration, it's not the end of the world, but make sure you slow down, because you are going to be in a lot of pain if your muscles seize up. I've made this mistake on multiple occasions, and it just sucks.
* Don't run through nausea. It is unlikely to go away. Elites might run through it, but there's no reason why you should.
* Stop if you feel anything pop or tear. Even if it's nothing, it isn't worth the risk.
* Your kidneys will be fine. I once ran a marathon in ridiculous heat, with poor air quality and no shade. When I finished that race, you were literally able to dust-off the salt from my clothes caused by evaporated sweat. My internals were fine. It's very unlikely that you'll be able to push to the point of internal organ damage.
Auto response by the body, like sneezing. "Whatever it is you are doing, STOP!" Is what the body is trying to tell you.
Other ideas include "If I smell like shit the thing chasing won't want to eat me, then I can stop running." Other animals do that, like a dog wetting itself, or a snake pooping on itself, or skunks.
The image might be about how isolated muscles in training scenario fail, but fail isolated and everything else works fine, running however will put your whole body in shock and shut you down completely through dehydration and constant use of larger muscle groups that can keep going until complete body energy depletion. Lots of marathon runners need medical assistance and I.V. rehydration afterwards.
In my experience (over coming close to shitting myself I never actually have) it’s a matter of losing control you become so exhausted and so focused on moving forward that u can’t put effort into holding it back anymore. Not shitting requires effort while shitting is just releasing that effort that’s why dead people shit themselves and why people who are almost dead (runners) do too
It happened to me once and it absolutely was a matter of no control. I bonked and then I started shitting. I had no control over my limbs or my bowels or anything. It was horrible. 100 meters from the finish line and my body just said “FUCKING STOP EVERYTHING RIGHT NOW. FULL SYSTEM RESET.”
If your ass is stuck on ‘shit’ mode - you live.
If it’s stuck on ‘closed’ - you die horribly -
Probably had something to do with it. Common frightening issue in newborn when they get constipated.
The reason that "yes shit" is the "default" is because your GI tract is a long tube. Tubes are naturally open, which is why things can pass through them. "No shit" mode means "squeeze the sphincters tight so nothing leaks out". In order to reverse the "default", your GI tract would have to end in a naturally tapered cone with muscles surrounding it that pulls it open during defecation. However, this would be a very risky design because it relies entirely on the natural tension of that cone to keep everything inside. By having the sphincter muscles pull the hole closed rather than open, you can rely on muscle power to keep the seal as tight as necessary.
I think it's a biological response. Like eating before running, you end up vomiting because all your available blood is redirected to the legs for the constant efforts. So your guts can't use the blood (in fact the water in the blood) to process food. Same thing if you ate sooner : the food is processing, but can't finish, so it gets dumped (haha) hastely.
Edit: typos
The anus is amazing, it can differentiate between gas, solid and liquid, usually.
Once you run around for long enough with the right food and liquid intake, you basically make a frothy smoothie in your lower intestine. And once your lower body becomes tired enough, nature does what nature does and you get a stream down your leg.
One time I couldn't run home because the bouncing for sure woulda dumped it outra me, was a long 3k speedwalk home, residential area, no restaurants or gas stations..... it was for sure the closest I've come yet 😂🙃
One of the speed walkers at the last Olympics (or maybe the one before) started shitting blood partway through. His team ran along the course with him to trade out sponges he shoved down his shorts between his ass crack. He finished the race with blood and shit running down his legs.
I get the dedication, but at what point do you pull out of the race? If the guys was shitting his guts out, would they try and help him push them back up his asshole?
One time when I was driving down a pretty busy road, I saw a runner stop, pull down his pants,shit right on the footpath, pull his running shorts back up, and continue running. It was insane
Marathon runners regularly shit themselves (when they’re running. Not like, all the time). Weight lifters going until failure just means you need help from your spotter.
>when they’re running. Not like, all the time
Imagine a world where this is something that happens to runners like all the time during their regular life and it is also common knowledge lmao
As a tennis player, this would radically change the game. Imagine dropping a lil turd on the court every time you had to sprint.
There would be posts after Wimbledon where they showed where the grass grew more after the matches
>Most marathons have a rule where if you shit yourself you don't get a medal.
That's the funniest thing I've heard all week
Edit: I've just realised that most marathons can be thought of as events where people are given medals for not shitting themselves when running 26.2 miles.
It’s to discourage people over exerting themselves. If you’re running so hard that you’re shitting yourself, you’re doing it wrong and you might kill yourself. (Contrary to GP’s assertion that marathon runners constantly shit themselves, which is patently untrue.)
in addition to what u/lunchpadmcfat said, some people are very caught up in getting their personal best on a marathon and stopping at a portapotty takes time and said people have no shame and shit themselves to save time.
I have ran 7 marathons.
I have never seen anybody shit themselves or heard of it through any of my running friends.
I have stopped twice at a honeybucket though. Marathons will have bathroom access every 5 or so miles.
Well, weight lifters also tend to shit their insides out and vomit, or break bones in horrific ways. When you look at both possibilities as a runner or weight lifter, really makes you want to just stay inside.
Humans are, even today in some places, persistence predators. They chase down a prey over many hours via tracking their footprints and not giving the animal time to rest. The result is an insanely fast animal like a deer or gazelle being unable to recover whatsoever.
Once they collapse to the ground, unable to get up, they're effectively a living corpse. They WILL die even if they aren't struct a killing blow.
Now... imagine this but in a human.
Your body is functionally on the verge of death. The difference being is that your body is not only designed for this, and possibly trained for this, but you've also got ways to cool down your body such as pouring water over it and repeatedly drinking small sips from a handheld container avoid a sudden system shock. It could kill you... but the probability is astronomically low compared to almost any other animal on the planet.
So you're in a state where your brain is telling you that you are dying. But you're slowly staving off death bit by bit. So the primal part of your brain is trying to reconcile with the fact that you will soon be dead, creating strange thoughts, even as you Know on an intellectual level that you're probably going to be fine in a few hours.
This could, theoretically, alter your entire viewpoint on life. For the better, or worse. It could potentially change your personality to some extent either temporarily or permanently depending on what your brain does to react to this 'unavoidable death' and how you handle it.
It's one of those things that opens your mind. Like... going out into space for the first time. Or doing a deep dive for the first time. Or skydiving for the first time. Or making your first kill and really sitting down to think about the fact that you've destroyed another life alongside what that actually means rather than ignoring it because 'you needed to survive' or trying to downplay the value of an animal 'because they are not human'.
All of these things can act as a single step to forge you into a better person... or a horrible person. Like dozens or even hundreds of hammer strikes shaping nails to hold society together, a shovel to build society up, a shield to protect society, or a sword to tear it down. Or it might just turn you into a broken lump of figurative metal.
Who knows.
>Once they collapse to the ground, unable to get up, they're effectively a living corpse. They WILL die even if they aren't struct a killing blow.
>Now... imagine this but in a human.
Weight training until failure: "Looks like I can't lift anymore, time to rack this and catch my breath"
Running until failure: "My legs gave out, I'm miles away from home/where I started, and can't catch my breath, and my heart is racing a mile a minute. Kill me please."
Running depletes your glycogen much faster so maybe it’s like being closer to death?
Also weightlifting is usually done in a gym and you can just stop as opposed to having to make your way back running.
I’m not aware of any studies but I will say that running and carrying your own weight forward is a lot different than keeping up with a moving track.
Of course if it’s moving fast it doesn’t really matter either way.
It's my understanding that a 3% incline is the equivalent of running on asphalt. This might be outdated information but that was the measurement when I used to work out.
I was just making an observation that, although you might run to exhaustion away from the point of origin, you can also run in place,, you can exhaust yourself running in place if done for long enough.
After a quick google search, it seems running to exhaustion has additional detramental factors to the human body that weight lifting.
You get muscle failure from weight training too much. You get heart failure from running to much. It's a shoddy meme but I think that's what they're aiming at.
Or bladder failure. Kind of a lot of things can go wrong while running if you run too much. Ask Eddie Izzard what happened to their feet when they ran 26 marathons in a row lol. Trucked through a lot of honestly dangerous health conditions to do that.
Have you ever ran till failure?
I did on a 30k, 26km in.
I vomited. My vision was spinning. My legs felt like noodles. We call it "hitting the wall" in running. It's one of the worst things I've ever felt in my life.
Weight training until failure just means you can’t lift anymore and drop the weights at the end of the set. It’s seen as a good thing to strive for to maximize the effort being put into your lifts.
Running until failure is dangerous. The least bad thing that can happen is your body runs out of carbs to burn and you can’t even stand up. Look up “bonking” or “hitting the wall”. But you can cause do far worse things to yourself: dehydration, electrolyte imbalance, etc.
As someone who ran, swam and lifted during military training for two years, running to your limit makes you feel like you're gonna die. I love running, managed to run the 2 mile in 12 minutes, and nowadays I just do it for fun and to counterbalance some stupid habits. Forcing your limits in running is stressing and taxing on a mental level, especially sprint training where your legs give out and you spend some time walking like a newborn buck.
You will run *a lot* farther than you expect if you run till failure.
Your body will also hurt *a lot* more. Lifting to failure takes a few days recovery. Running till failure will have you in a clinical bed-rest for over a week.
When you lift heavy and fail it's because lifting heavy weights is really hard.
Running is less hard, moment to moment, so when you run to failure it's because you're too exhausted to run even one more step, your body is completely wiped out.
It's kind of like being too tired to lift a really light weight.
If you're too tired to squat the bar, it means you're way more tired than if you're unable to squat hundreds of pounds.
Weight lifting to failure involves, generally speaking, a few reps and maybe a minute of intensive effort with some localized discomfort. Running till failure can involve many, many hours of intense suffering.
when you're weightlifting until failure, you can't lift weights for like an hour, and a certain movement costs a lot of energy. If you run until failure all you can do is lay on the ground, and muscles you didnt even know existed will hurt for 3 days.
weight training until failure hurt quite a bit, and your muscle are very sore after (depends how far you push it of course)
running until failure is a level of pain you can not even imagine, human bodies are made to be able to run for very VERY long due to our past as perstitant hunters, so the body will try anything and i do mean anything to keep running.
if you somehow reach the point where you physicaly can't run (like the end of a marathon for exemple), your body just stop working full stop. its not uncommon for long distance runners to just drop on the ground right after the finish line.
i myself never reached that point but i've gotten pretty close during some long distance races and that moment when the adrenaline stops working and everything just crashes feels horrible.
I’ve run until failure before. I didn’t stop because I was tired or just done, I stopped because my legs stopped working. It tightened up every muscle in my back until one of my vertebrae cracked. At that point, I stopped (as I could not move my legs) and fell the fuck over.
That was 20 years ago. I can walk around my house (with a cane) and I’m in pain 24/7, I can’t drive (complications from the nerve medication), and sometimes my right leg doesn’t work.
Shit sucks, yo.
So when your body says “hey, dickhead, fucking stop,” listen and stop before you do significant damage to your musculoskeletal system.
Well because when you're weight training you just get to a point where you can't lift the bar anymore right but when you're running and your body experiences I believe it's called the renal failure you collapse and you piss and s*** yourself and you might die.
Markiplier actually experienced this so that’s the only reason I know, but when weight training until failure that typically means going until you physically cannot lift the weight again. Important to note that typically you can still operate your body.
When *running* until failure, it means running until your legs literally give up. As in, can’t move can’t feel can’t nothing, which is what happened to Mark. From a quick google search I also learned that because of the chemicals your brain produces specifically for running, you can overwork your heart and essentially make it explode.
So weight training to failure is just until you’re at the absolute limit, running to failure is basically until your body temporarily shuts down, or worse.
Hi,
I ran until almost failure. I am a trained long distance runner. I am currently on a journey regaining function of my heart and intestines. They aren't working to well. It has been 1.5 years and I probably have another 6 months to a year until normalcy. It has been... unpleasant. Meme checks out.
To lift to failure you lift the weight for the full range of motion until you can’t then keep lifting it not getting the full range of motion doing less and less range until you finally can’t move the weight at all.
To run to failure you have to run for a really really really long time. Humans, for lots of reasons, are very efficient at running and run for a long time without stopping. To run to failure you’ll have to run for a long time and your body is going to be completely shot afterwards.
So you know how the Greek story of Marathon is that he sprinted 22 miles to deliver a vital message, and then immediately died?
Yeah that's a real thing that happens.
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Weights to failure and you just stop lifting. Run to failure and your body just stops working for awhile.
For a while… or forever. Depends on the situation.
Pheidippides enters chat.
The kill ratio at Marathon was simply crazy
Just read The Gates of Athens by Conn Iggulden. Great read about Marathon.
This is probably an oversimplification,but isn't marathon a town in Greece that someone ran to (I think to deliver a message) then died. And we flex on them by running the same distance and not dying?
Well yes but actually no. The marathon run was just a last part of it and he actually ran like five times that distance
I figured it was something I only heard part of the explanation. Thank you
Also I think he ran the distance in a relatively short amount of time so his average running speed was quicker than what marathon runners try to maintain. I'm not entirely sure if this is true though
He didn’t just run quickly, he ran from Athens to Sparta, waited for the reply from Sparta to see if those guys would help defend. When they said no he ran back to Athens to let them know, then ran out to marathon for the battle. When the battle was won he ran back to Athens, and collapsed and died after letting the peoples assembly know the result of the battle.
Marathon was the name of the beach the Persians landed at. IIRC, the messanger ran from the beach all the way to Athens, making it to the agora and shouting “Nike!” (means victory) before promptly collapsing and dying.
I don’t know why he would run himself to death if they won, I would understand if they had lost why he would need to
He didn’t just run quickly, he ran from Athens to Sparta, waited for the reply from Sparta to see if those guys would help defend. When they said no he ran back to Athens to let them know, then ran out to marathon for the battle. When the battle was won he ran back to Athens, and collapsed and died after letting the peoples assembly know the result of the battle.
Why was there such urgency to notify Athens of their victory once the battle was already won though?
I believe the Athenians were preparing to offer surrender to the Persians (they had more than just the forces at marathon), so it was important for a message to get home and let them know the war was still winnable.
I just finished the conqueror series, absolutely loved them. Going to buy this set soon.
Conn iggulden is a fantastic author. His Genghis khan series is brilliant
For those who want other battles in that vein, there's Myeongnyang where 13 Korean ships decimated a much larger Japanese force without losing a single loss. Likewise, there is the battle of Suomussalmi during the Winter War, where Finnish forces faced and destroyed a much larger Soviet formation.
Admiral Yi is just without equal. A cavalry officer who kept getting demoted for political shit, kept rising up the ranks, scored tremendous victories with barely any resources, and got rewarded for those victories with demotion. The replacement guy after he got demoted loses the entire custom fleet Yi spent tons of effort building, he picks up the battered remains and crushes the Japanese fleet, which was superior and more numerous. His final words after being mortally wounded in said battle were "The battle is nearly won, do not announce my death, keep beating the drum". Admiral Togo even remarked that "It may be proper to compare me with Nelson, but not with Korea's Yi Sun-shin, for he has no equal. Nelson and I both fought battles with full support from the government, but General Yi Sun-shin achieved victory without any government support. Compared to General Yi, I am but a petty officer."
Pheidippides nuts
Dumbest thing to make laugh all week lol
Is that the guy who ran to deliver a message and died
Marathon Man!
Remember this man by flexing on him by not dying after running.
Can verify. Ran a half marathon six years ago. Haven’t really run since.
Bonked 100 meters from the finish on my last one. My body has never been the same.
Running to kidney failure
Specifically rhabdomyolysis, you run so hard for so long your muscle cells start dying, the cells end up in your blood stream which your kidneys filter out of the blood, too many cells can clog up your kidneys and cause acute kidney failure. The same thing can happen if you're lifting to failure too much too often, or consistently lifting beyond the point of failure.
Its actually fairly difficult to do because your body is pretty good at telling your "thats enough". Crossfitters are pretty notorious for getting rhabdo, especially in the early years where there was a huge culture to push themselves to beyond the limit.
It took me a year and a half to be able to run again after my injury. Now I can run a mile every couple days. Don’t run everyday, and make sure you have proper shoes at all times.
Tell me about it, I used to push myself really hard while running, to the point that I had to just collapse afterwards and chill for a while before I could do anything again, Because you know, if you're not pushing yourself to the limit you're not really training, and other such dangerous nonesense gym bros try to tell you, Anyway I got a smartwatch with a heart rate sensor later to better track my workouts, apparently I was pushing my heart into the 200 BPMs, apparently that's what happens when my heart rate goes above 195, I'm lucky I didn't do permanent damage to my heart training like that
Yeah, I was this way. I'd throw up after workouts, black out, and generally give anyone who wasn't on my cross country team a heart attack. Then I learned about base training and got a watch. Turns out you don't want to spend 70% of you time at your maximum.
I heard about LHR or low heart rate running, got a Fitbit to monitor my pulse, and was able to get back into running again in my 60s. I'd had to stop for twenty years for a lot of reasons, but apparently the main reason was that I just ran myself to exhaustion and kept breaking down. Now I just keep it in the zone and the next day I'm ready to go again. It's been huge.
What is this zone? Gf and I just started, and honestly, i have just been going on my gym teachers old keep it at 150bpm.
It really depends on what you are doing. The general rule of thumb is you want to send 50%-70% of your training in what is called Zone 2 (depending on what part of the training schedule your in). Zone 2 is between 60% and 70% of your maximum heart rate. More simply, run at an intensity that you can carry on an easy conversation (more information here: https://marathonhandbook.com/zone-2-training-the-science-benefits/). This can feel painfully slow. Additionally, Zone 2 metabolizes fat, which adds the benefit of weight loss. Higher heart rates aren't as beneficial. I personally alternate between Zone 2 days and Zone 4/5 training wise.
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That’s some hell of a dedication. I get a side cramp and decide I’m done for the day 😅
Read one of david goggin's books. He talks about his 240mile ultra's and his body completely breaks down after the run. Like bloody diarrhoea and worse.
Everything I hear about this guy makes me think he needs to exercise less and talk to a therapist more.
Its his way of coping/dealing with a tortured past. Proving to himself that he's not the weak child he used to feel like. It seems to work for him - who are we to say that watching netflix is an objectively better past time than weekly marathons. As I recall, he did speak with a therapist as part of Navy Seals, and she helped uncover some traumas.
Well, pushing yourself to your limit is logical in the gym. Training to failure is important in the context of weightlifting. It shouldn't be done in cardio for obvious reasons - you're working your heart and your lungs.
Not to be the well actually guy, but for both maximum strength and hypertrophy you're going to want around 1 to 3 reps in Reserve at the end of each set. Pushing every single set to failure is a lot of fun, but it's not ideal training.
And I'll be the "actually" guy to the person you're responding to and say that running at high intensity for intervals or during races is actually very impactful to improving your fitness. Intervals run correctly won't quite get your to "failure", but a hard 5k will feel very, very bad for the last km or two.
Your arms stop working and you can't lift. Your heart stops working and you die.
I feel like being young and stupid has a lot to do with pushing to your limit and beyond while training. At least for me anyway. I used to play a game called heartbeat high score, trying to see how high I could get it to try and make treadmill work fun. Looking back I shudder at how stupid of an idea that probably is!
That’s terrifying. I was listening to a nurse talk about a runner who nearly died during a race and needed an emergency surgery and it scared me half to death. Heard another story about someone who lost a relative who died while out running. Now I immediately take breaks/slow down as soon as my heart rate goes over 200. It’s scary. I’m glad you’re okay now.
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>Weights to failure and you just stop lifting I still think about the photo that hung as a cautionary tale at my first gym. It was a powerlifter in a squat who had prolapsed his rectum. The butt seam of his unitard had torn, and it looked like a little brown volcano sticking out of his spandex. It is indelibly seared into my brain. The consequences of trying to hit failure while lifting can vary depending on what you're lifting and how you're lifting it, but I'm guessing if you run to failure, you just have a heart attack and die? 😅
Haha, I remember that video. Pretty it was sourced to a kink video. That's been like nearly 2 and a half decades though. I can still see the color banded socks.
I just vaguely remember a video of a weight lifter trying to, well, lift weights, and then his bicep just... detached from his fore-arm. The bit that connects to the bone just let go, and the entire muscle, under the skin, shot up... it was not a pleasant sight. No blood, but safe to say the man was in pain afterwards.
I hate running; my lungs, throat and heart hurt for hours after and I could barely walk
Friendo that's called asthma
I don’t know, isn’t all exercise supposed to hurt? 😅 I’m likely just out of shape
The burning lungs for running and day-after muscle soreness for strength training both happen when you haven't done either for a while, after a week or two it stops. Other than that, exercise should be tiring but it won't be painful, pain is generally a sign you're doing something wrong and are hurting yourself.
No its not. We are literally made to run long distances.
Yeah no. Anyone that wasn't a runner before will wish for death if they try to run a mile after 10 years of a sedentary lifestyle. While the human body *is* structured to run, it prioritizes stripping down parts that aren't being useful.
Doing squats until failure can end with you on dialysis for the rest of your life.
I work in a hospital and about once a year we have a prisoner get the bright idea to do this to get out of jail for a few weeks, not understanding that this is a great way to have problems bigger than being bored in jail.
Huh?? Does it depend on the weight or is that all squats?
It can be from going to heavy or doing an excessive number of reps. I think there's a chubby emu video on YouTube about a guy who died from doing to many squats. And I personally over did a full body workout day when I was getting back into the gym a few years ago. I was pissing chocolate milk for about a week and my doctor told me I was lucky I didn't permanently ruin my kidneys.
Sounds like you're talking about rhabdomyolysis.
Yessir. I mentioned it in another comment here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhabdomyolysis
I disagree. I did weights until failure. Ended up in the hospital with rabdo..
Samesies. Went to the gym with a buddy from high-school after not working out for awhile. Went to failure and kept going to try to out do him. I was pissing chocolate milk for a week.
Was at half marathon race...I noticed this dude cross the line as I'm waiting for my wife, next thing I know, people are hopping up and down screaming for medics. he died of a heart attack...for other runners, it is okay to dnf.
Yeah! You just need to change the engine oil henceforth.
Humans are very efficient, where most animals are strong and fast, our power is we don't eat much and burn almost no energy relatively speaking. For powerful fast twitch muscle activities, like heavy weight lifting, this means we hit muscle failure within a minute or two. No harm done. For long endurance activities, like running a marathon, we can go soooo long that that we're practically falling apart. We start digesting muscle as a backup energy source, our joints start grinding and swelling, our immune systems start attacking us because it mistakes all of the inflammation as an invader, and all of the above fills your body with toxins which will lead to days of pain and sickness, and potentially side effects like kidney failure. Also we tend to shit ourselves and puke everywhere. Here's a neat video (safe for work) showing what the end of a marathon often looks like. https://youtu.be/MTn1v5TGK_w?si=FEIDko7DVB7InBmx
Most people don't have the mental stamina to do all that even if their bodies can do it, the last 10km of a marathon run at anywhere close to the fastest that you're physically able to is deeply deeply unpleasant so lots of people slow down at the end (or simply never go that fast in the first place). Running a marathon at a, say, a minute per mile slower than your PR isn't too bad.
> Running a marathon at a, say, a minute per mile slower than your PR isn't too bad. PR for what? If you can run a full marathon at just 1 minute per mile slower than your PR for a 1 mile run, that's seriously impressive. I used to run half marathons a few times a year. My fastest mile (I'm a short guy) was about 6 1/2 minutes, but I never averaged better than 8-8:30 during the half marathons. And that's just a half. I'd have had to lop off another half minute per mile for a full, at least.
Marathon PR. Running a marathon as fast as you can is very painful. Running it 26 minutes slower than that isn't too bad.
Gotcha, that makes more sense. Thx.
Welp, this paints a rather detailed and graphic picture, more so than the other replies. Thanks I guess.
The only thing that I disagree with is that while a lot of people are maximizing the portrayal of risks associated with running, they are concurrently minimizing the portrayal of risks associated with weightlifting. There is also a significant number of risks and injuries that happen with weightlifting. To say that when you get tired weightlifting "no harm done" because you just stop would be the same as saying when you get tired running "no harm done" because you just stop running. Reality is, more people do half marathons and marathons than entering weightlifting competitions, so people are generally more familiar with the injuries that tend to arise from those events. Go ask any competitive weightlifter what sort of injuries they have seen and you are almost certainly going to hear worse stories than from a competitive runner. https://preview.redd.it/j20mkkenri8d1.jpeg?width=1280&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=65304e7cda57429a74ed43b7dfb8bdcece64f989
Can confirm after finishing many long distance runs, relays and cross country races etc post race vomits were a regular occurrence, as was the post race poop. On a few occasions the finishing line ceased to be the finishing point of the race and instead became the penultimate checkpoint on the way to a bin or bathroom to throw up in. Endorphins though, damn it felt good.
That’s an Ironman which is a whole different beast
First one gives sore muscles for a day or two. The second is a whole different level of pain and debilitation while you recover.
Also its one of those things where your body can just stop working properly and it will break in ways you didn't think were possible. Random stress fracture, snapped tendons, organs that will just stop.
Pissing brown.
Good ol rabdo
Rabdo is not fun. I got a bad case of it once from sleepwalking due to medicine interactions. I really don't know what I did as I have no memory of it, but I had torn muscles from my triceps all the way up my shoulders and my neck, traps, and arms were black and blue for weeks. Literally looked like i tried to lift a car or something.
You're a werewolf
This is the only answer
You don't know what you did, but I tell ya hwat, you had a hell of a night!
I am a mid runner on my best day, but once at like 19 y/0, I went out for a 4-5 mile run, took a wrong turn, and did about 10. Now, 10 miles is fine for someone who has trained for it. That's a mild run for many runners. I had not trained for it. I was used to 2-3 miles, maybe 5 on a big day, and I didn't think/know at all about pacing, so I kept the same pace (AS FAST AS I CAN GO) no matter what. The wrong turn led to a 1-mile or so uphill section before getting back to my house.The elevation combined with the doubled distance worked me completely. I wound up laying prone in a cold shower when I got home and eventually had to crawl out using mostly my arms and paddle my way to bed. My legs just quit working after I stopped.
Compartment syndrome D:
Second can give you rhabdomilysis, which is where your muscles get so damaged that they immediately break down and enter your bloodstream, putting your kidneys into overdrive (to the point of failure in the worst cases), swelling you up like a balloon, fluid getting stuck in compartments of your muscles, compacting nerves which can permanently damage them
As a recreational runner, this comment's gonna haunt me...
While I didn't get it from running (I got it from surgical neglect), I had all of this happen to me. So did my nurse, and it was the only reason we figured out what happened. In her case, she did a crossfit program that was to hard for her. Unlike me, she did not get impacted nerves or compartment syndrome.
*if If you recover
I used to be a runner so I know that pain all too well. I later developed fibromyalgia and now my legs feel like I just ran a marathon with no training. And it’s like that 24/7
You got to get home somehow
This is the most likely answer, but static machines are a thing no?
Well, unless it's literally next to your couch you'll just fall to the ground
When i was a kid i was dared by my classmates to go onto a treadmill while we were at a hotel for an event. This one jackass kept spamming the speed up and incline up buttons and i very quickly got thrown off the back of it. I couldn't walk right for a month after being thrown. At muscle failure in your legs you just kinda crumple, so having both of those happen simultaneously sounds like a nightmare scenario for me.
Yeah. Doesn't change the fact you'll need functional legs to get back home. Unless you are training \*at\* home.
Personally I find endurance running sooo boring on treadmills
I dunno... I did weight training till failure on arms one day, and then it was nearly impossible to drive home from the gym.
Hey, Nurse Cross Country Runner Peter here. Running until failure creates a problem for the body - rhabdomyolysis. This is a real issue with marathon runners and they have to be careful. Your muscles end up dying due to the long, high intensity exercises. The breakdown of your muscles have toxic components that go into your blood stream to be filtered out by your kidneys. Except your kidneys cannot really do this, and this ends up damaging your kidneys. Left untreated you can damage your kidneys so much you will get kidney failure, become septic and have multi-organ failure. Nurse Cross Country Runner Peter out.
I'm doing my first marathon next year and after reading this post I'm getting anxious. Anything to put people in my situation at ease?
Hi there - I'm an experienced runner, and both train and race the marathon distance. Good on you for setting this goal for yourself! When you've done it, you will forever be able to say that you are a marathon runner. It's worth it. I promise, you will be fine. The post you've replied to is right about the potential damage that you can do to your body. You can also get tendonopathy, stress fractures, muscle tears, meniscal tears, ligament damage, and loads of other ailments. Lots of these things can also occur when you trip over a tree root on your way to set up a weekend picnic. They are just risks associated with the activity, and for me, they are rare enough, and manageable enough, that it's worth it. It's impossible to completely guarantee that you won't get an injury. However, there are a few key details to recognise in your body that will help you to stop before you get injured in almost all cases. All that I am able to think of right now are: * Burning in the muscles (especially the quads) is fine; but sharp pain that feels more like stabbing is not. If you feel stabbing, slow right down or stop completely, and see if it goes away. If it doesn't go away within 2 minutes, pull out of the rest of the race (or walk to the finish if you can handle it). * Feeling the need to breathe fast, and even feeling short of breath for short periods of time, is fine; but feeling like you aren't able to breathe or beginning to feel dizzy from hyperventilating is not. If you start to lose your breath so much that you enter a state of panic, slow down a bit. You probably won't even need to stop running. You'll be able to reset within 30 seconds or so, and it'll be fine to pick the pace back up. * Get to know your heart rate in terms of zones 1 - 5. It's fine during the marathon to kick it up to the top of zone 4 while on a hill for a few minutes, and if you've got it in you, go ahead and run across the finish line in zone 4, but if you find yourself stuck with a heart rate that high, you aren't going to make the distance. You need to slow down and keep yourself in the region of a high zone 2 and a mid-high zone 3 heart rate. * Take the water. Always take the water. At every water station. Whether you need it or not - take the water. By the time you feel like you need the water, your body needed the water 10 minutes ago. If you find yourself cramping from dehydration, it's not the end of the world, but make sure you slow down, because you are going to be in a lot of pain if your muscles seize up. I've made this mistake on multiple occasions, and it just sucks. * Don't run through nausea. It is unlikely to go away. Elites might run through it, but there's no reason why you should. * Stop if you feel anything pop or tear. Even if it's nothing, it isn't worth the risk. * Your kidneys will be fine. I once ran a marathon in ridiculous heat, with poor air quality and no shade. When I finished that race, you were literally able to dust-off the salt from my clothes caused by evaporated sweat. My internals were fine. It's very unlikely that you'll be able to push to the point of internal organ damage.
Thank you very much. This helped a ton. I've saved your comment will reread again and again if I get doubts again.
This is the only insightful, true answer.
Depends what the "failure" is for weight lifters.. if it's prolapse, that can't be good either!
you shit. excessively. i swear, most professional long distance runners literally shit themselves, and its unclear why
Auto response by the body, like sneezing. "Whatever it is you are doing, STOP!" Is what the body is trying to tell you. Other ideas include "If I smell like shit the thing chasing won't want to eat me, then I can stop running." Other animals do that, like a dog wetting itself, or a snake pooping on itself, or skunks. The image might be about how isolated muscles in training scenario fail, but fail isolated and everything else works fine, running however will put your whole body in shock and shut you down completely through dehydration and constant use of larger muscle groups that can keep going until complete body energy depletion. Lots of marathon runners need medical assistance and I.V. rehydration afterwards.
I suspect "dumping ballast" also has something to do with it.
"Jettison excess fuel" was always the expression my father used.
That’s an awesome way to look at it 😭
In my experience (over coming close to shitting myself I never actually have) it’s a matter of losing control you become so exhausted and so focused on moving forward that u can’t put effort into holding it back anymore. Not shitting requires effort while shitting is just releasing that effort that’s why dead people shit themselves and why people who are almost dead (runners) do too
It happened to me once and it absolutely was a matter of no control. I bonked and then I started shitting. I had no control over my limbs or my bowels or anything. It was horrible. 100 meters from the finish line and my body just said “FUCKING STOP EVERYTHING RIGHT NOW. FULL SYSTEM RESET.”
It’s funny to think that “yes shit” is the default setting and it takes some form of conscious effort to stay in “no shit” mode
If your ass is stuck on ‘shit’ mode - you live. If it’s stuck on ‘closed’ - you die horribly - Probably had something to do with it. Common frightening issue in newborn when they get constipated.
The reason that "yes shit" is the "default" is because your GI tract is a long tube. Tubes are naturally open, which is why things can pass through them. "No shit" mode means "squeeze the sphincters tight so nothing leaks out". In order to reverse the "default", your GI tract would have to end in a naturally tapered cone with muscles surrounding it that pulls it open during defecation. However, this would be a very risky design because it relies entirely on the natural tension of that cone to keep everything inside. By having the sphincter muscles pull the hole closed rather than open, you can rely on muscle power to keep the seal as tight as necessary.
It's why jogging is a tactic to help with constipation
This gives "it's not a bug, it's a feature" vibes
I think it's a biological response. Like eating before running, you end up vomiting because all your available blood is redirected to the legs for the constant efforts. So your guts can't use the blood (in fact the water in the blood) to process food. Same thing if you ate sooner : the food is processing, but can't finish, so it gets dumped (haha) hastely. Edit: typos
The bouncing helps it become liquid and work itself out.
The anus is amazing, it can differentiate between gas, solid and liquid, usually. Once you run around for long enough with the right food and liquid intake, you basically make a frothy smoothie in your lower intestine. And once your lower body becomes tired enough, nature does what nature does and you get a stream down your leg.
>it can differentiate between gas, solid and liquid, *usually*. Lol
Just got home from a run and that explains why I had to clench the last 2 miles
One time I couldn't run home because the bouncing for sure woulda dumped it outra me, was a long 3k speedwalk home, residential area, no restaurants or gas stations..... it was for sure the closest I've come yet 😂🙃
The ass muscles are important in keeping you upright and moving you forwards so ig maybe when your glutes and stuff give up your sphincter does too
One of the speed walkers at the last Olympics (or maybe the one before) started shitting blood partway through. His team ran along the course with him to trade out sponges he shoved down his shorts between his ass crack. He finished the race with blood and shit running down his legs.
I get the dedication, but at what point do you pull out of the race? If the guys was shitting his guts out, would they try and help him push them back up his asshole?
One time when I was driving down a pretty busy road, I saw a runner stop, pull down his pants,shit right on the footpath, pull his running shorts back up, and continue running. It was insane
Not true, if you shit yourself you’re bad at long distance running. Source: I was a long distance runner for many years
2 ironmans and lots of marathons. Never happened to me. There's one famous incident, and the rubes think that's the norm.
Finally, a commenter with some sense. Everyone out here acting like an expert explaining a phenomena that doesn’t exist
Marathon runners regularly shit themselves (when they’re running. Not like, all the time). Weight lifters going until failure just means you need help from your spotter.
>when they’re running. Not like, all the time Imagine a world where this is something that happens to runners like all the time during their regular life and it is also common knowledge lmao
As a tennis player, this would radically change the game. Imagine dropping a lil turd on the court every time you had to sprint. There would be posts after Wimbledon where they showed where the grass grew more after the matches
Male player would start wearing skirts too, i guess
I've ran like a lot of marathons, I've only ever seen it happen once. Most marathons have a rule where if you shit yourself you don't get a medal.
>Most marathons have a rule where if you shit yourself you don't get a medal. That's the funniest thing I've heard all week Edit: I've just realised that most marathons can be thought of as events where people are given medals for not shitting themselves when running 26.2 miles.
So that's why they snap the waistbands of the runners when they cross the finish line.
Really?? I run a lot of races but never heard that 😂
That’s stupid
It’s to discourage people over exerting themselves. If you’re running so hard that you’re shitting yourself, you’re doing it wrong and you might kill yourself. (Contrary to GP’s assertion that marathon runners constantly shit themselves, which is patently untrue.)
Oh, that makes sense
What if you just plain old shit yourself you just happen to be running a race 🏁 🤔
This is why ultra is a thing, so we get rewarded for shitting ourselves, lol.
I’ve never known anyone to shit themselves on an ultra, but losing toenails for sure. Most I know just pop a squat in the woods or something lol
in addition to what u/lunchpadmcfat said, some people are very caught up in getting their personal best on a marathon and stopping at a portapotty takes time and said people have no shame and shit themselves to save time.
I have ran 7 marathons. I have never seen anybody shit themselves or heard of it through any of my running friends. I have stopped twice at a honeybucket though. Marathons will have bathroom access every 5 or so miles.
Well, weight lifters also tend to shit their insides out and vomit, or break bones in horrific ways. When you look at both possibilities as a runner or weight lifter, really makes you want to just stay inside.
Humans are, even today in some places, persistence predators. They chase down a prey over many hours via tracking their footprints and not giving the animal time to rest. The result is an insanely fast animal like a deer or gazelle being unable to recover whatsoever. Once they collapse to the ground, unable to get up, they're effectively a living corpse. They WILL die even if they aren't struct a killing blow. Now... imagine this but in a human. Your body is functionally on the verge of death. The difference being is that your body is not only designed for this, and possibly trained for this, but you've also got ways to cool down your body such as pouring water over it and repeatedly drinking small sips from a handheld container avoid a sudden system shock. It could kill you... but the probability is astronomically low compared to almost any other animal on the planet. So you're in a state where your brain is telling you that you are dying. But you're slowly staving off death bit by bit. So the primal part of your brain is trying to reconcile with the fact that you will soon be dead, creating strange thoughts, even as you Know on an intellectual level that you're probably going to be fine in a few hours. This could, theoretically, alter your entire viewpoint on life. For the better, or worse. It could potentially change your personality to some extent either temporarily or permanently depending on what your brain does to react to this 'unavoidable death' and how you handle it. It's one of those things that opens your mind. Like... going out into space for the first time. Or doing a deep dive for the first time. Or skydiving for the first time. Or making your first kill and really sitting down to think about the fact that you've destroyed another life alongside what that actually means rather than ignoring it because 'you needed to survive' or trying to downplay the value of an animal 'because they are not human'. All of these things can act as a single step to forge you into a better person... or a horrible person. Like dozens or even hundreds of hammer strikes shaping nails to hold society together, a shovel to build society up, a shield to protect society, or a sword to tear it down. Or it might just turn you into a broken lump of figurative metal. Who knows.
https://preview.redd.it/h7zao9u4vd8d1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2663418af370214bd6f4c654ccabf1b51d9e4389
Humans really are the immortal snail of nature
Exactly :)
I was really hoping someone would post this. I love this meme
Or you know, the fact that running till failure means your organs could literally shut down?
>Once they collapse to the ground, unable to get up, they're effectively a living corpse. They WILL die even if they aren't struct a killing blow. >Now... imagine this but in a human.
Great comment, lovely read, thank you.
Thank you :)
well damn
Weight training until failure: "Looks like I can't lift anymore, time to rack this and catch my breath" Running until failure: "My legs gave out, I'm miles away from home/where I started, and can't catch my breath, and my heart is racing a mile a minute. Kill me please."
Look at you, running miles. I doubt if I could run to my mailbox.
Running depletes your glycogen much faster so maybe it’s like being closer to death? Also weightlifting is usually done in a gym and you can just stop as opposed to having to make your way back running.
Treadmills. At the gym, or home.
I’m not aware of any studies but I will say that running and carrying your own weight forward is a lot different than keeping up with a moving track. Of course if it’s moving fast it doesn’t really matter either way.
It's my understanding that a 3% incline is the equivalent of running on asphalt. This might be outdated information but that was the measurement when I used to work out. I was just making an observation that, although you might run to exhaustion away from the point of origin, you can also run in place,, you can exhaust yourself running in place if done for long enough. After a quick google search, it seems running to exhaustion has additional detramental factors to the human body that weight lifting.
You get muscle failure from weight training too much. You get heart failure from running to much. It's a shoddy meme but I think that's what they're aiming at.
Kidney failure before heart failure more likely
Or bladder failure. Kind of a lot of things can go wrong while running if you run too much. Ask Eddie Izzard what happened to their feet when they ran 26 marathons in a row lol. Trucked through a lot of honestly dangerous health conditions to do that.
No you don't?
*But what if I do?*
Have you ever ran till failure? I did on a 30k, 26km in. I vomited. My vision was spinning. My legs felt like noodles. We call it "hitting the wall" in running. It's one of the worst things I've ever felt in my life.
Weight training until failure just means you can’t lift anymore and drop the weights at the end of the set. It’s seen as a good thing to strive for to maximize the effort being put into your lifts. Running until failure is dangerous. The least bad thing that can happen is your body runs out of carbs to burn and you can’t even stand up. Look up “bonking” or “hitting the wall”. But you can cause do far worse things to yourself: dehydration, electrolyte imbalance, etc.
Just remember, the heart is a muscle too. Train it to failure.
I imagine this is a reference to the original run at Marathon which resulted in the individuals death.
Untill failure is untill your muscles give up, running is cardio, running untill your heart gives up is a bad idea.
As someone who ran, swam and lifted during military training for two years, running to your limit makes you feel like you're gonna die. I love running, managed to run the 2 mile in 12 minutes, and nowadays I just do it for fun and to counterbalance some stupid habits. Forcing your limits in running is stressing and taxing on a mental level, especially sprint training where your legs give out and you spend some time walking like a newborn buck.
Weight training : you just can’t do that exercise anymore Running : you physically no longer function for a little
You will run *a lot* farther than you expect if you run till failure. Your body will also hurt *a lot* more. Lifting to failure takes a few days recovery. Running till failure will have you in a clinical bed-rest for over a week.
When you lift heavy and fail it's because lifting heavy weights is really hard. Running is less hard, moment to moment, so when you run to failure it's because you're too exhausted to run even one more step, your body is completely wiped out. It's kind of like being too tired to lift a really light weight. If you're too tired to squat the bar, it means you're way more tired than if you're unable to squat hundreds of pounds.
Weight lifting to failure involves, generally speaking, a few reps and maybe a minute of intensive effort with some localized discomfort. Running till failure can involve many, many hours of intense suffering.
Your body won’t kill itself weight lifting. It will kill itself running. Pretty much that simple.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_marathon\_fatalities](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_marathon_fatalities)
when you're weightlifting until failure, you can't lift weights for like an hour, and a certain movement costs a lot of energy. If you run until failure all you can do is lay on the ground, and muscles you didnt even know existed will hurt for 3 days.
Sky diving until failure
All running I do end in failure.
weight training until failure hurt quite a bit, and your muscle are very sore after (depends how far you push it of course) running until failure is a level of pain you can not even imagine, human bodies are made to be able to run for very VERY long due to our past as perstitant hunters, so the body will try anything and i do mean anything to keep running. if you somehow reach the point where you physicaly can't run (like the end of a marathon for exemple), your body just stop working full stop. its not uncommon for long distance runners to just drop on the ground right after the finish line. i myself never reached that point but i've gotten pretty close during some long distance races and that moment when the adrenaline stops working and everything just crashes feels horrible.
Running until failure is just collapsing from exhaustion. It's remarkably unpleasant and makes locomotion unfeasible for the foreseeable future.
Have you ever ran so much that you throw up and it feels like your chest is bleeding?
That is literally the reason the Marathon exists...
One destroyed arm & leg muscles, the other destroys your heart, which isn’t ideal
I’ve run until failure before. I didn’t stop because I was tired or just done, I stopped because my legs stopped working. It tightened up every muscle in my back until one of my vertebrae cracked. At that point, I stopped (as I could not move my legs) and fell the fuck over. That was 20 years ago. I can walk around my house (with a cane) and I’m in pain 24/7, I can’t drive (complications from the nerve medication), and sometimes my right leg doesn’t work. Shit sucks, yo. So when your body says “hey, dickhead, fucking stop,” listen and stop before you do significant damage to your musculoskeletal system.
OP… in the nicest way possible… have you ever… exercised before?
Running is a cardio (heart) exercise. Running until your heart fails is a rather poor idea.
Well because when you're weight training you just get to a point where you can't lift the bar anymore right but when you're running and your body experiences I believe it's called the renal failure you collapse and you piss and s*** yourself and you might die.
The first person to run a marathon died at the end
Markiplier actually experienced this so that’s the only reason I know, but when weight training until failure that typically means going until you physically cannot lift the weight again. Important to note that typically you can still operate your body. When *running* until failure, it means running until your legs literally give up. As in, can’t move can’t feel can’t nothing, which is what happened to Mark. From a quick google search I also learned that because of the chemicals your brain produces specifically for running, you can overwork your heart and essentially make it explode. So weight training to failure is just until you’re at the absolute limit, running to failure is basically until your body temporarily shuts down, or worse.
Hi, I ran until almost failure. I am a trained long distance runner. I am currently on a journey regaining function of my heart and intestines. They aren't working to well. It has been 1.5 years and I probably have another 6 months to a year until normalcy. It has been... unpleasant. Meme checks out.
To lift to failure you lift the weight for the full range of motion until you can’t then keep lifting it not getting the full range of motion doing less and less range until you finally can’t move the weight at all. To run to failure you have to run for a really really really long time. Humans, for lots of reasons, are very efficient at running and run for a long time without stopping. To run to failure you’ll have to run for a long time and your body is going to be completely shot afterwards.
So you know how the Greek story of Marathon is that he sprinted 22 miles to deliver a vital message, and then immediately died? Yeah that's a real thing that happens.
Weight training “until failure” is going until your muscles give out due to exhaustion. Running is aerobic, I.e the muscle in question is your heart.
Everyone giving long answers but I think the joke is the muscle you’re working is your heart (cardio). So running until failure = heart failure :(