Lore of Running, 4th edition

  • Tim Noakes
Oxford University Press: 2002. 1,277 pp. £27.99

Following Khalid Khannouchi's victory in April's London Marathon, in which he broke the men's world record, there was renewed speculation that male athletes would eventually trim five minutes off the record and complete the course of 26.2 miles inside two hours. The experts promptly declared it exceedingly unlikely, if only because it would mean running four consecutive sets of 10 kilometres in times that individually would be beyond all but the best of today's athletes. So it's a tall order — but impossible?

For decades it was considered beyond human capacity, virtually in physiological principle, to run a mile inside four minutes. Since Roger Bannister achieved it in 1954, hundreds of others have breached the barrier, which was thus shown to be psychological rather than physiological. A few athletes can now run two miles at almost Bannister's speed. And some African athletes run several miles in training at almost this pace.

Shortly after his legendary mile, Bannister asserted that: “Though physiology may indicate respiratory and circulatory limits to muscular effort, psychological and other factors beyond the ken of physiology set the razor's edge of defeat or victory and determine how close an athlete approaches the absolute limits of performance.” This statement is almost fifty years old, yet most research is still directed at the physical side of running.

It is the psychological aspect — the complex chemistry of ambition and competitiveness — that absorbs Tim Noakes, director of the Department of Sports Medicine at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, and one of the world's leading scientists in endurance sports. This book is a thoroughly revised and expanded version of his 1985 original. A large portion of this fourth edition presents new findings and analyses on the “psychic” side of endurance events — not just running, but swimming, rowing and cycling.

He provides a detailed evaluation of the thesis that the brain is in ultimate control of the body, and that fatigue is part of a regulatory process to prevent excessive physiological effort. In other words, the body has a safety-first mechanism that rings warning bells well before the onset of actual danger. However exhausted a runner may feel, he is likely to be a fair way from exhausting all his physical potential. The trick is to close the gap through targeted training, reflecting the best sports science available.

Not surprisingly, Noakes is particularly illuminating in his sections on “What makes a winner?”. World-class runners are all at virtually the same peak of physical fitness, so the medal goes to whoever most wants to win and best deploys the neurological commitment that reflects the wanting. Among sports-science books, this one does more than most to further our understanding of what makes up the endurance athlete who is also a superb competitor. This applies not only to the attributes of Olympic champions, but also to those of talented amateurs.

The book is illuminating on more conventional aspects of running, notably the physiology and biochemistry of energy systems, the cardiovascular and anaerobic models of athletic performance, and the principles of training, especially for elite athletes. Interspersed throughout the book are profiles of leading runners such as Roger Bannister, Josiah Thugwane, Elana Meyer, Bruce Fordyce and other world-class performers, plus a wealth of insights into the training regimes of athletes from northern, eastern and southern Africa, North America, Western and Eastern Europe, Japan, Australia and New Zealand (although there is little on Nepal, Bolivia and other high-altitude countries that theoretically should be producing winners). The presentation of so much detail on the brain's role in determining physical performance, juxtaposed with Noakes' expertise as an exercise physiologist, makes this a unique compendium of the latest scientific thinking.

All this is presented in a genial style that makes this long book readable from start to finish. Noakes views running as much more than putting one fleet foot in front of the other. He sees it as a sport in which it is possible to be completely alone, and where overcoming physical discomfort provides the means for personal growth: “Running has influenced my life by teaching me who I am, and, equally importantly, who I am not. Even in the most crowded races, the point is reached when fatigue drives each of us back into ourselves, into those secluded parts that we discover only under times of such duress and from which we emerge with a clearer perspective of the people we truly are.”