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Endure Audiobook Summary

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * “Reveals how we can all surpass our perceived physical limits.” –Adam Grant

Limits are an illusion: a revolutionary book that reveals the secrets of accessing your hidden extra potential

Foreword by Malcolm Gladwell

The capacity to endure is the key trait that underlies great performance in virtually every field–from a 100-meter sprint to a 100-mile ultramarathon, from summiting Everest to acing final exams or completing any difficult project. But what if we all can go farther, push harder, and achieve more than we think we’re capable of?

Blending cutting-edge science and gripping storytelling in the spirit of Malcolm Gladwell–who contributes the book’s foreword–award-winning journalist Alex Hutchinson reveals that a wave of paradigm-altering research over the past decade suggests the seemingly physical barriers you encounter as set as much by your brain as by your body. This means the mind is the new frontier of endurance–and that the horizons of performance are much more elastic than we once thought.

But, of course, it’s not “all in your head.” For each of the physical limits that Hutchinson explores–pain, muscle, oxygen, heat, thirst, fuel–he carefully disentangles the delicate interplay of mind and body by telling the riveting stories of men and women who’ve pushed their own limits in extraordinary ways.

The longtime “Sweat Science” columnist for Outside and Runner’s World, Hutchinson, a former national-team long-distance runner and Cambridge-trained physicist, was one of only two reporters granted access to Nike’s top-secret training project to break the two-hour marathon barrier, an extreme quest he traces throughout the book. But the lessons he draws from shadowing elite athletes and from traveling to high-tech labs around the world are surprisingly universal. Endurance, Hutchinson writes, is “the struggle to continue against a mounting desire to stop”–and we’re always capable of pushing a little farther.

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Endure Audiobook Narrator

Robert G. Slade is the narrator of Endure audiobook that was written by Alexander Hutchinson

Alex Hutchinson, Ph.D., is a columnist for Outside magazine and was a long-time columnist for Runner’s World. A National Magazine Award winner, he is a regular contributor to The New Yorker online, pens the weekly “Jockology” column in the Toronto Globe and Mail, and writes for the New York Times. FiveThirtyEight recently named him one of their “favorite running science geeks.” He was a two-time finalist in the 1,500 meters at the Canadian Olympic Trials, and represented Canada internationally in track, cross-country, road racing, and mountain running competitions. He holds a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Cambridge, and has worked as a researcher for the U.S. National Security Agency. He lives in Toronto, Canada.

About the Author(s) of Endure

Alexander Hutchinson is the author of Endure

More From the Same

Subjects

The publisher of the Endure is HarperAudio. includes the following subjects: The BISAC Subject Code is Human Anatomy & Physiology, Life Sciences, Science

Additional info

The publisher of the Endure is HarperAudio. The imprint is HarperAudio. It is supplied by HarperAudio. The ISBN-13 is 9780062802729.

Global Availability

This book is only available in the United States.

Goodreads Reviews

Otis

March 12, 2020

Fascinating book about the limits of human endurance, well researched and backed by science. Worth reading, but if your goal is to learn how to become a faster athlete, it ambles a lot and doesn't really focus on that question as much. That said, lots of interesting tidbits.First, some basics - oxygen in the bloodstream fuels us up to a point, and with increased oxygen we get increased performance. That is only up to a point, of course, which is called your VO2max - as you approach that point you start to burn carbohydrates, which produce lactic acid, fatigue your muscles, and make you slow down or stop."Crucially, they could still accelerate to faster speeds; however, their oxygen intake no longer followed. This plateau is your VO2max, a pure and objective measure of endurance capacity that is, in theory, independent of motivation, weather, phase of the moon, or any other possible excuse. Hill surmised that VO2max reflected the ultimate limits of the heart and circulatory system—a measurable constant that seemed to reveal the size of the “engine” an athlete was blessed with."Interestingly, the book points out that the "vast majority of the world’s best distance runners these days, were born, grew up, and train in the East African highlands along the Great Rift Valley, at elevations of at least 6,000 feet". So I guess if you want a better ability to process oxygen really well, be born in (or move to?) a high elevation.Disappointingly to me, the book didn't go as much into how to improve your endurance or train up to elite levels. With one exception - it focused a lot on mental stamina, which the author seemed obsessed by. It gave a lot of interesting examples of people who have done remarkable things by pushing boundaries (a guy lifing a car off a cyclist trapped underneath, a woman who drowned saving her son in dangerous surf by treading water for hours). And to be fair, it is an interesting question of how the mind regulates us and how you can learn to push those limits. Because we all rate limit ourselves - if you go out for a 5 mile run at the 4 mile mark you start to feel it because you know you are almost there - versus if you go out for a 10 mile run, at mile 4 you feel fine - because your brain regulates it. So if it's all in your head, can you improve mental endurance to affect that? The answer is it sounds like you can, but it's a nascent field. Drugs can also help endurance - a placebo pill will boost performance by several percentage points, as will caffeine, Tylenol, or even crystal meth (which puts a whole new lens on the Blitzkrieg). Swishing gatorade or anything with carbs in your mouth and spitting it out also improves performance by a few points, which speaks to mental power. Ice baths are something that many people I know and have read about swear by - but apparently the science says they are neutral - IE have no measurable impact on performance. (Curious if there are other takes on this?).Your body starts to run out of fuel about about an hour of intense exercise, so even in a half marathon it's good to fuel - you can only absorb about 250 calories an hour though. Sports drinks like gatorade or gels. But the best advice that I at least gleaned as a combo of improving mental belief and pushing your limits there:"Even the humblest Kenyan runner, he noticed, wakes up every morning with the firm conviction that today, finally, will be his or her day. They run with the leaders because they think they can beat them, and if harsh reality proves that they can’t, they regroup and try again the next day. And that belief, fostered by the longstanding international dominance of generations of Kenyan runners, becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy."You have to teach athletes, somewhere in their careers, that they can do more than they think they can." ... And also improving your aerobic and anaerobic limits:"which is why his super-workout consisted of five times a mile as hard as possible, followed by your coach telling you to do another at the same pace. “From this workout, you’ll learn forever that you’re capable of much more than you think,” he wrote. “It’s the most powerful lesson you can possibly learn in running."Best advice, expressed in a Michael Pollan-esque quote:"Run a lot of miles. Some faster than your race pace. Rest once in a while."

Krystal

October 07, 2021

I found this incredibly fascinating.There is so much in it but it's written logically, clearly and concisely, and there is a healthy dose of scepticism to keep everything grounded.The research in this novel pertains to the limits of human endurance, and considers physical, physiological and psychological. There are chapters on Pain, Muscle, Oxygen, Heat, Thirst, Fuel, and more.I really enjoyed slowly digesting this one. There really is a lot to take in but I never felt lost. A lot of it focuses on running and cycling, but it's still applicable to pretty much any sport that requires endurance. I was mentally applying everything to the martial art I do and it still made heaps of sense.I loved the way it was all broken down, but also broken up by the anecdotes and challenges that got you invested in the outcome. It's highly unlikely I'll remember many of these names, but many of their stories will stay with me.If you are someone interested in exploring the limits of human endurance, this is a brilliant book for it. I got a lot out of it and will likely read it again and refer to it often.Highly recommend.

Loomis

August 18, 2018

I found Hutchinson's journalistic style of reporting on Endurance to be highly enjoyable. I was able to form my own ideas and often there was an answer coming when I wanted to challenge what I was reading. I appreciated the journey of this book and the fascinating detail.

Atila

June 19, 2018

Um passeio bem legal e muito bem escrito sobre os limites do corpo humano. Usando a corrida como desculpa (ou contexto), Hutchinson passa uma combinação de medicina, método esportivo e a história do esporte e de esportistas para discutir o tema. Fica um balanço legal do que é limite físico (e muscular) ou fisiológico e o que é limite psicológico – até onde o cérebro segura nosso desempenho tentando gerir nossos recursos. Os exemplos que mostram o papel de cada um desses fatores são bem legais, com histórias de experimentos que mostram recursos que não sabiam que tínhamos ou pessoas em situações que realmente chegaram no limite.O autor escreve sobre corrida há bastante tempo na Runner's World, então acho que já teve tempo e experiência para deixar de lado modas esportivas que vão embora sem fazer a menor diferença. Achei bem balanceado, ele não dá trela para contos de pessoas hiperfortes ou situações sem comprovação nem fala sobre aparelhos e métodos miraculosos. pelo contrário, o livro usa experimentos e pesquisa bem embasada para discutir o que realmente entendemos dos nossos limites.

Jon

February 16, 2020

This book is a good survey of the history and current state of science around human endurance. For that, it was worth a read. You learn about all the factors, such as oxygen, food, pain, muscle, and, most importantly, the mind. It’s recent enough that it covers topics such as Eliud Kipchoge’s first 2-hour marathon attempt and low carb, high fat diets.The problem with the book is that it the author just provides a survey of all the things but doesn’t weave it all together into something more cohesive with a strong point of view. Instead, I often felt like I was reading magazine articles instead of a whole book on the topic. I appreciated the author’s objectivity and how focused on science it was, but that approach unfortunately made it less fun than it could have been.

Roberto

August 13, 2018

The interesting thing is that most people DON'T die of exhaustion, Tim Noakes noted in the 1997. Thus starting with the hypothesis that your mind is protecting you from misusing your body. Very good, It is all in your mind. But protection comes with a cost. That is, your mind is also stopping you from doing the best you can. And that’s what this book is all about. Alex is compiling the current science developments on human performance which includes a great deal of brain training. To make things more dramatic, he sets the book within Nike's Breaking2 project. You may end up in a full body sweat while reading this book.

Phil

May 11, 2018

I don't like that Alex Hutchinson's "Endure" is "written in the spirit of Malcolm Gladwell." It reminds me of what Stephen King said in On Writing: "Any book that has the description, 'written in the spirit of,' is probably the pits" (or something to that effect, I'm not going to fish it up).Well, this is the exception. Endure is a fantastic book that's chock-full of interesting, far-reaching, and applicable research. He masterfully walks the line between hard data and engaging anecdote, never drawing conclusions that are too universal for what the evidence suggests.It's the only book this year that I've actually read the notes for.Some memorable bits that stuck with me:Jons Jacob Berzelius first introduced the idea that cardiovascular fatigue is caused by a build-up of lactic acid in the muscle in 1807 -- although lactic acid is only formed when protons bind to lactate, which is really what the muscles and blood of his subjects, dead animals forced to differing degrees of exhaustion, were producing. When coaches, trainers, and athletes refer to "lactic acid buildup," they really mean "lactate buildup," which seems minor and inconsequential unless you consider the negative connotative implications of the word, "acid," and you combine it with the power of positive thinking, which can considerably influence your performance in a race. (When I think about "lactic acid," I think about that Palahniuk quote from Fight Club: "My veins were pumping battery acid" -- that only works if you make the connection between the two). It might help, during a marathon, to think about your fatigue as "lactate buildup," a slight linguistic change that may have a non-negligible effect on the brain, which, as I said, is an important aspect -- possibly the most important aspect -- of physical endurance.And that, true to Endure's subtitle (Mind, Body, and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance), is my biggest takeaway from the book: Effort, more than anything else, is the true determinant of individual performance. Inspired by this book – even though, as Alex Hutchinson says on page 258, it “isn't a training manual” -- I'm going to compete in a mini triathlon in my area (or maybe a sprint triathlon -- I haven't decided). They call it a “mini,” but it's essentially a super-sprint that's fit to the trail: a 7mi bike ride, 2mi run, and 250y swim; something that everyone could conceivably finish, so I don't think it's going to be hyper-competitive, but there are always those outliers in your area. I'm going to work some of what I've learned from this book into the program I'm designing for that race. If you don't know me personally, you should know I'm primarily a powerlifter. It's not that I'm completely untrained for endurance work, but I usually keep a higher bodyfat percentage (particularly during the winter) with a focus on lifting progressively heavier weights. This summer I'm going to cut down to sub-170 and work on something new. That's not to say that I'm going to completely dismiss strength training from my routine; I think it's a necessary part of just about any healthy training regimen, but I'm also going to include some serious endurance training in there.For fun, or something.Mayo Clininc physiologist Michael Joyner wrote a training haiku that's going to be the crux of my routine: Run a lot of milesSome faster than your race paceRest once in a whileWith that simple poem as my backbone, it's time to overcomplicate things. I'm going to take a polarized approach to my program, splitting up the HIIT/LISS portions along the all-popular Paretto split like Ben Greenfield recommends in this article. (This is just a fancy, self-serving way of saying I'm going to spend 20% of my time working on increasing my VO2 max by doing high intensity interval training and the other 80% of the time doing easy aerobic work). I might be able to reserve a lap at the Rec Center near my house, so swimming might also be an option. As it stands, though, I only have a bike and not-too-dependable Ohio weather. With that said, I'm not going to focus or measure cardiovascular markers; mostly because I don't have the means to do so, but also because I want to focus on the most important aspect of success in this sport (and all sports): busting my ass. You can have the most aerodynamic bike, the one that cost $7000, you can have a swimsuit that Phelps would be jealous of, you can have the Nike Vaporfly 4% (which do sound cool, if not unrealistic), but -- on the local level -- you'll lose to the person who's busting their ass the most.One thing I didn't like: The front flap reads, “The capacity to endure is the key trait that underlies great performance in virtually every field—from a 100-meter sprint to a 100-mile ultramarathon, from summitting Everest to acing final exams or completing any difficult project. But what if we all can go farther, push harder, and achieve more than we think we are capable of?” The italicized portion is a bit of a bait-and-switch. Endure doesn't even have a chapter on willpower; it sticks almost exclusively to endurance training – never really touching on how to “endure” anything that isn't related to exercise.I'm not going to take any stars off because I have a strong feeling it had nothing to do with Hutchinson and everything to do with HarperCollins. They probably wanted to include something that was seemingly universal in the summary to draw more readers in. It worked. I'm not an endurance athlete. I picked it up for its more general message on human adversity.But, if you couldn't care less about cardio, don't expect this to interest you.

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