Running a marathon was never crazier than during the 1904 St Louis Olympics | Hacker News Reader

Running a marathon was never crazier than during the 1904 St Louis Olympics

abc.net.au

65 pointsThevet23 comments

If you've never watched Jon Bois or his Pretty Good series, you're in for a real treat. He has a video on the marathon that's very worth the 21 minutes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4AhABManTw

The most perplexing: How is it possible to come to believe water is bad for athletic performance, especially long distance running? Not only water, but seemingly distrusting any tangible amount of any liquid?

Well, they used to treat diarrhoea by withholding fluids as an attempt to "starve it out", maybe it's something along those lines. E.g. it makes you heavier, you want to drink as little water as possible to stay light, or to minimise bathroom stops, or something like that.

Whenever I was doing intense physical effort drinking water made me feel sick. When I was a teen I didn't understand why so I assumed water is bad right after exercise. But later on I started reading on this and using some common sense and I started putting salts/minerals and some sugar in the water I was drinking and my body reacted completely differently. This was before sports drinks were a thing.

Exercise-associated hyponatremia is an issue for endurance athletes. If you drink too much water it can throw your electrolyte balance off which inhibits performance. Athletes have been told to hydrate to avoid heat stroke but sometimes they overdo it.

https://www.outsideonline.com/1900801/tim-noakes-serious-pro...

For those who won't read the article... too much liquid intake can dilute the sodium levels in the body and lead to swelling of the brain which itself can cause all kinds of issues, some of which can lead to death.

That's why now long distance runners usually consume salt pills. Especially on the ultra marathon races.

And the worst part is that the symptoms are very similar to dehydration, so it's easy to keep drinking water to try to fix it!

Stories like this make me wonder about what sorts of pseudoscience people will laugh at us for believing in 100 years.

A fan travelling by air to the 2120 games says to his wife: "Look at me, I'm reading The Economist. Did you know normal teams never competed between the 1908 games and the 2036 games? In those days they were organised on 'national' lines."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed_teams_at_the_Olympics

All sorts of nonsense is embedded in nutrition. And medicine of the mind is still very much at primitive levels.

The Dollop has a great comedic re-telling and examination of this event. The show format is that one comedian reads a prepared and lightly researched account of the event, and another comedian reacts and improvises over it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFLjcX163WI

It would appear the rat poison they are referring to is strychnine.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strychnine

Haha "The winner, who had to be dragged across the finishing line by his trainers, was doped up and hallucinating on rat poison.

That was only after it was discovered that the first person to cross the line, Fred Lorz, actually hitched a ride in a car for most of the race."

Those men barefoot is a sobering image.

Abebe Bikila won the marathon in the 1960 Olympics running barefoot. Shoes weren't much of an advantage until fairly recently when materials scientists figured out how to make foam that returned a significant amount of energy.

A more recent barefoot example, though at shorter distances, is South African runner Zola Budd. She ran 3000m barefoot in the 1984 Olympics. That race was notable for Budd and American Mary Decker leading the pack, then colliding and Budd's spikes piercing Budd's foot. Decker crashed out and Budd finished 7th.

*Decker's spikes pierced Budd's ankle - then Decker fell onto the track rail and was out, Budd ran the whole race but was too shaken up (/slightly injured) to win it as she was expected to.

Both of them were too fast to have much experience competing in a pack of runners. Budd was only 17 and Decker was older, but had been winning international competitions since she was 14, too young to even enter the Olympics.

I recommend the book "Born to run" quite illuminating.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Marathon_bombing

I'm not sure why you're getting downvoted because you're technically correct. For a statement to be proven false ("running a marathon was _NEVER_ crazier...") all it takes is one counter example. You've provided that counter example; the statement is false.

I’m guessing downvotes because the counter-example comparatively isn’t that “crazy”. Bear with me here, especially if you don’t recall the details. Every participant was affected by conditions in 1904, by dusty roads if nothing else. Whereas in 2013 I had crossed the finish line hours before and was taking a nap when the bomb went off, and the top finishers had already finished well before me. That’s not to diminish the damage for those affected in 2013, but there is an argument to be made that the 2013 crazy didn’t start until the race was effectively over. I mean, if we’re going to argue with the title, running a marathon (as the title says) in the Boston area on the 2nd Monday of April 2013 was fine for me, the crazy started afterward. 1904 sounded crazy from the start.

That, and contrarianism for the sake of it.

Because it is not a counter example. The “crazy” is the decisions made by the race organizers and participants. The Boston bombing was very tragic but not crazy.

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