- 4 hours ago
Aleksandr Sorokin ran 198.6 miles in a single day. Athletes and scientists explain the six factors behind elite endurance and distance-running records, including VO₂ max, advanced footwear, physical conditioning, and an athlete's mindset.
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00:00Take a look at this footage.
00:03That's Alexander Sorokin, breaking the world record for the longest distance run in 24 hours.
00:11198.6 miles. That's nearly eight marathons in a single day.
00:17Ultramarathons have a way of breaking people.
00:19Oh my gosh, he's going to do it.
00:22Medics there immediately to take care of Wayne.
00:25But Sorokin got the world record looking like this.
00:29You need to just go through your pain.
00:38How does he make it look so easy?
00:41I just did seven miles.
00:44My hips hurt. My knees hurt.
00:46I'm really thirsty. I haven't been drinking. And I'm hungry.
00:50It turns out that there are six factors that need to be perfectly dialed in to break a distance running
00:56world record.
00:56We met with athletes and scientists who are pushing the limits of human endurance.
01:01And what we learned could help all of us go far beyond our comfort zone.
01:09Running nearly 200 miles non-stop requires elite cardio.
01:14But how do we measure that?
01:16VO2 Max measures the maximum rate at which your body can take in and use oxygen at maximum effort.
01:23Basically, it's like the size of your engine.
01:25And to find out how it works, we track down the athlete who has the highest VO2 Max in the
01:32world.
01:32This is insane.
01:35Meet Kristian Blumenfeldt.
01:37He's one of the only triathletes on the planet to win an Olympic gold medal, a world championship and an
01:43Ironman world title.
01:44And in January, his team recorded a VO2 Max of 101.1 during testing in Norway.
01:51A new unofficial record and the first time anyone had ever breached triple digits.
01:57So when I saw the first time I was breaking 100, it was a little bit like a cool experience.
02:05But it was also something we sort of expected.
02:07Part of that record high score is simply genetics.
02:11The rest is left to highly intense training.
02:18Part of Blumenfeldt's routine includes spending time at high-altitude camps that reach up to 7,500 feet above sea
02:26level.
02:27Up there, the air is thinner, so less oxygen reaches his bloodstream with each breath.
02:33And that forces his body to produce more red blood cells.
02:37When Blumenfeldt returns to sea level, he brings that extra oxygen-carrying capacity with him,
02:43driving up his VO2 Max.
02:45But here's the thing.
02:47Blumenfeldt's former coach told us he doesn't necessarily want the athlete's VO2 Max to remain that high.
02:53For longer sports or sports with a longer duration,
02:57then VO2 Max becomes less of a good predictor of performance
03:02because there are other characteristics that are more important than necessarily the ability to turn around a lot of oxygen
03:08per minute.
03:11Basically, having a massive aerobic engine doesn't mean anything unless you're using it efficiently.
03:16So as race season approaches, Blumenfeldt's VO2 Max actually starts to drop.
03:22And that's a sign his training is working.
03:25The VO2 Max comes down, but also his biochemical efficiency also comes up.
03:29So he's able to utilize the oxygen better for propulsion.
03:33Sorokin also does altitude training alongside some of the most efficient runners on earth in Kenya.
03:48Kenya and its neighbor Ethiopia have produced more elite marathon runners than anywhere else in the world.
03:54Just this year, Sebastian Sawe did what once seemed impossible.
03:59He became the first person to run an official marathon in under two hours.
04:04And Sawe has something in common with many of Kenya's greatest runners.
04:08He's from this strip of land right here.
04:11The Kalenshin people live mostly in Kenya's Rift Valley,
04:15with elevations up to 9,800 feet above sea level.
04:19Living and training at that altitude is part of their success.
04:22But there may be something deeper at work, too.
04:26Scientists have spent years searching the Kalenshin genome for clues to their extraordinary running ability.
04:33One study found genetic differences that could give an endurance runner an edge, like body shape.
04:39Kalenshin's are famously slight, often weighing little more than 120 pounds, with long, slender legs.
04:45Their legs act like pendulums, allowing them to swing forward efficiently and cover more ground with less energy.
04:52However, when you stretch a race beyond 26.2 miles, something striking happens.
04:58Kenya's dominance disappears.
05:00At ultra distances, what your body looks like is only part of the equation.
05:05What matters equally brings us to factor number two.
05:08How well you move it.
05:10We sent our producer to a lab at Stanford University.
05:14That's part of a $220 million effort to study the world's fittest people.
05:20Running economy is how much energy you spend per distance traveled.
05:25Kind of your miles per gallon.
05:27Part of a person's running economy comes down to basic build.
05:30Now, obviously, if you have way too much mass or huge muscles, it doesn't help you in endurance races.
05:39To show us what running economy actually looks like in real time, Scott needed a runner.
05:43But we didn't want to get him just any runner.
05:46So we hit up this guy.
05:48Dean Karnasas holds the world record for the longest distance ever run non-stop.
05:55350 miles over 80 hours and 44 minutes.
05:59Which was somewhat of a letdown because I thought maybe I could run 500 miles.
06:03He set that record in 2005 and it still stands today.
06:07So we asked the team at Stanford to analyze Dean's form.
06:10We've got him set up with our standard motion capture systems.
06:16And from that, we can create a digital Dean.
06:19A biomechanical model that lets us assess what's happening under the hood.
06:24You can see his body form.
06:26We get exact joint angles of all of his joints in his body.
06:31The special treadmill that Dean's running on is also tracking key data.
06:36Every step sends a jolt of force through the body that's two to three times the runner's own weight.
06:42Over the course of a 24-hour race, a runner can take over 250,000 steps.
06:48That force is very consistent. Is that unusual?
06:52The very consistent forces you're noticing is a sign of an elite athlete.
06:56People who are earlier on, there's much more variability step to step.
07:00You're wasting a lot of energy each step.
07:02His are just like the same every time.
07:05You can also see his running gait is quite efficient.
07:08He has a narrow gait versus a wide gait.
07:11His feet are fairly close together.
07:13When you have a wider gait, you just spend more energy stabilizing your body.
07:17But he's got an amazing running form.
07:20And he's not swinging his torso at all.
07:23No, he's super steady.
07:24You see he's steady from the side.
07:27And if you look from the back, he's very steady from the back.
07:31He's not swaying this way or that way.
07:34But the interesting thing is that Dean doesn't even think about his form.
07:39Scott says you have perfect, beautiful running form.
07:42Do you think about your running form when you're doing this?
07:45I paid him to say that.
07:49No, I just run to what feels natural.
07:54I've never trained to run.
07:56I don't think there is a perfect body.
08:00It's really how can you make best use of the equipment you have, of the body you have.
08:07We've seen that Dean's body is incredibly built for endurance.
08:14But Sorokin has a different challenge.
08:17He has to endure long distances and race the clock.
08:21He's not as small as Dean, but that actually might play to his advantage.
08:25His larger, heavier frame costs more energy to carry.
08:29But his longer legs give him the stride that helps generate speed.
08:33However, there's only so much you can change about the body you were born with.
08:37So, I went shopping for the next advantage.
08:41Right now I'm heading to the Brooklyn Running Company, where I'm going to try on some special shoes for long
08:47distance running.
08:48So, what are you looking for?
08:50I'm looking for something that's going to be comfortable for, you know, running for a few hours at a time.
08:54You know, I'm up to about an hour running now, and I would like to go a little bit further.
08:59The first marathoner, Phaedipides, is said to have run from the battlefield of Marathon to Athens barefoot.
09:05And for most of running history, footwear was an afterthought.
09:09However, as the margins between world running records shrank, researchers started looking to footwear for the next edge.
09:16That edge came in 2017, when Nike introduced the Vaporfly, a new kind of racing super shoe.
09:23I tried on four different versions of super shoes.
09:27My first impression, this shoe, even though it has a huge, big, cushiony bottom, it's very, very light.
09:34And each one had different materials that could affect performance.
09:38Immediately, I would say probably feel 20 to 30 percent more bouncy than the last pair.
09:44Yep.
09:44What makes super shoes so different is how much energy they can actually save a runner.
09:50The original Nike Vaporfly saves about 4 percent.
09:55And over a marathon, that's roughly the amount of energy it would take to run an extra mile.
10:00So, yes, there is the science behind, hey, it's 4 percent.
10:03It's going to save me some time.
10:05Right.
10:05But also, the shoe doesn't do all the work.
10:08Right.
10:08It is the training.
10:09It's the fueling.
10:10It's the strengthening.
10:11So, you've really got to look at these things holistically, right?
10:14The shoe's going to give you what you give it.
10:16And the technology on these shoes has kept improving.
10:20It's not an understatement to say that super shoes transformed the running world.
10:25Take a look at this chart.
10:27Before super shoes, new world records were rare, averaging just a couple a year.
10:32That average more than tripled after 2016.
10:36A big part of the super shoe revolution came from a new generation of ultralight, highly responsive foams.
10:44Back at Stanford, we tested the foam of an ASICS Metaspeed Sky.
10:48So, this is just another one of these cylindrical foam samples.
10:51When you compress the foam, you're putting energy into it.
10:54And then, when you unload it, you want to get as much of the energy back as possible.
11:00And so, the fact that these curves are fairly close together means that a large amount of the energy that
11:06you put into the foam is returned.
11:08It's about 90% of the energy is returned.
11:13Then, there's the carbon fiber plate.
11:15In sort of non-technical terms, I think it sort of acts as a spring.
11:20So, you land and then it pushes you forward instead of just pushing you up.
11:24Super shoes help fuel a global running market that's worth $20 billion.
11:29So, how much are these?
11:31Yeah, now we're talking a few bands here.
11:33It's about $250 plus.
11:35$250, okay.
11:36We're getting into the higher, the more expensive shoes.
11:39So, in general, is the carbon fiber plate going to cost you a little bit more?
11:42Yeah, the materials of the shoe, absolutely.
11:44Because now you're paying for performance.
11:46Just look at the shoes that Sebastian Saway wore when he broke the marathon world record.
11:51I think they released it publicly the day after the marathon for $500 and they immediately sold out.
11:58We've narrowed it down to these two pairs of shoes.
12:02They're both ASIC shoes.
12:04One does not have a carbon plate inside.
12:07And this one has a carbon and plastic plate inside.
12:10So, we're going to get on the treadmill and see how they feel.
12:13Well, you know, it takes a couple of minutes for me to get the kinks out of my knees, you
12:17know?
12:18Yeah.
12:19Based on the experience I just had on the treadmill, I feel like the plated shoes would maybe get me
12:24faster, but I wouldn't be able to go as long.
12:28But these, because of the comfort factor, I feel like that's going to get me running longer than these would.
12:34Now I understand why the most elite runners might have a plate because they're not just going for distance.
12:42They're going for time in distance.
12:44Absolutely.
12:45Sorokin has raced in the Adidas Adi Zero Pro Evo 2, but both times he broke the 24-hour record
12:51in 2021 and 2022.
12:53He chose the Nike Air Zoom Alpha Fly Next Percent.
12:57Everything Sorokin does is about managing a limited supply of energy.
13:01How much he burns, how much he wastes, and crucially, how much he can replace.
13:05So here we are looking at some of the food items at the 3100 race.
13:13Over a 24-hour race, an ultra runner can burn as much as 20,000 calories, which is an insane
13:20amount.
13:21That's like 10 days of energy for the average adult, or about the energy that's in 65 hot dogs.
13:28Burning that many calories is one problem, but replacing them is another challenge altogether.
13:34And that brings us to factor number four.
13:37We are at the Sri Chinmoy 3100 Transcendence Race.
13:41Today is September 16th, and there are people who have been running around this same block in Queens for two
13:48weeks.
13:48And they will continue running for almost another month.
13:53Every day, these runners start at 6 a.m., and they run until 12 midnight.
13:58They break to sleep.
13:59They take breaks to eat, use the bathroom.
14:01Other than that, all of their waking moments, they are running.
14:06After hours of continuous exercise, the body actually diverts blood away from the digestive system
14:12and into the muscles that are actively working.
14:15You don't want to eat anything.
14:17You want to stop.
14:18You want to cry.
14:19Just give me, leave me alone.
14:22I want to run.
14:23I don't want to just finish this race.
14:25It's very common for your GI system to get disrupted or even shut down, and it's a big issue with
14:31runners.
14:32So nausea, stomach cramps, and vomiting are just some of the side effects of when the body starts to do
14:37that.
14:38Things like sports drinks or ginger candies can help settle the stomach.
14:42But the thing that makes fueling for an ultra so hard is that everybody's digestive system is slightly different.
14:49I would say fueling has been the biggest unlock for a lot of athletes with much higher carbohydrate intake than
14:56has been previously recommended.
14:58There's no single way to get those carbs down.
15:01Some runners tolerate solid food, but others do better with carb-loaded liquids.
15:05Mango, banana, protein powder, some soda, water.
15:10You know, I guess everybody has their own things that they really like to fuel themselves with.
15:16The goal is simply to find what the runner can tolerate consistently.
15:20Because if stomach stops, you stop too.
15:24What I have right here is called goo.
15:27It's an energy gel.
15:28This is what ultra runners like to eat because it's just pure carbohydrates.
15:33So let's give it a try here and see if we like it.
15:41Oh!
15:43That is disgusting.
15:45It tastes like medicine.
15:47Look, it has the consistency of neosporin.
15:50Look at that.
15:52Disgusting.
15:57I'm struggling to finish this.
15:59I really am.
15:59And my fingers are totally...
16:00I'm going to have to wash my hands after this.
16:02It's totally sticky.
16:04Food isn't the only thing competing for space in the gut.
16:07Athletes also have to keep hydrating without overdoing it.
16:11Drink too much plain water, and the sodium in your bloodstream can become dangerously diluted,
16:16causing cells in the body and brain to swell.
16:19That's a condition called hyponatremia, and in very rare cases, it can be fatal.
16:24Cynthia Lucero, a 28-year-old runner, died from it during the 2002 Boston Marathon.
16:31That remains a sobering reminder of just how little room for error there can be in endurance sports.
16:37From every athlete we spoke with and the helpers here at the 3100 race, one thing became clear.
16:42There is no such thing as a perfect fueling plan.
16:45This is spring water.
16:46Right.
16:47This is coconut water.
16:48Okay.
16:49This is water with fresh squeezed lemon and molasses.
16:53And here's the thing.
16:55Even the perfect fueling plan can fall apart under the wrong conditions.
16:58There's one variable that can take all of that strategy and throw it out the window.
17:03The weather.
17:04The weather has crushed world record attempts before.
17:08At the 2018 London Marathon, Elliot Kapoji finished in 2 hours, 4 minutes, and 17 seconds in record heat.
17:16Just five months later, in cooler Berlin weather, he ran nearly three minutes faster,
17:22shattering the world record at that time with a 2 hour, 1 minute, and 39 second finish.
17:28So what is heat actually doing to a runner that can cost them that much time?
17:32Josh here is about to help us find out.
17:35And this is my temperature probe.
17:38This is like the full part that goes in.
17:41So it's pretty far down.
17:43But this goes down into the esophagus so that we can get a measure for the core temperature
17:47because that's a lot more accurate than trying to measure by like skin or by ear, especially in the hot
17:52room.
17:53That room is over 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
17:57As Josh walks, his muscles generate heat.
18:00Then he ups the incline in speed.
18:02As the temperature goes up, your ability to dump heat through sweating and radiation decreases.
18:11And there's a point where the body simply can't keep up.
18:14So when it gets to 38, 39, 40 degrees, that's when you shut down.
18:2239 degrees Celsius is 102 Fahrenheit, the kind of core temperature you'd associate with a very high fever.
18:29And the longer you stay that hot, the greater the danger.
18:32One way to prepare is heat acclimation.
18:36Christian Blumenfeld knows the process well.
18:38He deliberately overdresses for runs, forcing his body to adapt.
18:42Like I'm dressing like it's minus 5 degrees and snow outside and then I can go out and run a
18:48session.
18:48And those sessions is mentally awful.
18:52But as Dean has experienced firsthand, sometimes the heat can be as punishing as the distance.
18:59You know, running 135 miles across Death Valley in the middle of summer is brutal.
19:05The pavement gets up to 200 degrees so the heat coming off the ground is intense.
19:11Which brings us back to Sorokin.
19:13His record race in Verona, Italy was run in relatively mild conditions with overcast skies
19:19and temperatures hovering around 70 degrees Fahrenheit.
19:23Could an even cooler race day be enough to get him to 200?
19:27It's going to depend on the individual.
19:28But if you're in a cooler environment, then other factors will be limiting other than your ability to lose heat.
19:37By now we've attacked the problem from every angle.
19:40Training the body, refining the stride, optimizing the footwear, the fuel, even the conditions.
19:47And a lot of these things can be controlled.
19:50But here's the thing.
19:51No matter where the race is, eventually dusk approaches.
19:55The main race begins when sun goes down.
19:59You're tired, you're painful, you want to stop, pace goes down.
20:04And that brings us to the final factor.
20:07I am locking in to run as far as I can around the course.
20:12Hopefully it's more than an hour and I don't embarrass myself.
20:16At the far end of endurance, the best athletes aren't the ones who avoid suffering.
20:21They're the ones who can stay in it.
20:23The mental game is even more significant than it is in a marathon.
20:28To fight central fatigue, the urge to give up, the boredom of training, the pain tolerance is really essential.
20:39Sorokin is a good example of just how rare that is.
20:42For almost 25 years, the record stood at 188.6 miles.
20:49Then Sorokin beat it the first time by running 192.2 miles.
20:54And the second time by running 198.6.
20:58He didn't just break the record.
21:00He shattered it by nearly 10 miles.
21:03Every step is pain, pain, pain, pain, pain, pain.
21:06You're pushing, pushing, pushing here in your head, but it's a hard thing, yes.
21:13I've met a lot of people and what I see Alex is different.
21:19His character and his mind, he can suffer for a long time when I see him in the race.
21:26So he changes completely.
21:28He's going into his own mode of competition.
21:34We are going to spend a little bit of time talking to the frontrunner in the race, Andrea, from Venice,
21:43Italy,
21:43and get a little bit of his experience.
21:47Andrea, you have won this race five years in a row, is that true?
21:51It is true, yeah.
21:53Does it get easier?
21:55Not at all.
21:57Every edition is a very special one, and there's different challenges every year, definitely.
22:02Something new to learn, something new to adapt to.
22:05How do you handle the boredom?
22:08Well, I mean, it's something that you build it up along the years.
22:13I try to think about positive things, family, friends, what gives me joy somehow.
22:20On races this long, feet can swell as much as a full shoe size.
22:25Blisters form and split open.
22:27Muscles cramp up.
22:29Heat stroke.
22:30Dangerously low sodium.
22:32Kidney injury.
22:32Sprained ankles.
22:33Broken bones from falls.
22:35And rarely, death are all real risks in ultrarunning.
22:39And that's the strange thing about what happens inside your head during an ultramarathon.
22:43The same race that can bring you to your lowest point can also produce moments of intense euphoria.
22:48Take a look at Sorokin a few hours into the race.
22:52Some runners describe this feeling as runner's high.
22:55It can take 30 to 60 minutes of continuous running to kick in, as endocannabinoids help reduce pain and anxiety
23:02and trigger euphoria that can last from minutes to hours.
23:05Dean knows the feeling well.
23:08And to me, it's just a feeling of euphoria.
23:11It's a calmness that comes over your body.
23:14And it's a drug that, you know, is a good, positive drug.
23:20Still, a runner's high can only carry you so far.
23:23Eventually, the brain runs into a much more basic need.
23:27So I set out to see how far I could run without stopping.
23:31The first night without sleep was fine.
23:33The second night was a little bit less fine.
23:36Going into that third night without sleep, it was very disorienting.
23:40During his record 350-mile run in 2005, Dean actually started hallucinating.
23:46And he had what they call an out-of-body experience.
23:50Like, I'm somewhere else.
23:51I'm not in my head.
23:52It was as though I was in a helicopter or a hot air balloon, hovering over myself, looking down.
23:57And I thought, this is probably what happens right before you die.
24:02So really, to me, the limitations on how far a human can go is not just human endurance, but it's
24:08sleep deprivation.
24:10But there's another way to push human endurance even further.
24:14Give the body time to rest.
24:16So just how far can someone run if they're allowed to eat, sleep, and then keep going?
24:22Yes, so many of these runners, they stay in just like guru consciousness in meditation.
24:29A lot of them say that without it, they couldn't really finish this race.
24:33So with guru in their meditation and everything else, that's what fuels them to complete it.
24:39Sri Chinmoy believed that sports, and distance running in particular, could be a way of discovering limits you didn't know
24:46you could cross.
24:47He called the idea self-transcendence.
24:49So the goal of this race isn't really to beat the person next to you.
24:53It's to go further than you thought you were capable of.
24:56So I just completed 0.2% of what the people who finish this race do.
25:03I am super tired.
25:04I'm going to call it, and let's call it six and a half miles.
25:10I don't know.
25:11That's kind of disappointing now that I look at it.
25:14What's going on mentally with the people that are in this race to keep going?
25:22Surrender.
25:23Surrender.
25:24Surrender.
25:24You keep going and going and exhausting as much as you can.
25:27You keep going.
25:28You leave it all up to the Supreme.
25:30You leave it all up to guru.
25:31So this is for me, it's a kind of self-actualization.
25:35So I am becoming what I really want to become in my life.
25:39And that's a big opportunity that life gave me.
25:42And I'm really, I feel privileged somehow.
25:46So where is the limit? Maybe there isn't one number where the human body simply says,
25:51this is as far as I could go. Maybe the limit depends on the rules of the challenge.
25:57Sorokin's is 24 hours. For the runners in Queens, it's 52 days. And for Sri Chinmoy,
26:04that was the entire point. The finish line wasn't supposed to show you where your limit was.
26:09It was supposed to show you that the limit you believed was there might be further than you
26:14think. Here's the most encouraging part. You don't have to start young to start pushing yourself.
26:20In ultras, data shows that the longer the race, the older the runners tend to be. The average
26:26ultra runner is 42 and nearly 70% are in their 30s and 40s. How old are you? I am
26:3244 years old. And do
26:34you feel like you're at your peak condition or do you think that you have more to go? Oh, well,
26:40that's a very important, very interesting question. I guess in the ultra distance world,
26:45until 50, everything is possible. This is my, my belief. That's because ultra running rewards
26:52something you can only build over time, experience. It is less about the time and more about the
26:58experience, your ability to keep going, your ability to fight central fatigue and boredom and
27:04your experience to manage everything going on. If you can start where you are, go a little
27:11further tomorrow and keep showing up, there's no telling how far you might go.
27:22Is there a limit to how far someone can run? No, there is no limit. Records are made to be
27:30broken
27:31and there is always a way to improve. Only it takes a lot of time.