Re: running discussion

From: Alex Ferguson <abf_at_cs.ucc.ie>
Date: Wed, 12 Apr 2000 16:49:20 +0100 (BST)

Steve Lieb on the allegation that humans have superior endurance to horses:
> I'd be interested in a citation for this factoid. Everything I've seen
> tends to suggest that this isn't the case - the Tevis cup has horses
> finishing 100 miles in roughly 15 hours IIRC "in good condition to continue"
> I think is even part of the charter, but I may be wrong about that.
>
> The Sri Chinmoy (I think this is some foreign tongue for "ungodly long" :)
> Races are ultra-endurance races, where people are running roughly 60 miles
> per day for 50 days or so.
>
> So while these aren't apples to apples comparisons, it just seems that this
> might suggest that horses are roughly 1.5 times "better" even on a macro
> scale, as well as being faster.

I think you answer your own point, pretty much (hence the longish quote): you can get people (though obviously not most of us listpotatoes)  to run for 50 days on the trot (as it were), or to cite another example, bicycle round the whole of France at break-neck (or at least, break-clavicle) speeds for three weeks, but you couldn't get a horse to do that. So it depends on how 'long a run' it is you're interested in. It's also the basis for one documented 'how to catch a horse if you don't already have a horse' technique, incidentally... The fact that you're making it hard to the horse to feed presumably contributes to that. (Though it doesn't simply relate directly to bipeds vs quadruped or carnivores vs vegetarians, if one contrasts felinids and canids, for example, so I'm guessing it also relates to muscle geometry and perhaps especially, muscle chemistry too.)

Cheers,
Alex.

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