Does human endurance have a hard limit?

Humans love to test their limits. Some people run marathons, race triathlons, or climb the world’s highest peaks. All of these endeavors are challenging, but can we quantitatively compare how each undertaking pushes the human body? Join us this week as Charlie dives into new research that seeks to determine a ‘hard limit’ on human energy expenditure, both in relatively short duration tasks like running a marathon as well as long duration tasks like running 6 marathons a week for 20 weeks or even being pregnant!

Check out the paper from Science Advances here and the Science Magazine article here

Here’s a copy of the plot showing the how sustained metabolic rate changes with respect to event duration:

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