Endure

"You have to teach athletes, somewhere in their careers, that they can do more than they think they can." As someone who is interested in the limits of human performance (especially my own performance), this book provided incredible insight into what those limits actually are. As a slight spoiler: There really is no defined limit. The book covers many different categories of maximums such as pain, oxygen, heat, thirst, and even the brain's willpower. It's hard to test these limits since pushing someone to the brink of death just for research is very immoral. But the book has a great balance of discussing the records and how they were achieved while also analyzing studies and research that contributed to our understanding of that topic. The author gives great summaries at the end of each chapter too with his own opinions of the data at hand, usually putting everything on the table and presenting all arguments. The center stone story of the book is Eliud Kipchoge's attempt to break a two hour marathon and it felt like a natural "feel-good" piece to include between chapters as a break from the science. My only gripe with this book is that it almost felt like it was... too researched? There were some instances where the author provided studies that barely related to the chapter and did not provide anything besides just taking up space. It also made it more difficult to know what to make of it all. However, as a former runner, I appreciated this book and everything I got out of it. I would say that anyone who is looking to improve themselves physically in any activity should read this book.