The Philosophers of Running: Bernd Heinrich, Part 1
By: Michael Mcmillan
Tags: Running, Runner Profile, Why We Run, Runners, Runner Community

Photo courtesy of runnersworld.com

Bernd Heinrich is a retired Biology professor and one of today’s best nature writers. Heinrich has written more than twenty books on everything from bees to ravens to the winter worlds of Vermont and Maine to spending a year in a remote cabin in the Maine woods. Heinrich also wrote a book on why humans are such fantastic natural runners — Why We Run: A Natural History. Heinrich is also a decorated runner and holds or has held several American ultramarathon age-group records.

Why We Run is more a book on what used to be called natural philosophy than it is a book of classical philosophy. During the Enlightenment, as Europe was coming out of the Middle Ages, scientists began examining the world around them and areas such as mathematics, anatomy, astronomy, and chemistry, just to name a few, became subjects for intense study. The people studying these areas were called natural philosophers and Heinrich definitely fits into that mold. In his book, he spends a lot of time discussing some of the biomechanics of running and he also spends some time explaining how evolution made humans the ultimate runners, but all of this eventually lends itself to an explanation of why we run as well as how we run.

Heinrich’s Background

Heinrich was born in Bad Polzin, Germany (now part of Poland) in 1940. Heinrich’s father was the entomologist and field biologist Gerd Heinrich. Heinrich and his family fled Germany in the mid-1940s as the Russian army was advancing on that part of Germany.

The family emigrated to the United States and settled in a ramshackle cabin in Maine. After a year or two, Heinrich’s parents put him in a boarding school because they needed to go to Mexico to collect insect specimens for various American museums, which was the Heinrich family’s primary income. (Heinrich’s father lacked the doctorate needed to secure a position with a college or university).

Heinrich’s childhood in the Maine woods is a prime factor for his later running success. Because they were poor and lacked a car, Heinrich spent a lot of time running from place to place, much like Kenyans do during their childhoods.

By the time Heinrich reached high school age, he was an excellent cross country and track runner and led his school to many titles before he graduated.

Because of his success in high school, Heinrich was able to join the University of Maine cross country and track teams but during his freshman year Heinrich hurt his back lifting weights and this injury kept him from having much success in running during his freshman year.

A summer of working in the woods for a lumber company helped strengthen his back and Heinrich was able to rejoin the cross country and track teams in his sophomore year. He was so successful that year that he was named captain of the team, which was a surprise to him because he still felt much like an outsider.

His collegiate running career, however, took another unexpected turn when he left college for a year to go overseas to Africa with his parents. His parents were hired by a museum at Yale University to go to Africa to collect bird specimens and they needed Heinrich to go with them to help out. Heinrich goes without hesitation and his excitement at being on the trip demonstrates how his work in biology has often tempered his interest in running.

After Heinrich graduated from college, he went to UCLA where he received his doctorate in Biology. Heinrich’s graduate studies involved insect comparative physiology and behavior. In particular, Heinrich studied the temperature regulation processes in insects that live in temperate climates versus insects that live in tropical climates. This research led to several publications and research awards for Heinrich after he finished his graduate studies and began teaching and doing research at the University of California, Berkeley.

Heinrich’s Running Renaissance

During his graduate studies, Heinrich continued running and by the late 1970s, he was healthy enough and fit enough to start entering marathons. In 1979, he won the Golden Gate Marathon with a time of 2:29:16 on a course that ran through the San Francisco hills. He followed this effort with a 2:22:34 time (at age 40!) in the West Valley Marathon in San Mateo, California. This is his personal best marathon time and left him only 40 seconds away from qualifying for the Olympic Marathon trials.

In 1981 he moved up to the ultramarathon distance, and in his first race, a combined 50 mile/100K, he won the 50 mile and went ahead to also win the 100K. He also won several other races during this time but I want to focus primarily on the age-group records Heinrich holds to this day.

First, here are the road records Heinrich holds. These records are listed by age-group, distance, and time.

40–44 100K 6:38:21

40–44 50 miles 5:10:13

60–64 50 miles 6:39:55

Here are the track records Heinrich holds:

40–44 100 miles 12:27:00

40–44 12 hour 154,000 meters

45–49 100K 7:00:12

45–49 50 miles 5:34:24

Human, Insect, and Mammal Endurance

Much of Why We Run consists of Heinrich doing comparative physiology where he compares how humans are built for endurance racing versus how other insects and mammalian species are built for endurance. Among the insects and mammals Heinrich highlights are hawk moths, bees birds, frogs, camels, and antelopes. In fact, the original title for this book was Racing the Antelope: What Animals Can Teach Us About Running and Ourselves, but Heinrich was forced to change it because it conflicted with the title of a book about the jam band Phish.

In the next several paragraphs I’ll discuss what Heinrich teaches us about endurance in other mammalian species. One of the keys to understanding how humans, insects, and mammals are able to perform high endurance feats is understanding how we and they manage heat production.

The first insect Heinrich discusses is the hawk moths. Hawk moths are continuous fliers, which means that when they are eating they don’t stop flying. This makes them endurance athletes because they are moving constantly throughout their day. So how do hawk moths manage heat production?

Unlike humans, who manage heat production by sweating, hawk moths don’t sweat but they do manage to control their heat production so they can fly all day in order to eat properly. Heinrich was able to show experimentally that hawk moths manage heat by using their blood to transfer heat from their thorax to their cooler abdomen. Heinrich compares this convective cooling to the way a car radiator works.

After moths, Heinrich moves to birds. Birds may be the ultimate ultra-distance animal because of their migration habits. One of the birds Heinrich mentions, the white-rumped sandpiper, are bred north of the Arctic Circle, but in the winter they begin a long journey of over 9,000 miles to their winter quarters, Argentina at the tip of South America, doing so in two-to-three day continuous flights of up to 3,000 miles at a time.

Birds have several features that give them the ability to make such long, arduous journeys. First, they are able to double their body weight in the weeks previous to their migration. For example, the knot, an Arctic shorebird, normally weighs about 120 grams, but in the leadup to their migration south, they will double their body weight up to about 250 grams, giving them the fuel they need to fly a total of 8,000 to 9,000 miles in just a few days.

Birds have also evolved to allow for long flights. Their bones have hollowed out since their days as dinosaurs. Birds have learned to prefer fruit and insect protein over plant protein, both of which provide a better energy return. Because of this type of protein preference, the guts of birds have reduced in length and mass. This has led to these extra body spaces being connected to their lungs, giving them an improved breathing technique, giving them improved aerobic and respiratory abilities. This ability is so great that one species of bird, the bar-headed goose, can fly over the summit of Mount Everest (over 29,000 feet of elevation) as part of a non-stop 900-mile migration journey.

The next animal Heinrich discusses is the animal he used for his original book title — the antelope, specifically the pronghorn antelope found on America’s western plains. This antelope species have been clocked running 61 MPH and have been recorded covering seven miles in ten minutes.

Heinrich states that the pronghorn has survived for so many years (at least 4 million years based on the fossil record) because it evolved its ability to outrun its natural predators. Biologists believe that earlier pronghorns could run even faster and farther than current pronghorns but have lost some speed and endurance since it has been thousands of years since any other species could run a pronghorn down.

Scientists have shown that one measure of the pronghorn’s superior endurance is its incredible aerobic capacity as measure by their VO2max. Scientists have found through treadmill testing that pronghorn antelope have registered a VO2max of 300 millimeters of oxygen per kilogram of body weight per minute. In comparison, as Heinrich notes, the great American long-distance runner Frank Shorter had a measured VO2max of 71 millimeters per kilogram per minute.

Heinrich writes there are several theories as to how the pronghorn has developed such a high aerobic capacity and one of the more interesting theories is that young pronghorns like to play by running with and at each other, in some ways simulating hunting. This “play” helps develop their aerobic capacity to a high level when they become mature animals.

Heinrich ends this section by talking about man versus antelope and horse races. Animals usually win in shorter to longer distances but not up to ultramarathon distances. These animals have never had to run 30 or more miles to outrun a predator and they will never have to, making it unlikely they will evolve this ability. Humans have developed their ultrarunning abilities through their own devices and not as a result of evading predators.

I’ll close this first part of my review of Why We Run here. In my next article on this book, I’ll finish Heinrich’s comparison of the endurance abilities of different species and finish up with Heinrich’s view of how humans are capable of running 100 miles or more in a day or so.

Thanks for reading and please respond to this article or email me at mmmcmillan1@att.net with your comments and suggestions.