The most illuminating thing for me on how they survived? Listening to serious endurance athletes talk about what they go through. Mostly, it's les grandes anciens from Paris Brest Paris... Bike 1200km in 90 hours. Get rained on, have no possible way to sleep enough, hallucinate, have your knees do strange things, discover caffeine. And keep going, because you have a date back in Paris.
When you listen, it's always clear that it's not so much the physical strength as the *mental* strength. Great care for the other people they run into and great care for their own physical resources balanced as carefully as possible. And they're able to care for others, even 72 hours in when they might be running on less than 4 hours of sleep.
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momijizukamori
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Date: 2009-01-29 12:03 pm (UTC)When you listen, it's always clear that it's not so much the physical strength as the *mental* strength. Great care for the other people they run into and great care for their own physical resources balanced as carefully as possible. And they're able to care for others, even 72 hours in when they might be running on less than 4 hours of sleep.
Human brains can be pretty amazing.