The Shakeout Podcast: Is Endurance All In Your Head?

Endurance permeates every aspect of human life. Whether it’s training for a marathon or trying to get through late nights at work, the ability to endure, to withstand discomfort, is a practical skill. 

What readers learn from Alex Hutchinson’s book Endure is that this skill is something we can train and improve upon, and that the limits of human endurance are much more elastic than what we once believed. 

Throughout the book, Hutchinson traces the intellectual history of the concept of endurance. He weaves together stories of epic moments that test the limits of human endurance, including Henry Worsley’s fatal journey across the Antarctic, the Tor des Geants, a trail race that covers an incredible 24,000m of elevation, the classic ride of the Tour de France, and a non-stop 692km race in the Yukon Arctic Ultra. 

On this week’s episode of The Shakeout, we take you back to our conversation with Hutchinson who shares intimate stories of his own running successes and failures he shares in Endure and how he discovers that the concept of endurance is at the heart of what it means to be human.

Audio footage taken from the National Geographic documentary film Breaking2.

We would like to thank the Ontario Media Development Corporation for their contributions to this podcast.