The Ultra-Marathoner

We marathoners take pride, with some justification, in being able to complete a 26.2 hour foot race. The best at it take only a little over 2 hours, which is mind-numbing to someone like me who needs six hours, including standing in a few porta-potty lines that the great marathoners never need. But I learned yesterday of an untra-marathoner that puts us all to shame.

This incredible athlete is the bar-tailed godwit, a type of shore bird. It turns out that this amazing animal flies from Alaska to New Zealand, non-stop, in nine days! That’s over 7,200 miles, or 800 miles a day! No eating or drinking! No resting! No sleeping! And no porta-potty stops! Beating those wings every second or so, or maybe even faster, for 9 days. That’s 216 hours! 12,960 minutes! 777,600 seconds! Non-stop! They are averaging about 33 miles per hour to pull off this seemingly impossible feat.

One secret they have is to double their weight before leaving for their jaunt. 50% of their body weight is fat at journey's start, and that is what they burn for the next nine days. So I got to thinking about that. I weigh 182 pounds. Now let’s say I have an extra 10 pounds of fat, because I should really weight about 172 – 175 pounds. So in order to make this kind of journey, I would need about 172 total pounds of fat. I have this 10 pound head start (thank goodness), so I only have to gain 162 pounds. If I had a month to put on the lard, and I need 2,000 calories a day for normal activity, I would have to consume 582,200 calories above and beyond that over the month. That comes down to a 21,440 calorie a day diet, total, including my 2,000 a day just to get by. What is that, like 4 cheesecakes a day? Bring them on! 80 chocolate bars? Make mine dark! Five or six tubs of ice cream a day? Wow, think of the flavors one could try!

After gorging beyond belief, the big day finally arrives. I groan - I knew I shouldn't have had those two apple pies at midnight - and slowly hoist my 344 pound bulk out of bed, wrap a blanket around myself because none of my clothes fit, and start running. I can’t fly, of course, never could even when I only weighed 182. I lumber down the driveway, the first 50 feet of a nine day, non-stop run. At 6 miles an hour, I will run 1,296 miles – not as impressive as the godwit but still a pretty fair marathon. I waddle down the street – man, this is going to be tough! I reach the main road and I’m getting hungry. Normally, I’ve eaten a cheesecake by now! But for the next nine days, no eating or drinking. No stopping. No rest breaks of any kind – yech! After about a mile, I suffer a massive coronary from arteries clogged from all that ice cream. Game, and trip, over! How do those little birds do it?

We humans tend to think of ourselves as pretty special and amazing, and that we are superior to all other life. The first part is true – no other animal does some of the things we are capable of. But the second part is not true at all. There are plenty of animals that in their own way are special and amazing as well, that can do things we can only marvel at. The bar tailed godwit is just one of them. The next time you run a marathon, hike all day, or make an all day drive and it seems exhausting, think of this bird’s journey.

Whoa – 6:15! Time to eat a chocolate cake and get ready for work!