Racing the Antelope by Bernd Heinrich, Cliff Street Books, $25, ISBN
0060199210
ON 4 October, 1981, Bernd Heinrich won a race in Chicago. But it was no
ordinary race鈥攁nd Heinrich is no ordinary biologist. Endurance is his
obsession. He鈥檚 devoted his career to studying how animals perform amazing
physical feats. And the race he won was a 100-kilometre ultramarathon.
Half of Racing the Antelope is a survey of how muscles, lungs and
diet combine to enable animals to become either sprinters, like the grouse, or
marathon fliers, like the Arctic shore birds, the knots. Drawing on his wide
reading of current research, plus his own studies鈥攁lso to be found in
several earlier books鈥擧einrich gives clear explanations of how diverse
organisms such as bees, antelope, camels and humans have learned to fly, run or
walk. These developments often occurred under harsh conditions, and usually as a
matter of life and death. But he believes that the reason humans run鈥攁nd
can literally run deer down鈥攊s that they have vision. And his own vision
fills out the book.
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It鈥檚 a vision achieved at great personal cost. The autobiographical chapters
in Racing the Antelope relate a saga of achievement against the odds.
Heinrich鈥檚 parents were refugees from Germany who emigrated to the US. But they
could not adapt to their new country, put their children in an orphanage called
Good Will and left to collect birds in Africa. Heinrich began competitive
running at Good Will, and his prowess earned him a scholarship to the University
of Maine. Along the way came a back injury and repeated knee injuries. Doctors
told Heinrich more than once his running days were over, but he never stopped
for long. Like other ultramarathoners, who often run the last few miles in a
state of glassy-eyed exhaustion, he keeps going where others might falter. There
are hints that his stubborn, or obsessive, approach to running and life might
explain why he is now in his third marriage.
Heinrich decided that if hawkmoths can fly without overheating, despite not
being able to sweat, he would learn their secret, and apply it to his own
running. If antelope can reach 100 kilometres per hour and race passing cars for
the fun of it, he would try to get inside their bodies and minds. If knots feed
near Tierra del Fuego and breed in the Arctic, he would look at how they eat
before their world crossing migratory flights.
Not all this research is pretty: one physiologist in California, interested
in how much lactic acid lizards accumulate in their muscles when running, picks
them off the treadmill and pops them right into a blender. But Heinrich never
spares himself: at one point he decides that if bumble bees fly so well on a
drop or two of honey, he can run on the same fuel. He chugs a pint of honey,
takes off, but is soon squatting behind a bush beside the road. Years later, he
has a similar misadventure with artificially sweetened cranberry juice.
Overall, Heinrich does better with the animals than he does with his nervous
sections on human evolution, especially on sex differences in running
performance, which do not seem motivated by the same enthusiasm. And his
sections devoted to preparing for races are probably only for other runners. But
descriptions of how and why antelopes evolved into slim runners with small guts
is brilliantly done. Compared to goats and sheep, they are picky eaters and have
little fat on their bodies鈥攕o they die when a harsh winter blankets the
American plains with snow. Frogs seem classic sprinters at first, capable of
only a few great jumps before tiring. But many species outdo marathon runners
for endurance as the males call all night during breeding, converting fat and
oxygen into noise for hours.