Alex Hutchinson, Ph.D.: Translating the science of endurance and extreme human performance

**Peter Attia** (0:11)
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Now, without further delay, here's today's episode.
My guest this week is Alex Hutchinson. Alex is a science sports journalist who writes about the science of running and other endurance sports.
Before getting his master's degree in journalism from Columbia University, he received his Ph.D in physics from the University of Cambridge. He's a lifelong runner, and we start this podcast by talking about his incredible passion for running, which he did competitively until about the age of 28 I first got familiar with Alex's work reading a number of his articles, but became really obsessed when I read his book Endure. Early in 2019, I believe it came out the year before. It's a wonderful story about the science of endurance and what the real limits are of human performance. And since that time, I just knew I always wanted to have him on the podcast to talk about this with him. In this episode, we talk about a number of things. We kind of talk about his background, which is how does a guy go from having a Ph.D. in physics to deciding he wants to go and do journalism and then kind of go from doing sort of the beat journalism stuff to getting into science and the science of endurance. And then we just talk a lot about stuff that people have asked me so many questions about, and we go into it in really tremendous detail, such as VO2 max and what does it mean and how much of it is genetic and does it automatically imply superior performance?
Even some of the nuances of how it's measured. We talk about the difference between maximum aerobic capacity and efficiency. And then we kind of transition into what these things mean for normal people. So we obviously talk about the extreme examples of human performance. We talk a lot about breaking the two hour marathon, which is something that was done recently in 2019, and then kind of bring it back to what all of this means in terms of health. We get into the idea of challenging the idea that one can exercise too much and challenging the J-curve of mortality, discussing how maybe there are different ways to think about this problem. We talk about high intensity interval training and a whole bunch of other things that I think you'll find really interesting. So without further delay, please enjoy my conversation with Alex Hutchinson.
Alex, thanks so much for making time today to sit down and be part of our inaugural video podcast here. I hope it's not a long run for a short slide. So far it's been a long run, but I have a feeling it's going to be a long slide too.

**Alex Hutchinson** (3:09)
Well, thanks for having me on Peter. I really appreciate it and this is going to be fun.

**Peter Attia** (3:14)
So about two years ago, was it two years ago? Yeah, it would have been. It would have been like February of 19 I read your book, Endure, which I literally couldn't put down. I think I read it in two days.
It was fantastic. And since that time I've become such a huge fan. You're a very prolific writer. I don't know how you do it. If you just search your name and go through all the magazine articles you write, it's just a wonder you can do so much. There are so many things I want to talk about today.
But I want to kind of start with just a bit of your background because you don't have a typical background, right? You have a Ph.D. in physics.

**Alex Hutchinson** (3:47)
Yeah, probably the least useful Ph.D. in physics anyone has ever attained. But yeah, no, I come from a different place in some ways, I would say.

**Peter Attia** (3:55)
You're a collegiate runner and we actually have some friends in common because I think we're of the same generation. Remind me, did you go to Waterloo? Did you go to Guelph or did you go to Colling?