Racing the Clock
Running Across a Lifetime
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
An
award-winning, much-loved biologist turns his gaze on himself, using his
long-distance running to illuminate the changes to a human body over a lifetime
Part
memoir, part scientific investigation, Racing the Clock is
the book biologist and natural historian Bernd Heinrich has been waiting his
entire life to write. A dedicated and accomplished marathon (and
ultra-marathon) runner who won his first marathon at age thirty-nine, Heinrich
looks deeply at running, aging, and the body, exploring the unresolved
relationship between metabolism, diet, exercise, and age.
Why do some bodies age differently than others? How
much control do we have over that process and what effect, if any, does being
active have? Bringing to bear research from his entire career and in the spirit
of his classic Why We Run, Heinrich probes the
questions of how we use energy and continue to adapt to our mutable
surroundings and circumstances. Beyond that, he examines how our bodies change
while we age but also how we can work with, if not overcome, many of these
changes—and what all this tells us about evolution and the mechanisms of life,
health, and happiness.
Racing the Clock offers
fascinating and surprising conclusions, all while bringing the reader along on
Heinrich’s compelling journey to what he says will be his final race—a
fifty-kilometer race at age eighty.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Biologist Heinrich (Why We Run) delivers a powerful reflection on his decades of competitive running that's nicely colored by an exploration of the effects of aging on the human body. Heinrich spent his childhood in a cabin in the woods of northern Germany, where his family subsisted on berries, nuts, and mice, and later moved to rural Maine, where cross-country running became his "entry into American society." In adulthood, he balanced his passions for science and running, beating his own records on the campuses where he taught. Along the way, Heinrich explores the science behind running, covering metabolism, temperature regulation, and endurance, and finds parallels in the natural world. Studies of moths and bees, for example, show that their breathing is "synchronized with their blood flow pattern," something Heinrich became conscious of in his long-distance running when his "unlabored" strides matched his breathing. In evocative prose, Heinrich treats readers to precise explanations of such diverse subjects as the physiology of tree frogs and the life cycle of the "suicide tree" of Central America. Heinrich's keen observations and unique story will keep readers hooked.
