Seems humans didn't evolve to run after all, or at least not without modern western medicine and self-help groups. According to Ignatz van Beaner, PhD of the University of Copenhagen at Albuquerque (Department of Continuing Education and Distance Learning), humans have evolved to run for short spurts sometimes lasting up to two weeks followed by recurring trips to the doctor or at the very least having to confront several new and strange pains that weren't present before the bouts of running began. "It turns out there is strong evidence that humans and pain have coevolved", says van Beaner. "Humans may have engaged in persistence hunting in our history, but surely these hunts were interspersed with long periods of hobbling around and general complaining at our lot in the food chain. And we may have never actually succeeded in running anything down other than the occasional sloth."
In a recent study that isn't peer reviewed due to lack of interest but was nevertheless published in the Journal of Inter-Mountain Physiology and Kinetics, van Beaner found that one hundred percent of his subjects had some kind of pain after running and thought seriously of going to the doctor or taking pain medication. And that's saying quite a bit because of the two in the study, one was actually a medical doctor and the other was van Beaner himself who, ironically, is called "Doctor" by students and colleagues.
"This is probably really a problem for the psychologists", van Beaner admits. "Why would anyone want to subject themselves to this viscous cycle?"
In other news, espn.com used a T.S. Eliot reference this morning. "Cruelest Month: Pujols' April empty of HRs". Who ever said the polymaths at ESPN didn't read their classics? April is the cruelest month, indeed.
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