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Former marathon champion Rob de Castella calls it "one of the hardest things you can do".

One of the world's best human integrative biologists, Mike Joyner, predicts that somebody will run a marathon in less than two hours within the next 30 years.

But a UWA student and two staff members were simply happy (but sore) to cross the finish line in the New York Marathon on 6 November.

Sam Shepherd is one of 11 young Indigenous runners trained by de Castella for the Big Apple's biggest race. They all completed the course. Sam is a third-year environmental engineering student. She ran the marathon along with Law lecturers Kate Offer and Tony Buti.

Kate and Tony were running for charity (World Vision and Amnesty respectively). Kate, who had never run until she started training a year ago, kept a blog of her lead-up, and she was chosen by the New York Road Runners as one of their social media reporters, with a link to her blog on the official New York Marathon website.

"It was an amazing life experience," Kate said, the day after the race. "Hard physically but the crowds are wonderful, calling out your name (if you write it on your shirt) and being encouraging. There are bands lining the route and the finish line is in glorious Central Park. I'm not sure any other marathon could compare."

Tony, a more experienced runner, achieved his goal of under 3.30 by completing the marathon in three hours, 20 minutes.

All three runners will relate to Professor Joyner's lecture at the School of Sport Science, Exercise and Health next week, Stalking the Two-Hour Marathon.

Professor Joyner, a former elite athlete whose best marathon time was 2.25.44, is visiting UWA as a Fulbright Senior Specialist. He is a senior researcher at the famous Mayo Clinic, renowned for its medical research, which has an annual budget of around $US600 million, spread across 200 researchers.

The Clinic has about 2,000 staff physicians and Professor Joyner is also one of them, still practising as an anaesthetist.

Winthrop Professor Danny Green, who divides his time between the School of Sport Science, Exercise and Health and Liverpool John Moores University, said he had been trying to get Professor Joyner to UWA for a decade.

"I worked with him as a young postdoc at the Mayo Clinic and he's a remarkable man, one of the best in the world in his field," Professor Green said. "His research interests are diverse but primarily focus on adaptation of the cardiovascular system to physical stress, including the influence of gender and age."

His talk on marathon running will provide an insight into the limits of human performance and function. By considering how the marathon record has changed over time, it is possible to integrate ideas about oxygen consumption, running economy and the ‘lactate threshold' and tell a coherent story about the limits of human endurance performance. This story will raise questions for future physiology studies and highlight sociological issues.

"One of those issues is the sheer numbers of people who want to run marathons," Professor Joyner said. More than 47,000 runners finished the New York Marathon last month and, every year, more than 100,000 people apply to take part.

Professor Joyner predicted about 20 years ago that it was physiologically possible for somebody to run a marathon in less than two hours. The current record is 2.03.38.

"The biggest and most obvious threat would be some sort of problems with thermoregulation," he said. "Historically marathon records have been set on cool days."

Professor Joyner also has interests in research management, regulation and governance, through his administrative roles at Mayo and for the National Institutes of Health. He will speak at UWA about governance and ethical issues associated with medical research.

His talk, Privacy and Consent in a Post Individual World, is in the John Bloomfield Lecture Theatre, School of Sport Science, Exercise and Health at 6pm on Monday 5 December. Stalking the Two Hour Marathon will be in the same venue at 6pm on Thursday 8 December.

Both lectures are free and open to everybody.

Published in UWA News , 28 November 2011