What can the body do?

What are the limits of the physical body? It's always interested me. Climbing is a natural interest and in the mid 90's with friends after clubs were closed we often ended up playing the game of travelling as far in London as we could, roof top to roof top, without reaching street level. I broke my ankle whilst trying a drunken jump in 1992 that I was sure was possible - sober with the right landing I'm sure it was possible.

Reading that Alexander the Great used to get his army upto 50miles a day opened my eyes to the possibilities of endurance. The most I've done yet is 40miles in a day - but that is with a rucksack. The taking of his army from Macedonia via Iran to India opened my eyes to the idea of distance possible with the physical body. Bach walked 250 miles to his organ school without issue. Have we forgotten what the body can do?

Heard about Mark Beaumont on holiday from a fellow camper and especially the 6kcal he needed each day to cover the 100miles a day on bike. That is 600ml of straight veg oil a day in calories! Or 1.2kg of biscuits! This was an important eye opener for me, the size of diet when you are energetic. This video is inspirational (altho my mother's answer is always NO WAY :-( )

Here's something else inspirational - free running. Finding out what this body is, and what it can do. Our relationship with space and the world about us is so dull in modern life. We learn how to sit in a car and operate the pedals, we learn how to perform dull repeatative movements with our girl-friend, we learn to walk the same way in the street and stand the same way - it is an icing over of our physical existence. I learned to juggle once just to break the uniformity and monotony of our expected gambit of physical movements and how we think about our physical relationship with the world. I chickened out of jumping a gate in holiday - I'm 37 people my age don't do that... I was wrong I should have jumped it ... I will find a gate this week and jump it - why open it, walk through it, and close it again - have we no imagination! 

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So I jumped it after some hesitation n practice - this is an unusual movement until you are familiar with it - but very useful afterwards.