The man who ran 71 miles while juggling

Welcome back, sapiens! In a surprising turn of events for all involved, we are *still* waiting on baby here at Techno Sapiens HQ [thank you to all who reached out with well wishes last week!] The good news is that this has given me time to do essential pre-baby tasks like: organizing the snacks in my pantry closet, panic buying three different types of pacifiers, and, of course, contemplating the state of human-AI relationships (see below).

Thanks for being here, sapiens!

4 min read

In 2007, Michal Kapral ran a marathon in 2 hours, 50 minutes, and 12 seconds. This is, in itself, impressive—the fastest marathon ever recorded was 2 hours, 0 minutes, and 35 seconds. What made Kapral’s race even more impressive? He did it while juggling.

This is, apparently, a thing.1 It’s called “joggling”—juggling while jogging, obviously—and Kapral is one of the best in the world at it. He also holds the records for the fastest joggling half-marathon, and fastest “no-drop” joggling marathon (i.e., without dropping any balls).2 Recently, he set a new record for the longest distance run while juggling: 71.5 miles.

Of this latest feat, which took 17 hours, 22 minutes, and involved roughly 150,000 tosses and catches over the course of the race, he told Canadian Running: “I wanted to get to 100 miles joggling, but learned the hard way why no one has ever done it. I’m thrilled I even made it to 71.5 miles…As ridiculous as it is, I knew I was doing something no one had done before.”34

Of course, Kapral could have simply hopped in a taxi and juggled from the passenger seat for 71 miles. He could have used string, velcro, or other tools to make sure the balls did not drop. He could have outsourced the whole feat to a joggling robot.

But would we view it the same way? Would we feel that same mix of delight, awe, and confusion? I don’t think so. We are drawn to Kapral’s feats of joggling grandeur because we know the limits of human abilities, and we love to see someone push them to their edge.

We are impressed precisely because they occur within the bounds of human fallibility.

How joggling is (not) like AI

A few days ago, the Pew Research Center released new data on U.S. adults’ views of AI, and I found myself thinking ...