254 points | by thunderbong3 days ago
https://therunningchannel.com/deo-kato-completes-run-from-ca...
Does anyone know how he ran from continental Europe to England?
https://www.runnersworld.com/uk/news/a63224509/deo-kato-lond... https://www.instagram.com/p/DDynCvFAph_/?img_index=1
> During one Sunday in October 1993, Wally Michalski and Mike Turner, working as contractors on the British side, used a pair of the Saracen bicycles to cycle the 100-kilometre (62 mi) round-trip from Folkestone to Coquelles and back again. The pair took around five hours to complete the journey, while wearing full overalls and needing to carry respirators.[1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycling_in_the_Channel_Tunnel
He reached Calais on the 19th and started from Dover on the 20th, so I'm assuming a ferry.
I have to say I don’t find myself too surprised that anybody non-local doing extreme-long-distance running through insular Croatian towns might arouse the interest of the local constabularies—and I imagine the runner being a Ugandan guy would be an especially surprising sight to people in Croatia (91% Croat, 3.2% Serb, officially recognize 22 other ethnic minorities, none of them from Africa) [1]. Which I suppose is the point he was trying to raise.
What an astonishing extreme of human endeavor.
[0] https://archive.is/4T13g [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Croatia#:~:t...
I don't live in Europe, but just help me out, why call the cops on a guy running down the road, in running gear, even if he's an ethnicity you rarely ever see?
The primary reason why he got so much police harassment is because Croatia is a EU Schengen border country, the patrols here are much stricter than everywhere else, and the associated problems are much worse as well.
I don't think it's entirely due to racism - if you were a border policeman, and you are tasked with bringing in people illegaly entering the country, what would you do seeing a person of color running on back roads near the border of an otherwise extremely ethnically homogenous country?
For every case of someone who entered legally and got harassed, they probably bring in thousands of people which they are supposed to bring in (ie. entered ilegally).
https://www.ndtv.com/offbeat/indy-nelson-man-who-visited-eve...
https://www.pap.pl/en/news/pole-wrongly-sentenced-life-congo...
Are you suggesting no countries in the world should have any border control?
You weren’t born here and don’t pay taxes here is pretty different from you’re African, right? So why do you say racism and not discrimination? Why do you say African and not non-European? Phrasing Europe’s border policy as racism against Africans is misleading and escalating, rather than edifying.
Let’s fix that: Saying that you can’t come into Europe because you’re not a European resident is discrimination based on country of residency that could look like racial discrimination if you’re not careful.
In as much as, ahem, some government policies actually are racist, it’s true that border policy does discriminate based on country of residence, but this is not necessarily racist. Europe is not necessarily discriminating against Africans, it’s discriminating all non-Europeans, including China, Russia, America, the Middle East, etc., right?
When people say racism it is often (usually?) referring to beliefs about other races being inferior in some way, or hate for other races. Racism typically means prejudice and antagonism combined with discrimination. Discrimination on its own without judgement may be necessary, and doesn’t mean there is any animosity or value judgements being made based on someone’s race.
And to be clear, that's not wrong, but it's also a distinction without a difference. People will still feel discriminated against even if the source of that discrimination is different from what they named.
Also, in your border-free dreamworld, how far does this go? Can anyone / everyone in the world come live in your country? How about your city? How about your backyard?
People within a country can freely move between cities but can't freely use private backyards.
We're just saying it should be the same between countries as it is between cities.
Countries aren’t geographic regions. They’re collections of people. If you magically swapped the populations of South Korea and Germany, those geographic countries would change overnight to be their demographic countries.
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with wanting your country to stay at least somewhat stable in its ideals, crime levels, particular problems, etc.
i am for the elimination of borders and free movement of everyone across the world, but that requires that we help raise the standard of living everywhere to remove the incentive for people to move just for economic reasons.
How's that different from what's already happening with the borders in place?
This is far from universally true, both because of legal direct constraints on internal migration and because of implicit controls which are the result of economic constraints (which are themselves part of the means by which societies are governed, whether or not they are overtly intended products of state policy.)
The same logic that justifies national government with tax-levying and rule-enforcing power also requires national borders. (ie, a group of people own this area together and will vote to determine what is done).
Open borders does not imply absence of laws.
Then the hypothetical, what if it were true that the people attempting to harm your society singularly visually differed? Would that be racism, some strange "justified racism" or simply not racism? If you say, we are not prosecuting on race, but on propensity to crime. Well that starts to sound like some things I've heard in my country, which we believe is racist. Interesting questions.
Also turning it around: Is it right for somebody, like the runner, who legally entered to repeatedly be treated bad just because others who share skin color do bad?
part of the problem is not only that he is checked, but how he is being treated during those checks.
i mean that's my experience in china. every interaction with authorities was extremely polite and friendly. even when it was an issue where i broke the law because i didn't register my new address in time. of course africans experience racism in china as well, so i can't say for sure that they would get the same treatment as me, but certainly not what this guy experienced in croatia.
after reading the article i found the links to other articles on the guardian site linked to this: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2024/oct/10/p... "Croatian police accused of burning asylum seekers’ phones and passports". the problem seems to be more than just never having seen a black person.
To add relevant context Croatia is at the edge of the Schengen zone. On the other side of the border are Serbia and Bosnia with less strict border controls and visa rules, so this is one of the roads for illegal immigrants to reach rich western countries. This and Hungarian borders are what's between them and their goals. Connect that with the fact that Croatia doesn't have non-white minorities, there were probably zero cases before this of black person wondering down the roads who was not an illegal migrant.
Destroying passports is a normal practice for illegal immigrants. It extends their stay in EU by several years. Most countries are considered safe, and it is hard to claim you are from Syria with Egyptian passport.
>ethnicity you rarely ever see?
Rarely... I was 20 years old when I first saw a black person in real life. This was in a center of a big city, and it surprised me so much that I remember exactly where and when it was.
Nowadays times have changed and it's not that rare in my country - at least in big cities. But I imagine a Croatian farmer seeing a black person - running! - and calling the police to investigate what the hell is going on.
So is this common? I would not call the police immediately among seeing something odd or unusual that isn't threatening...
Power failures, parked cars, loose animals, strange kids, balloons, weather, etc.
I've done this when a horse had escaped from a field at the edge of a village.
First thing to many occur to especially older folks watching news is illegal immigrant running ie from busted police operation, not some epic runner. They definitely dont recognize running sportswear.
Your question is a trick. If only statistics make something reasonable, then the only "reasonable" assumption is that he is a criminal. And all racist assumptions will be "reasonable". But the very idea that a person should be assumed about based on his ethnicity is not reasonable or morally right.
I'm from that part of the world and had the same thing happen when I went camping.
The police officer asked if I lived in the west, then left me alone with a warning about bears and gypsies.
People see he’s a different race so they treat him badly because of it. No one is worried about being called racist.
He was arrested several times a day for being black. No one in the whole chain of events viewed this as a problem.
"On other occasions, however, he almost packed it in. In Uganda, his one-man support crew resigned, leaving him without a support vehicle or help at a time when his funding for the run was almost exhausted. To compound matters, all routes ahead involved either conflict or extreme risk."
Others comments mention a route map, but I can't find it.
> The swim covering 179 miles (288 km) was achieved in 31 days as part of his global expedition on foot.
With the help of Azerbaijan's coast guard and some swimmers. Wow!
Mastodon: https://masto.bike/@nabili Strava: https://www.strava.com/athletes/113690657
You can always trust russia to be a pain in the neck, to put it mildly.
Also recall, Ukraine suspended elections until after the war. While that’s following Ukrainian law, that still sounds pretty undemocratic to me. Ukraine possesses Lviv which was Polish since the 1400s. Crimea was Russian from the 1700s as a result of a war with the Ottomans — a war started by the Turkish because they were made that Russia was interfering with Polish internal affairs. Russia has a much stronger claim on Crimea than Ukraine, historically speaking.
Lviv was stolen from Poland by a Soviet-Nazi agreement during World War II. If the Russians should leave eastern Ukraine, then certainly the Ukrainians should give Lviv back to Poland right?
My point is that the Ukraine conflict isn’t as black and white as people make it out to be. This entire conflict is based on overlapping and often contradictory versions of history. Claiming it’s a battle against fascism is glossing over the realities.
Running in the other direction seems to be somewhat more dangerous.
> DNA testing suggested that Bacca was raped by multiple people, and not just Karataş.
How sad. Looks to me like the dangerous part is doing so as a woman, not the direction.
This is an epic feat and gives me hope for humanity. My hats off to Mr Kato!
I suspect this guy was actually running significantly more every day but also took some significant time off.
Russ Cook, who also ran the length of Africa, ran a route that was 2000 miles longer, in about 5 less months. He covered on average about 28 miles per day.
They're both very impressive accomplishments, but not as physically impressive as mentally, at least in my opinion.
Funny, you bring us Russ Cook, his body was literally breaking down. Again, 15 miles on average is tame for a long distance runner. It's starts to become exponentially harder when there are no rest days involved. Both of the achievements are nothing to scoff at.
At a slow enough pace (relative to the individual), 15-20 miles isn't a hard run for many distance runners. (For the BQers in the bunch, their recovery pace was faster than my race pace. However, their race paces would be considered recovery paces for professional marathoners.)
https://journals.lww.com/acsm-csmr/fulltext/2015/03000/exerc...
> Recent research has raised alarms about the potential for plaque buildup and scarring in the heart in some long-distance runners. Yet other studies have suggested that when marathoners get heart disease, they may be able to weather it better than non-runners.
All articles discuss scarring and physical signs but no clear link between exercise and worse life outcomes. The article you cited noted most issues resolve themselves within a few weeks after a race. There are literally 0 people exercising at “race intensity” day after day, which is completely different kettle of fish to your regular training run. Kato here certainly isn’t doing that.
Given many professionals and amateurs run over 5 hours per week and easily break 5/6 miles at a time. A quick search will show strong runners regularly hit 6-8 hours per week.
Cyclists will cover greater distances and times and, apart from Pantani (who was doped to the gills), you don’t see them dropping dead of heart attacks despite regularly covering 10-20 hours a week. Similar for triathletes.
So no, the evidence really isn’t there that distance running causes heart disease.
> Other studies also have confirmed the long-term adverse effects on myocardial structure (18,27–30,32), including one study suggesting that the CAD event rate during 2-year follow-up was significantly higher in the athletes than that in controls
> Recent studies have suggested that long distance runners may have increased levels of atherosclerosis and CAD (18,37). In a study 6 years ago, male marathon runners had paradoxically increased coronary artery calcification (CAC) as measured by computed tomography (CT) CAC scoring (21). A very recent study of men who completed at least one marathon yearly for 25 consecutive years (n = 50) compared with 23 sedentary controls demonstrated increased total plaque volume (P < 0.01), calcified plaque volume (P < 0.0001), and noncalcified plaque volume (P = 0.04) compared with those with EEE (Fig. 3) (37). Despite the fact that runners have better overall CAD risk profiles, these results underscore the potential for very heavy EEE to increase the severity of CAD through mechanisms largely independent of the traditional CAD risk factors.
> Very high doses of running, however, were associated with trends of worse survival compared with either nonrunners or groups of low- and moderate-dose runners.
> However, when dividing runners into quintiles of doses (miles·wk−1, running days per week, min·wk−1, and running speed), with the exception of speed (faster running always had a trend for better survival), quintile 1 (<6 miles·wk−1, 1 to 2 times per week, <51 min·wk−1) had similar mortality reductions as those in quintiles 2 to 4 and a trend to slightly greater benefit than those in quintile 5 (Fig. 4).
There are other studies that have not shown long-term adverse events. The evidence isn't conclusive and most people need more exercise, not less. But it's prudent to caution committed runners about overdoing it with this information so they can make their own informed decision.
So after all that, you end up agreeing with me.
FWIW, there are some more recent studies that flatly contradict this claim [1] [2], so YMMV with a TED talk. My father has been a long-distance runner for 50 years, and he thinks that it is possible to do heart damage in very extreme cases, but these cases including being more committed than most Olympic athletes. The problem is when doing competitive racing type running without ever taking a break for recovery. He does know a couple of people who ran too fast and too much and had to quit due to what he calls “overtraining syndrome”. He specifically said he thinks Deo Kato isn’t likely running fast enough to cause overtraining syndrome. In the video, you might notice the data he shows depends on running pace; In the TED video, James didn’t separate miles per week from pace (at for example ~6:50). This means that distance alone - miles per week - doesn’t necessarily prove anything, miles might not be associated with risks until it’s enough miles that there’s no time left to rest.
There is a real danger here of scaring people who should exercise more, of giving the wrong impression or a backwards summary to the vast majority of people who will never ever run the risk of over-exercising so much they could cause heart damage. Your summary left out the part where James pointed to the absolute consensus that an hour a day of “vigorous” exercise is known without a doubt to be very beneficial. There’s also a danger of giving a misleading impression about the risks of not exercising compared to the risks of extreme exercise. The data in the video at ~5:10 shows not exercising leading to dying many years earlier, while there is no data here that shows extreme exercise leading to higher mortality; all it shows is that the benefits plateau. There’s some data and discussion on incidence of heart problems, but not outcomes. Essentially the summary should be: exercise all you want, and if you are wondering if you’re exercising too much, then you’re nowhere near the threshold - the very few people exercising enough to do heart damage are extreme and already know they exercise too much, because they’re compromising on work, hobbies, friends, and family in order to exercise. ;)
[1] https://www.outsideonline.com/health/training-performance/ex...
[2] https://www.utsouthwestern.edu/newsroom/articles/year-2019/e...
PS you’re not the Andrew Stuart of Sudoku/puzzle fame are you?
> The epic run was conceived by the London-based Kato to highlight the history of human migration and the discrimination faced by many black Africans, a message underlined by the fact he endured daily racism from police and passersby in parts of Europe.
Running to the 'epicenter of global subjugation and decimation of large parts of Africa' seems part of the point for the run.
[0]: https://www.numbeo.com/crime/rankings_by_country.jsp?title=2...
In the meantime, could someone with experience (i.e a local) please tell me about the current safety of and racism against a white person in Cape Town, where he started his peace run? Is it safer than Johannesburg? I'd love to visit South Africa, but I'm too scared of visiting there nowadays.
As a matter of fact, Africa is crossed partially or completely on a fairly frequent basis by white backpackers and bikepackers. You can find numerous guides and reports on the internet. Also, around 16% of the population of Cape Town is white.
Having said that even in the most dangerous places in Africa the problem is not necessarily racism but inequalities and unemployment. Cross a place where unemployment is high and education level is low due to inequalities, crime will be rampant regardless of average skin color. If you happen to have interesting goods or be seen as a vulnerable, you may have problems. Hence the reason you might have issues in some places in Cape Town but not in a peaceful village somewhere else in Africa. And said peaceful village that could happen to have been very dangerous in another time when same country was in civil war.
I am not saying racism against white people don't exist, but there is no reason to oppose racism against white people to a black guy running to raise awareness about racism. That guy is probably against any form of racism, especially as his life partner happens to be white.
1. Not 4 times. 4 times per day every day you are in the country
2. Don't complain about racism in 1st world if you are from the 3rd world because the 3rd world isn't safe. Conveniently missing that racism here is between ethnicity of the 1st world towards 3rd world ethnicities, so basically this absolves all racism in that direction in the 1st world.
3. I'm scared of visiting South Africa because of racism, but a black man scared of racism in Europe where the police are constantly called on him, that's no big deal and he shouldn't complain, which I'm doing right now.
2. I'm sorry I didn't fully get this (English is not my first language) but I'm also from a 3rd world country).
3. I'm guessing you are in the USA bubble (which always had and still have a racism problem on a different level) and don't know much about Europe. In Europe, racism would almost never result in any physical violence or not being allowed any rights.