I note this insight in a comment by Tuesday. I knew this and yet had not tied it together this clearly. It is regarding the Ancestors as Runners post of a few days ago where we discussed the mixture of continuous running, walking or trekking, and sprinting. I had argued that the distribution of these activities would have been more concentrated on walking, possibly at a high pace, and sprinting. Continuous running would also have been done for some periods. In fact, in my Essay, I argued that monitoring of wild animals and fish has been used to show that the distribution of these mixtures of activities follows a power law, to a good approximation. Now Tuesday puts this together nicely to make this argument:

"I know I've seen a study on the subject, though I can't seem to find it at the moment. Because walking and running/sprinting are more efficient gaits than jogging, they can be sustained for longer periods before complete rest is required, so over long periods of time (days/weeks) a walk-run pace does indeed cover more distance than a continuous pace."

I have seen the studies too, and have posted on some of them in the past, though I can't take the time now to find them. But, the point is that this mixture, with some time in the continuous mode, is likely to be more energy efficient. Why didn't I put it this way?

Further evidence comes from studies of intermittent versus continuous exercise and there the verdict is that a human can do a lot more work if done intermittently than if done continuously. Or, put another way, you can do a lot more work in a given period of time if the work is done in an intermittent fashion. This gain in time versus energy expenditure efficiency, as you know by now, is one reason Evolutionary Fitness makes use of intermittency in eating and energy expenditure. I think it is the ancestral pattern too, as this evolving discussion seems to indicate.

Quote from Econo on 4/26/2008 at 3:01 PM:
Is yours running?

You'd better go catch it!

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Despite the fact that this universal troll condition (IBTW) seems to support early hypotheses and marketing research suggesting that male enhancement is desperately needed by this subject group, the aforementioned major pharmaceutical companies denied Dr. Dilligaf's requests for additional funding for continued research.

Because nobody gives a flying @#$% about trolls.