Experts say best form of recovery will be to stay active, process traumas and set healthy targets

Most people would consider running a marathon the pinnacle of fitness – but not Russ Cook. The endurance athlete has just completed a 9,940-mile (16,000km) run along the entire length of Africa.

While Cook told reporters that he was a “little bit tired” and in need of a strawberry daiquiri after completing his odyssey, scientists who spoke to the Guardian suggested the road to recovery could be rockier than he anticipates.

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• Paris finishes 100-mile ultramarathon with 99 seconds to spare
• Tennessee event is considered one of the world’s toughest races

The British ultrarunner Jasmin Paris has become the first woman to ever finish the notorious Barkley Marathons race in Tennessee.

The forty-year-old was one of only five runners to complete this year’s event, which is made up of five punishing 20-mile loops around the Frozen Head State Park. Paris’s finishing time was 59 hours, 58 minutes and 21 seconds – 99 seconds inside the 60-hour cut-off.

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Why do people put themselves through ultra-long distance swims, runs and cycle rides? Plus our guide to the top ultra sports events worldwide

Have you noticed everyone’s cycling across Europe lately, or running over the Alps, or skiing to the south pole? Where once just a few mad explorers pushed themselves to these limits, now amateur sport is turning into a feat of ultra-endurance, from 4,000km bike rides to 100 mile runs. But … why?

“There are specific aspects to physical challenges like this,” says Dr Carla Meijen, a sport and exercise psychologist and assistant professor at the University of Amsterdam. “They offer a mix of endorphins, feeling fitter and observing progress”.

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In July, the World Joggling Championships take place, which raises just one question: could you run a marathon in less than three hours – while juggling?

Name: Joggling.

Age: Supposedly invented in 1975 .

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The California landmark is shrinking, exposing a toxic lakebed that threatens neighbors. ‘Irondad’ is running 92 miles to highlight the crisis

On an otherwise desolate horizon, a black dot materialized along the dramatic shoreline of California’s Salton Sea one recent Saturday afternoon. Beachgoers shielded their eyes against the midday glare and watched as the mirage became 49-year-old William Sinclair, an ultramarathon runner and activist who goes by the self-given nickname “Irondad”.

The runner’s sudden appearance felt apocalyptic: he wore an ominous full-face gas mask to block out dust, and a pair of snowshoes strapped wing-like to his back, to traverse the area’s expansive mudflats. He dressed all in black, with the exception of neon orange sneakers that were already caked in dirt from running and hiking the past 16 miles, a remote stretch of both cracked and swampy earth that very rarely sees any other human activity.

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Deo Kato has already completed the equivalent of nearly 180 marathons on his 9,000-mile journey to highlight the story of human migration

The 12 ultramarathons that Deo Kato has completed in recent years look modest compared with his current challenge: running from Cape Town to London. The aim of his epic journey is no less ambitious: Kato wants to tell the story of human migration, highlighting parallels between the millions of people forced to leave their homes today in search of a better life and the earliest movement of humans from Africa.

“The Khoisan people in South Africa, for example, are moving based on climate. They migrate to find a better environment that they can live in. So we’re moving for the same reasons that [anthropologists believe] early humans used to move for,” says Kato.

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The ultrarunner is famed for her achievements in long-distance events. Breaking 11 world records in a single competition may be her finest feat to date

It’s a hot winter noon on a Monday and Camille Herron is asleep. She lies on a cot in a tent next to a flat dirt track. Lined with palm trees and white stone and desert grass, it loops two and a half miles along the lip of a large olive-green lake. Over the lake, towers a screen of steep mountains covered in bush scrub. It’s one resort among many in California’s Coachella Valley and the setting for Lululemon’s FURTHER event, a chance for 10 select women to run as far as they can in six days.

It’s the penultimate day, and her nap is stretching long – five hours – and the timer by the line is ticking – and Herron has less than 24 hours to run 48 miles. If she can will herself on, she’ll break a record that has stood for more than three decades.

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Do you have your best ideas while running to the bus stop, or walking the dog? You’re not alone. Researchers are finding remarkable links between movement and blue-sky thinking

Need to get your creative juices flowing? Get moving. A long line of influential thinkers have instinctively moved their bodies to open their minds, from Darwin, who advanced his theory of evolution while accumulating laps of his “thinking path”, to Nietzsche, who in 1888 warned: “Do not believe any idea that was not born in the open air and of free movement.” And now scientists are not just confirming the link between exercise and creativity, but unpicking precisely how it works.

Often, when we hear about the benefits of physical activity, researchers are really referring to the benefits of fitness – the product of regular and repeated physical activity. But what’s interesting about creativity is that it appears to be enhanced through the very act of moving the body.

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University of Manchester study says abuse by men and boys is ‘everyday occurrence’ – with only 5% of cases reported to police

More than two-thirds of women experience harassment while running, a study has found, as victims say they no longer report abuse to the police as it has become an “everyday occurrence”.

The study, by the University of Manchester, found women surveyed in north-west England experienced threats, verbal abuse and had objects thrown at them while jogging.

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