The ultimate limit of human endurance has been worked out by scientists analysing a 3,000 mile run, the Tour de France and other elite events.
They showed the cap was 2.5 times the body’s resting metabolic rate, or 4,000 calories a day for an average person.
Anything higher than that was not sustainable in the long term.
The research, by Duke University, also showed pregnant women were endurance specialists, living at nearly the limit of what the human body can cope with.
The study started with the Race Across the USA in which athletes ran 3,080 miles from California to Washington DC in 140 days.
Competitors were running six marathons a week for months, and scientists were investigating the effect on their bodies.
Resting metabolic rate – the calories the body burns through when it is relaxing – was recorded before and during the race.
And calories burned in the extreme endurance event were recorded.
The study, in Science Advances, showed energy use started off high but eventually levelled off at 2.5 times the resting metabolic rate.
The study found a pattern between the length of a sporting event and energy expenditure; and that while running a marathon may be beyond many, it is nowhere near the limit of human endurance.
- Marathon (just the one) runners used 15.6 times their resting metabolic rate
- Cyclists during the 23 days of the Tour de France used 4.9 times their resting metabolic rate
- A 95-day Antarctic trekker used 3.5 times the resting metabolic rate
“You can do really intense stuff for a couple of days, but if you want to last longer then you have to dial it back,” Dr Herman Pontzer, from Duke University, told BBC News.
He added: “Every data point, for every event, is all mapped onto this beautifully crisp barrier of human endurance.
“Nobody we know of has ever pushed through it.”
During pregnancy, women’s energy use peaks at 2.2 times their resting metabolic rate, the study showed.
