I do so love pop science articles, especially when by sheer accident they MIGHT actually be on to something.
This article is a bit vintage, but because
1. I love number crunching
2. I've actually diaried on this very thing back in the 2009 day
3. Since then I've become a practicing running coach and might actually know what I am talking about (emphasis on MIGHT, because.. heh... this [bleep's] hard work!)
4. You get THIS topic tonight!!!!
More past the Brave New Squiggle. For now...
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We could run 40 mph someday... if we're male and aren't required to perform for too long
Ok, that's a bit of a joke there. We're grownups here, and it's a Saturday. We deserve a chuckle.
Wait, it's Top Comments. We're not grownups. :)
Anyhoo, the aforementioned 2010 Livescience article says the following:
Previous studies have suggested the main hindrance to speed is that our limbs can only take a certain amount of force when they strike the ground. This may not be the whole story, however.
"If one considers that elite sprinters can apply peak forces of 800 to 1,000 pounds with a single limb during each sprinting step, it's easy to believe that runners are probably operating at or near the force limits of their muscles and limbs," said Peter Weyand of Southern Methodist University, one of the study's authors.
But Weyand and colleagues found in treadmill tests that our limbs can handle a lot more force than what is applied during top-speed running.
...
[Specifically, t]he ground forces applied while hopping on one leg at top speed exceeded those applied during top-speed forward running by 30 percent or more. That suggests our limbs can handle greater forces than those found for two-legged running at top speeds.
Take whatever running mark you want. Multiply it by 0.7. Boom goes the speedy might. We have so not begun to reach Peak Zoom.
At that point I perked up. At that point, I wanted to devise a new simple way to sort out how such speed gains could impact distances a bit closer to my heart, namely middle and long distances (400m on up). And then I wanted to sort out how such top speed gains would vary by gender, because of findings on how energy system activation varies by gender (one word to the naysayers on that topic: PREGNANCY) and implications for training for each specific race distance.
For tonight's diary we are merely noting this is a somewhat cutting edge topic in physical fitness that, properly addressed, could transform sport, especially for female participants.
Thus the title, because someday, a woman will break the three minute mile, and it occurred to me someone might want to get the heads up on that and a few other records coming down the pike.
From the earlier day...
(Represented with permission of the author, who I know pretty well.)
When last we diaried on this topic....
...For all the distance data I had, the 100m dash was the hardest to forecast. More so than any other distance, it is subject to changes in technique and training. More, the kind of talent that makes a person a potential record holder in the sprints is, coupled with even modest hand-eye (or foot-eye) coordination and specific skills training, worth a great deal of money elsewhere. No one pays for exceptional distance running ability to do anything but, well, run distances. Even here there is some crossover competition from soccer. And for all track distances, there is the question of opportunity cost for other things - like getting salary to hold down a regular day job. Doing both at the world class level is done, but rarely.
So, while these sprint time projections could be much faster, I'm going to stick with conservative numbers... because for most distances, the improvements have been driven by what I call the flattening of the slowdown curve.
But the real improvements are in strength and endurance
As one goes up in the distance being raced, the primary source of energy motivating the muscles in each of these races moves from anaerobic to aerobic systems. Few people can hold a full sprint for much more than 200 meters. Then comes the slowdown, which can be expressed as a multiple of your best 100m time.
Since then I learned...
that you cannot train male and female athletes the same, because lady mitochondria. Basically, it's an empirical fact of track and field life that the mix of aerobic and anaerobic energy systems varies across gender. This should not be misconstrued as a call that women can't do stuffs, rather that the mix of training to obtain the same results while it can be the same will produce inferior results and produce them less often if female athletes train the exact same was as their male counterparts.
Specifically, for any given race distance, women need to put in more aerobic training and the variance in training (and positive results) is most acute at the 800m distance, aka the half mile, on up to the 5000m run.
Here's the chart I've distilled for the purposes of training mix:
Percentage of total energy that utilizes aerobic systems
Distance Male Fem
10000 92% 96%
5000 89% 94%
3200 86% 92%
1600 77% 86%
800 60% 70%
400 41% 45%
200 28% 33%
100 20% 25%
Aside from the gender differences, the attentive reader (all of you, because freedom!) is that even the 100m dash requires strong cardiovascular fitness. As anyone who has DONE sprints knows, you heart spikes to the ceiling (maximum heart rate) very quickly and stays there for a quite a bit AFTER the race is over.
The sprints; they are hard, painful events when done properly. Only the combination of superb speed AND fitness translates to the utmost speed endurance to hold that top speed for that nth of a second longer, to decelerate off top speed that centimeter/second more slowly than the competition, to produce a world record or record-challenging result.
And there is probably no realm of sport where more attention isn't focused on improvement that top speed, because of the obvious cross-channel implications for both revenue sports (read: soccer, hoops, football USA style, and more) and military applications. Yeah, those.
First, circle me back to 40 mph yo
I think the article misunderstands the distinction between top speed and average speed over a given distance.
First, here are the current world records by race distance, by gender in full.
Here are some samples:
100m..........00:09.58......Usain Bolt (2009)
200m..........00:19.19......Usain Bolt (2009)
400m..........00:43.18......Michael Johnson (1999)
800m..........01:40.91......David Rudisha (2012)
Mile............03:43.13......Hicham El Gherrouj (1999)
5000m........12:37.35......Kenenisa Bekele (2004)
10000m......26:17.53......Kenenisa Bekele (2005)
Five men are the documented best runners ever across all practical racing distances.
And they're not even close to where the records will wind up.
The comparable female records:
100m..........00:10.49......Florence Griffith-Joyner (1988)
200m..........00:21.34......Florence Griffith-Joyner (1988)
400m..........00:47.60......Marita Koch (1985)
800m..........01:53.28......Jarmila Kratochvílová (1983)
Mile............04:12.45......Svetlana Masterkova (1996)
5000m........14:11.15......Tirunesh Dibaba (2008)
10000m......29:31.78......Wang Junxia (1993)
The pharmacological time travel that produced some of these records is no joking matter. People DIE because of Rx training and there's a great deal of willful looking the other way when athletes quietly cash out after leaving the deadly casino of the chemists' training table.
More, they die or live on maimed from the inside out unnecessarily. We're getting to these impressive levels through changes in training; there was never any need to reach for pills.
(Soapbox over.)
So, yeah, where could these level be taken? There's nothing but argument over maximum performances. I was quite aggressive on my earlier forecast efforts.
As it turns out, a tweak using the purported maximum 40 mph foot speed has huge implications.
However, you can only apply such speed increases to the anaerobic portion of a given race distance. The aerobic function, well, that's both as easy and as locked-in as breathing and of course maxing that fitness to get great results across all running distances.
So, let's get to maximum hypotheticals, if top human speed is 40 mph.
And this is the kicker: Assume it's 40mph tops for both males and females, only differentiated by aerobic/anaerobic energy utilization.
Here's where the records will go someday based on that caveat:
Estimated Male Athlete Top Performances By Distance
100m..........00:06.07
200m..........00:12.57
400m..........00:26.87
800m..........01:01.21
Mile............02:26.40
5000m........09:46.56
10000m......21:44.35
Estimated Female Athlete Top Performances By Distance
100m..........00:06.19 NOT much of a difference is it?
200m..........00:12.87
400m..........00:27.37 Least difference between genders
800m..........01:07.27
Mile............02:51.20 Sub Three Minute Mile for Women!!!!
5000m........11:49.84
10000m......26:22.33
[Aerobic/Anaerobic mix inputs for 5K, 10K and therefore forecast ultimate records updated for both men and women]
Takeaways
1. Human beings will run much faster
2. It is a question of how to utilize the strengths humans have through superior training and preparation NOT superior pharmacies and cybernetics.
3. This is just my opinion, but contrary to longstanding urban legend the closer approximations in sport will be in the shorter more explosive sports and race distances not the longer distance events once the optimum training mix algorithm is understood fully and applied
We are not just becoming more as a people.
We are more than most of us will ever realize, and that's a heartbreaking thing.
TOP COMMENTS
September 27, 2014
Thanks to tonight's Top Comments contributors! Let us hear from YOU
when you find that proficient comment.
With my near-Pharaoh like powers as TC diarist du jour, I declare:
So Let It Be Mojo, So Let It Be Done.
From CaliScribe
In Laura Clawson's War on Workers diary, Oregon Oak describes his/her experience with "results-oriented" educated students when they leave their sheltered private/charter schools and enter the public education realm.
From Eddic C
You CAN Haz Seasonulz!
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TOP PHOTOS BUT NOT EXCLUSIVELY OF CATS
September 26, 2014
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