A Passion for Running

Comment by Taco John

Tuesday March 22, 2005 @

I think it has more to do with how the height is broken down. If you’re tall, but most of it is torso, and you have short legs, then you are built to swim. If you have longer legs and a shorter core, then you’re probably built more like a distance runner.

Comment by jeff

Tuesday March 22, 2005 @

well, look at josh cox, one of the fastest american men with a 2:13 marathon. he’s a short guy (5’9″ i think?). but then you get someone like keith, who is almost 7′ and runs a mean pace…it think it’s all over the place.

Comment by deene

Tuesday March 22, 2005 @

When I lived in New Mexico, there were a few Kenyans that lived in the area to train at altitude. They didn’t appear very tall but had long skinny legs.

Comment by Chris Brogan...

Tuesday March 22, 2005 @

Those dudes are puny. I’m 6’2″, and last Boston, they ran past me, and I thought… wow, miniature people. Fast miniature people, but y’know.

Comment by Ali

Tuesday March 22, 2005 @

Here something that might help. I think Kenyans have more efficient leg muscles, like the calf muscles, their’s is small and very high up on the calf

http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/Apr2003/1051048272.An.r.html

Comment by Reba

Tuesday March 22, 2005 @

Have no idea about the Kenyan’s either my friend. I did a search and came up as blank as you.

On the short and fast people though I’ll tell a quick story about ‘the road runner’ from 8 section, Charlie Company 1 Princess Patricia Canadian Light Infantry in 1995. Okay, he was damn fast, like insane and he was shorter than my 5’1″ self if you can believe that. Short but devious, clever man from Newfoundland. We did a route in Calgary called ‘Twin Bridges’ and it was about 10km I believe with 2 deadly steep hills a regular and a rope bridge and we had to cover it in somewhere between 35-40 minutes if I recall. (throw in some pushups of course) I was always breathing through my rear end I swear…any place I could get air into my body…crap that was brutual. Well, one day poor RR had a very bad case of disentry and had to stop every 10 minutes for a bathroom break at some gas station along the route. At one point we thought we’d lost him for good…hadn’t seen him in a good 10 minutes or more, figured he’d cab it back to base, then, like a maroon streak accross the Calgary skyline we see him closing in on us! He was incredible. Come to think of it we had a short fellow in Battle School too and he was darn fast too…but so was I with a cranky sergeant major at my six! LOL …wow, those are great memories. Thanks for sparking them Mark!!

Comment by Jon in Michigan

Tuesday March 22, 2005 @

I don’t know about the Kenyans, but all the guys at the front of the races I go to are always tall. The sprinters seem to be short.

Comment by Nancy Toby

Tuesday March 22, 2005 @

I used to have height/weight data for the Olympic track and field athletes, but unfortunately it’s residing on a crashed computer hard drive right now. As I recall, there was considerable more variability in heights than there was in weights (which were uniformly minimal for distance runners; “underweight” for most BMI standard guidelines). I’ll recover that hard drive some day….