Humans run at the most energy-efficient speed, regardless of distance


Date:
April 28, 2022
Source:
Cell Press
Summary:
As race season approaches, many runners have the same goal:
go faster.

But researchers now show that speeding up might require defying
our natural biology. By combining data from runners monitored in a
lab along with 37,000 runs recorded on wearable fitness trackers,
scientists have found that humans' natural tendency is to run at a
speed that conserves caloric loss -- something that racers seeking
to shave time off their miles will have to overcome.



FULL STORY ==========================================================================
As race season approaches, many runners have the same goal: go
faster. But in a study publishing April 28 in the journal Current
Biology, researchersshow that speeding up might require defying our
natural biology. By combining data from runners monitored in a lab along
with 37,000 runs recorded on wearable fitness trackers, scientists have
found that humans' natural tendency is to run at a speed that conserves
caloric loss -- something that racers seeking to shave time off their
miles will have to overcome.


==========================================================================
The research group, composed of scientists from Queens University in
Ontario and Stanford University in California, have been studying the
mechanics of running in labs for 15 years but hadn't gotten a chance
to study running in the wild before now. "We were able to fuse the two
datasets to gain new insights and combine the more messy wearable data
with the gold standard lab experiments to learn about how people run
out in the world," says co-author Jennifer Hicks, deputy director of
Stanford's Wu Tsai Human Performance Alliance.

What surprised the team most was the consistency that they found across
the combined datasets. "We intuitively assume that people run faster for shorter distances and then would slow their pace for longer distances,"
says first author Jessica Selinger, a neuromechanics researcher at Queens University. But this wasn't the case. Most of the runners analyzed stuck
with the same speed, whether they were going for a short run or a long
haul over ten kilometers.

From an evolutionary perspective, it makes sense that people would run at
the speed that uses the least amount of energy. This caloric conservation
is something that has been observed across the animal kingdom. But in
the modern world, humans' reasons for running have changed, and if the
goal is speed, there are some tricks runners can use.

"Listening to music with a faster pace has been shown to help speed
up stride frequency, which can then increase running speed," said
Selinger. In addition, picking faster running buddies can give you
a boost.

Selinger and Hicks hope that having large pools of fitness data from
wearables will help researchers to gain insights about populations. "You
can look at connections with the built environment and access to
recreation resources and start to layer all of that data to really
understand how to improve physical activity and health more broadly,"
says Hicks.

This work was supported by funding from the Natural Sciences and
Engineering Research Council of Canada, the National Institutes of
Health, the Wu Tsai Human Performance Alliance, and the Joe and Clara
Tsai Foundation.


========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by Cell_Press. Note: Content may be
edited for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Jessica C. Selinger, Jennifer L. Hicks, Rachel W. Jackson, Cara
M. Wall-
Scheffler, Derek Chang, Scott L. Delp. Running in the wild:
Energetics explain ecological running speeds. Current Biology,
2022; DOI: 10.1016/ j.cub.2022.03.076 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/04/220428125438.htm

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