Limits to running speed in dogs, horses and human

The to-me coolest bit is at the very bottom, captioned &quot;context&quot;:<p>&gt; [...] a women running the estimated absolute fastest speed for 100 m would have beaten the world&#x27;s fastest male in 1955, a feat that would have astounded contemporary spectators. The predicted maximum speed (5.83 m s–1) for a man running a marathon (42.2 km) would have been fast enough to beat the great Emil Zatopek in his world&#x27;s best 10 km race in 1954. Those in the stands watching that race could not have imagined someone besting Zatopek by 16 s, and then simply continuing at that winning pace for another 32.2 km.<p>The actual result for humans is split out by distance and gender in figure 11 near the bottom, peaking at ~150m distance just shy of 11 for men and 10 m&#x2F;s for women

I was hoping this would be a more mechanical&#x2F;physics defined limit. Along the lines of &quot;given bone shapes and mass, muscle mass, maximum twitch speed, and energy expenditure, we determined the maximum performance combinations and their physical limits.&quot;

I don’t think the title is accurate. And this isn’t about biology. The biology is there and the author dismisses it in Introduction and proceeds to go down the statistics rabbit hole. A golden opportunity to discuss how we can obtain limits of locomotion while adhering to thermodynamics was lost. There’s no physiology in here. Instead, we have plots of past competitions and silly predictions to go along with it.<p>I suppose I’m asking too much of the author to write the “Tire &amp; Vehicle Dynamics” book applied to the human body but, one can dream I suppose.

Looking at &lt;100 years of data, fitting a logistic equation to it and concluding that the limit is close to the current plateau is ... unsatisfying.<p>Maybe that&#x27;s an unfair summary, there is more statistic rigor than that in the paper. But nonetheless the observed time period seems way too small to support any conclusion

Interesting fact: humans are well built for shedding excess heat, which is a limiting factor in long races. It is possible under the right weather conditions for a man to outrun a horse.

Obligatory related paper:<p>&quot;in the future, the fastest humans on the planet might be a quadrupedal runner at the 2048 Olympics, which may be achieved by shifting up to the rotary gallop and taking longer strides with wide sagittal trunk motion.&quot;<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&#x2F;pmc&#x2F;articles&#x2F;PMC4928019&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&#x2F;pmc&#x2F;articles&#x2F;PMC4928019&#x2F;</a>

Have you ever had the chance to see a Greyhound in real life? They are so beautiful.

The host website is as interesting as the article:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;biologists.com" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;biologists.com</a>

Interesting perspective!