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Compared with other runners on this planet, humans are feeble.
If Olympic sprinters competed against mammals of comparable size, they would never even place. The top speed for an in-shape male human is normally between 15 and 18 miles per hour (the world record is 27 mph, sustainable only for a few second).
Meanwhile, horses have been clocked at about 48 miles per hour, wolves about 42, and the speed champion — the cheetah — at 70 miles per hour.
In the field of endurance racing however, we leave everyone else in the dust. Over long distances, a well-trained human can outrun a horse.
What is the key to this gift? Placement of our muscles? Proportion of our bones? Flexibility of our tendons? New evidence from the Animal Simulation Laboratory (ASL) out of the University of Manchester, UK, suggest that our Achilles tendon is the key feature that allows us to be efficient running machines.
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