Chris Solinsky breekt record op de 10 km met 26:59

Begin mei heeft Chris Solinsky het Amerikaanse record op de 10 km verbroken met een tijd van 26:59.  Dat is heel bijzonder omdat tot nu toe maar 30 mannen onder de 27 minuten waren gebleven en deze mannen waren allemaal Afrikanen en veel lichter en kleiner dan Solinsky.
De Science of Sport heeft er een topic over geschreven; hieronder een paar stukjes eruit.

Only 31 men have broken 27 minutes for 10,000m. It's amazing to think that this exclusive club, consisting of only 31 men, had never had a non-African in it, until last weekend.
Now, Chris Solinsky is a member, the first man from outside of African to break the barrier. Solinsky is the heaviest athlete ever to break the barrier, and by some margin. It turns out that the average mass of the men in this list, without Solinsky, is only 55.6kg. The heaviest, as mentioned the other day, were 64kg. In other words, only small men need apply!

Size in distance runners has received quite a lot of attention in the literature - about 10 years ago, Frank Marino did research showing that smaller men had a performance advantage over larger men during 8km time-trials in hot, but not cold environments (Marino et al. Pflugers Arch, 2000). That is, they performed similarly in cool conditions, but as soon as it got a little warmer, the smaller men outperformed the bigger men.

What was most interesting is that the bigger athletes started the trial at a slower pace, probably an anticipatory reduction in speed so that they wouldn't overheat. Why? Because the bigger you are, the more heat you produce during exercise, and even though it is possible to lose more heat, it doesn't quite make up for the extra heat gain. As a result, the larger athlete stores more heat, sees a more rapid rise in body temperature, and thus selects a lower speed in anticipation of this "thermoregulatory failure", and is thus outperformed by the smaller athlete.
The other notable observation of Solinsky's performance is that not only is he the largest runner every to make it into the sub-27 club, he's also the first man from outside Africa to do. Of the 31 members, 20 are Kenyan (including a few who happened to be running in Qatar vests), 6 are Ethiopian, 2 are Moroccan (one of whom ran for Belgium and then got caught doping), and one each for Uganda and Eritrea, and now America.


Ik zal dus zeker nooit zo snel lopen met m'n 192 cm en 74 kg. Het verklaart ook waarom René(178cm, 62 kg) zoveel harder liep tijden de hardloopvierdaagse; ik kon niet tegen de warmte en hij wel : as soon as it got a little warmer, the smaller men outperformed the bigger men.