Evolution of world running record performances for men and women: physiological characteristics.

Running world records (WRs) contain information about physiological characteristics that determine running performance. The progression of WRs over time encode the evolution of these characteristics. Here we demonstrate that a previously established model for running performance describes WRs since 1918 for men and since 1984 for women with high accuracy.

A minimal power model for human running performance.

Models for human running performances of various complexities and underlying principles have been proposed, often combining data from world record performances and bio-energetic facts of human physiology. The purpose of this work is to develop a novel, minimal and universal model for human running performance that employs a relative metabolic power scale. The main component is a self-consistency relation for the time dependent maximal power output.