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On Thursday, November 25, 2004, at 06:00 AM, Automatic digest processor
wrote:

> I think of kangaroos who can move very quickly for a few hundred yards,
> maybe a mile, and that's it and it works.  I think our running
> ability,  like our
> climbing and diving/swimming ability is only for short getaways,
> otherwise,
> we are walkers.

Except that humans are such piss-poor sprinters. Hardly any terrestrial
animal in the world is as slow as we are. Kangaroos on the other hand
are fast.

>   We can walk for a long time with very little  fatigue.  But,
> running presents many problems, particularly in the  knees.  Our knees
> are not
> made for the percussion effect of fast  movements.  If we look at
> endurance
> runners, their leg movements are short  so as to minimize shock on the
> leg
> joints.

This is just what the article argues. We are slow runners, not fast.
For myself, I jog almost everywhere. I find walking boring and tiring,
so I only do it when with people who don't run.

> The athletic body type that  runs is not too common,

In northern europeans. Most of the rest of the world is slim and
small-boned in comparison. Different modern groups have different
recent evolutionary trends.

>  if we don't
> hypothesize evolutionary specialization, we  have to consider why so
> few people are
> good at running, most humans can't run  for very long and very few can
> manage a 5
> minute mile at any age.

But almost anyone of any body type can train and run a marathon, the
kind of running this article discusses. Remember that we moderns are so
weak and flabby, most of us, that we can't do much of anything our
ancestors could. Humans can out-jog almost every other kind of animal
except horses, dogs and a few others.

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