Why you may have been born to run – 03/02/2024 – Balance

Just a gust of wind, a trail of dust, and the sound of my own footsteps.

A light rain falls as I dip my feet in the puddles and jump over the rocks. I feel ecstatic, free and totally at peace.

Suddenly I increase my speed, just for fun.

Running is one of the most practiced and popular physical activities in the world. In the United States alone, there are around 64 million runners – a story that is repeated around the world.

More and more people are running marathons. The number of marathon runners practically doubled between 2021 and 2022, among users of the fitness app Strava.

In 2023, the Parkrun organization announced that more than 8.5 million runners had registered to participate in its community events held weekly in public parks around the world.

Why is running an activity that attracts so many people? One of the reasons may be its accessibility.

You don’t need to buy equipment, which can be expensive, or a gym membership. You can just throw on a pair of sneakers, head out the door, and start running. That simple.

But is this the real reason? What differentiates people who can run quickly from those who run slower?

There is increasing evidence that genetics may play an important role in this regard.

British runner Ciara Mageean is training at altitude in Flagstaff, in the US state of Arizona. She is preparing for the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris, France.

Mageean has collected many victories, such as his silver medals at the Commonwealth Games and the European Championships, a fourth place at the World Championships and the Irish records for the 800, 1,000, 1,500 and 1,600 meters.

The 31-year-old recently set the Parkrun world record by completing 5km in just 15 minutes and 13 seconds – less than half the average race time.

It’s seven o’clock in the morning. Mageean will begin his training day.

His positivity and professed love for the sport are contagious. But reaching the top is not a simple task.

“I grew up playing a sport called camogie, an Irish game similar to field hockey,” she says.

“I could run all day, so they put me in midfield. But I wouldn’t say I was the fastest. Sports day was my favorite day of the year, but I didn’t win every sprint race.”

Mageean’s talent is not in the marathon, nor in the sprint. It’s in the middle distance. And her natural competitiveness led her to make this discovery.

“I just loved the thrill and adrenaline of competing,” she says.

“I was willing to give it my all. I caused myself pain to get out there and be competitive. But did I always know I was super-fast? No.”

Luckily, Mageean discovered she had a natural ability that would take her to the highest levels of athletics.

“I feel like it’s impossible to compete at the top of athletics without having this genetic component,” according to her.

Scientists have been researching the existence of a “speed gene” for more than two decades. There is increasing evidence that genetic makeup can have a strong influence on sports performance.

There are more than 200 different genetic variations that can influence sports performance and at least 20 that can contribute to someone being an elite athlete. But it is important to point out that these characteristics alone will not transform a person into an athlete.

In fact, there are several paths to becoming an elite athlete. And, in combination with the right training and a range of environmental factors, carrying the correct variants of certain genes can offer certain advantages to some individuals.

The genetics of speed

The so-called speed gene, or ACTN3, is a gene that encodes the protein alpha-actinin-3, expressed only in fast-twitch muscle fibers.

Skeletal muscles are made up of hundreds, sometimes thousands, of muscle fibers packed together and wrapped in connective tissue. Each skeletal muscle fiber is a cylindrical muscle cell. They are classified by their speed of contraction.

Type 1, or “slow twitch,” fibers are often found in large quantities in elite endurance athletes such as cyclists and long-distance runners. Type 2, or “fast twitch”, fibers are more numerous in elite strength athletes, such as weightlifters and sprint runners.

Recently, researchers at the University of Exeter, in the United Kingdom, took a step forward in research into the role of genes in athletics.

Sports scientist Henry Chung and his team searched thousands of genes in the DNA of 45 British men and women aged between 20 and 40. For eight weeks, participants ran for 30 minutes three times a week.

“In eight weeks, you typically see a 10 percent increase in cardiorespiratory fitness, or VO2 max — the ability to use oxygen for energy, which is the gold standard of assessment. [do condicionamento aeróbico]”, explains Chung.

“But we saw a large standard deviation. Some people improved by 20%, others by only 5%. And some had no improvement at all.”

Chung’s team then performed a genotype analysis of all the runners.

“We looked at more than 3,000 different genes,” he says, “and found 19 specific genes that kept showing up—all of them related to some kind of fitness variable.”

These genes have been reported previously, according to Chung, but this is the first study that links them together.

“People who improved by about 20% had all 19 of these positive genes, while people who didn’t improve as much only had one or two,” says the scientist.

One of the 19 genes identified was the so-called “warrior gene”, also known as the monoamine oxidase A (MAOA) gene. It is associated with aggressiveness and risky behavior.

“The warrior gene allows you to trigger the survival instinct to think, ‘I need to run, I need to move,'” explains Chung.

But the study also concluded that less than 31% of people have the necessary genetic component to make the most of their training. So how can we challenge our genetic expectations?

Research shows that the sharp progression of world records in sprint races since the start of the Modern Olympic Games is due to advances in training methodology, combined with progress in footwear and running tracks.

But experts also say that with training, you can simply switch your muscle fibers from slow twitch to fast twitch. So perhaps there is hope for those of us who face difficulties in running fast.

“Being able to run fast is actually very simple,” says biomechanics expert Steffi Colyer, from the University of Bath, in the United Kingdom.

“You just need to be able to apply very large forces relative to your own body weight and to the ground quickly. If you want to run faster, you simply need to be able to apply more force to the ground.”

But she highlights that the mechanical needs of sprinting change “quite dramatically” over the course of your performance.

“We talk about sprinting in terms of an acceleration phase and then a maximum speed phase,” she says.

Acceleration is highest at the beginning and decreases throughout the race, explains Colyer. And, as speed increases, your contact time with the ground also decreases.

As a result, your opportunities to apply force are reduced, to the point where the contact time is so short that you cannot generate the force necessary to continue accelerating – and you can no longer increase speed.

“You then fight with everything you have to maintain that speed,” she continues. “Typically, in the 100-meter dash, you also see a slight deceleration phase at the end of the race.”

To maintain your maximum speed for as long as possible, Colyer says you need to activate your muscles in a coordinated way to contract and generate force. In other words, it is a combination of strength, power and technique.

Colyer explains that your feet should make contact with the ground beneath your body and not in front. This will help reduce braking force when hitting the ground.

Minimizing contact with the ground can save energy – and your foot’s quick recovery when leaving the ground helps too.

“You don’t want too much to happen in the rhythm phase,” she explains. “You want to get your leg back as quickly as possible.”

Colyer adds that coordinating the sway of your thighs is also important. “Being able to quickly accelerate your thighs down and back toward the ground is also associated with greater force production.”

Athlete advice

For an amateur runner like me, this all seems a little easier said than done. How can we translate these instructions into actual training?

“There are many things you can do,” according to Ciara Mageean.

“Whenever I run, I give myself little tips. [Eu penso] ‘tap, tap, tap, tap, tap’ in my head – because touching the ground super fast and bringing my leg back up will help me run fast.”

Mageean advises going up and down hills during training sessions.

“I really like short runs up steep hills, no more than 10 seconds. Try running up that hill, as fast as you can. Walk back to the bottom of the hill, recover fully and climb back up again,” guides her.

While you are doing the exercise, focus on your form.

“I imagine that someone has tied a string to my chest and is pulling it forward at a 45-degree angle, to make me climb the hill”, says the athlete.

“I try to stay nice and upright, with my arms moving side to side and a proper triple extension through my feet. With that, my foot touches the ground, my leg extends, and so does my hip. Then I bring my leg back. as quickly as I can. I find these simulations very useful.”