Abstract
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. The analytic approach presented here is the first to derive the observed logarithmic scaling between world (and other) record running speeds and times from basic principles of metabolic power supply. Our hypothesis is that various female and male record performances (world, national) and also personal best performances of individual runners for distances from 800m to the marathon are excellently described by this model. Indeed, we confirm this hypothesis with mean errors of (often much) less than 1%. The model defines endurance in a way that demonstrates symmetry between long and short racing events that are separated by a characteristic time scale comparable to the time over which a runner can sustain maximal oxygen uptake. As an application of our model, we derive personalized characteristic race speeds for different durations and distances.
Citation: Mulligan M, Adam G, Emig T (2018) A minimal power model for human running performance. PLoS ONE 13(11):
e0206645.
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0206645
Editor: Barbora Piknova,
National Institutes of Health, National institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, UNITED STATES
Received: July 18, 2018; Accepted: October 16, 2018; Published: November 16, 2018
Copyright: © 2018 Mulligan et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Data Availability: All relevant data are within the paper and its Supporting Information files.
Funding: This work was supported by Centre national de la recherche scientifique, grant EMERGENCE2017 of INP, www.cnrs.fr (T.E.) and Agence nationale de la recherche, grant ANR-11-IDEX-0001-02 (T.E.). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.