Running in the wild: Energetics explain ecological running speeds

Abstract

Human runners have long been thought to have the ability to consume a near-constant amount of energy per distance traveled, regardless of speed, allowing speed to be adapted to particular task demands with minimal energetic consequence.1-3 However, recent and more precise laboratory measures indicate that humans may in fact have an energy-optimal running speed.4-6 Here, we characterize runners' speeds in a free-living environment and determine if preferred speed is consistent with task- or energy-dependent objectives. We analyzed a large-scale dataset of free-living runners, which was collected via a commercial fitness tracking device, and found that individual runners preferred a particular speed that did not change across commonly run distances. We compared the data from lab experiments that measured participants' energy-optimal running speeds with the free-living preferred speeds of age- and gender-matched runners in our dataset and found the speeds to be indistinguishable. Human runners prefer a particular running speed that is independent of task distance and is consistent with the objective of minimizing energy expenditure. Our findings offer an insight into the biological objectives that shape human running preferences in the real world-an important consideration when examining human ecology or creating training strategies to improve performance and prevent injury.